Dr. Melanie Laurin is a regular researcher in the Oncology axis of the CHU of Quebec – Laval University Research Center. She is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Molecular Biology, Medical Biochemistry and Pathology at Laval University. Her research activities focus on understanding the molecular mechanisms that orchestrate skin embryonic development and how these can contribute when deregulated to skin cancer progression. Throughout her career, Dr. Laurin’s work has been published in prestigious journals. Notably, one of her breakthrough received a best publication award from the CIHR Institute of Cancer Research and was identified as a Top 10 discoveries funded by the Canadian Cancer Society in 2013.

Team Development Award Project Title: Development of a in vivo mouse screening platform to identify molecular effectors of non-melanoma skin cancers.

Lay Abstract: Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) of the skin is the most frequently occurring form of all human cancers. Due to the striking number of cases, BCC treatment creates an important financial burden of the healthcare system. While BCCs may be easily treatable via surgical removal, a significant cohort of patients with advanced cases fail to respond or develop resistance to presently available treatments. Moreover, in addition to high risk of permanent skin damage with BCC resection, current therapeutic regimes are often associated with emergence of other medical complications, and there is a high incidence of disease reoccurrence. Thus, new and improve treatment options are urgently required. Using mouse genetics, our study aims at identifying previously unknown regulators of BCC progression.

Scientific Summary: Basal cell carcinoma (BCC), are the most common cancers. Our team overarching goal is to identify new regulators of BCC progression to uncover new therapeutic opportunities for the treatment of aggressive cases by capitalizing on our ability to mimic this cancer in mice. With the help of a SkIN Canada team development grant, we successfully establish at our research institution an ultrasound-guided in utero lentiviral injection platform that specifically targets skin progenitors during our first year of funding. Over the next year, we will move forward with our goals. Next generation sequencing efforts have generated massive genomic and transcriptomic datasets that facilitate the identification of genome alterations and gene expression changes that correlate with malignant progression. Yet, it remains crucial to distinguish the perturbations that directly contribute to tumor progression from the ones that are irrelevant. Key mutations driving BCC initiation, namely in the Hedgehog signaling pathway, have been identified. Still, these mutations alone do not explain the variation in outcome observed across patients. To address this, we propose to take advantage of our mouse platform, to support high-throughput functional testing of candidate regulators of BCC progression previously identified via the analysis of patient’s genomic and transcriptomic datasets. The funding from SkIN Canada is crucial as it will help us with the completion of proof-of-concept experiments toward the obtention of full project grant funding.

Dr. Mina Tadrous is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto who leads research focused on evaluating drug policies and post-marketing surveillance of medications. He works closely with policymakers and uses large data sets to answer questions about medication real-world safety and effectiveness and improving the optimal use of medications. Dr. Tadrous is currently a scientist at Women’s College Hospital (WCH) Institute for Health System Solutions and Virtual Care (WIHV), an investigator with the Ontario Drug Policy Research Network (ODPRN), and ICES adjunct scientist.

Team Development Award Project Title: Evidence-based Management of Skin conditions Collaborative (EMSC).

Lay Abstract: We will work as a team, made up of doctors, pharmacists, researchers, and patients, to provide evidence-based recommendations on how best to treat skin conditions. We want to answer questions that are important to both patients and doctors. Our plan fits with SkIN Canada’s goals of building a national network for skin research, bringing together researchers, doctors, and patients to continue to grow the skin research community. To demonstrate how well we can work together, we’ll start with a project about treating psoriasis where we will conduct a systematic review and network meta-analysis. This will be used as a test project to see how well we work as a team to answer questions patients and doctors think are important for psoriasis research. Patients will be a part of every step to make sure our results help people with psoriasis. Trainees will also play a contribution to the research, and they’ll learn the best ways to do this type of research. If we are successful, we’ll keep working together on more projects about skin conditions. We’ll apply to different grants to help us do more research related to the treatment of psoriasis and other skin conditions, helping patients and clinicians make treatment decisions using the best evidence.

Scientific Summary: We will work together as a new interdisciplinary, multi-institutional team of clinicians, researchers and patients to develop a strong collaborative capable of answering questions on the evidence-based treatment of skin disease that are important to patients and clinicians. Our proposal aligns with SkIN Canada’s overall goals of developing national infrastructure for multicentre skin research, fostering collaborations between researchers, clinicians and patients and creating a new team that will grow the skin research community by engaging trainees and young investigators. Using a systematic review and network meta-analysis of topical treatments for psoriasis as a demonstration project, we will optimize our collaborative workflows and demonstrate the feasibility of working together as a team while simultaneously answering a research question identified by patients and clinicians as a top research priority for psoriasis in the SkIN Canada Priority Setting Initiatuve. Patient partners will be involved at every stage, ensuring our results meet the needs of people living with psoriasis. Trainees will make substantial contributions and will learn best practices for advanced evidence synthesis. If our team is successful, we will build on that success by collaborating on future projects in evidence-based dermatology. This will include applying for funding to CIHR, Canadian Dermatology Foundation and disease-specific funders to conduct evidence-synthesis projects. We will also be poised to apply for funding from organizations such as the American Academy of Dermatology to directly support clinical practice guideline development.