Member since: October 25, 2012

A Little About Me

The project I am listing is the culmination of 7 years of research from my laboratory at Concordia University, where I worked as a graduate student. My original goal at the start of my academic career was to find treatments for age-related diseases. I worked with yeast and aging for quite some time, studying the mechanisms of lifespan extension in calorie-restricted cells, but it was when I received a full doctoral scholarship (awarded to me by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research) towards the end of my doctorate that I was able to look directly at specific age-related diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease and cancer. I collaborated at the Lady Davis Institute, part of the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, Quebec, hoping to use these bile acids as compounds that might slow the progression of Alzheimer's disease. Instead, what I found was a novel anticancer molecule that might one day help children suffering from nbeuroblastoma, and possibly prostate cancer as well. In the long run, with the help of those funding this and other projects, I would like nothing more than to start up my own lab, studying cancer chemotherapeutics in addition to continuing my previous work with yeast and aging.