Tag: cancer

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Concordia professor Nadia Chaudhri dies at 43, leaving a historic legacy

Amid her fight against ovarian cancer, the neuroscientist inspired hundreds of thousands on the internet

Dr. Nadia Chaudhri, an award-winning neuroscientist, Concordia professor, and beloved mother and wife, passed away on Oct. 5 due to ovarian cancer. While dealing with a terminal diagnosis during the pandemic, Chaudhri demonstrated nothing but courage and inspiration to an audience of over 150,000 on Twitter.

Born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan, Chaudhri attended Franklin & Marshall College in the U.S. from the age of 17, where she was recognized for outstanding academic and extracurricular achievements. With a PhD in neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh, Chaudhri has taught at Concordia University since 2010.

The professor had become a role model for the representation of women and minorities in neuroscience research — a cause for which she raised over $630,000 from thousands of donors, setting a record-breaking fundraiser at Concordia. Much of this support had emerged from Chaudhri’s popularity on social media, achieved by inspiring thousands with her personal stories about her fight against cancer, including the highs and lows of her difficult journey.

“Truth time! I can’t get out of bed without help anymore. But I’m gathering my strength for one more Shuffle down the palliative care floor tomorrow. I know I’ve got one more in me,” Chaudhri tweeted on Sept. 11 in an effort to raise funds for the Nadia Chaudhri Wingspan Award.

“I am not afraid,” Chaudhri added two days later, while spending her final weeks of life at the McGill University Health Centre.

For Dr. Alexandra Chisholm, now a postdoctoral fellow at New York’s Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Chaudhri played a key motivational role in the early stages of her career.

Chisholm shared with The Concordian that Chaudhri provided exemplary guidance and support when she began teaching the fundamentals of animal learning to undergraduate students in the Department of Psychology at Concordia. The neuroscientist also sent a warm congratulations email to Chisholm for her PhD thesis defense in experimental psychology — which Chaudhri could not attend as cancer complications had already begun.

“She was always the first to volunteer her help and expertise because she genuinely cared about her students’ development, wanted us to feel supported and wanted to push the limits of our critical thinking skills,” said Chisholm. “She helped me to build the confidence I now have today as a course instructor.”

Besides inspiring and funding her students for their success in neuroscience, Chaudhri also raised awareness about ovarian cancer through Twitter. She shared her early symptoms, which were not diagnosed correctly until six months later, in order to help her followers detect any potential complications of their own sooner rather than later. She highlighted how crucial it is to listen to one’s own body, while also stressing the need to fund cancer research as current chemotherapy treatments do not always manage to save lives.

“[Dr. Chaudhri] enriched us. Our entire community grieves her death and offers deeply heartfelt condolences to her son, Reza, and husband, Moni — whom she lovingly called her Sun and Moon — her family, friends, colleagues and the thousands of supporters to the Nadia Chaudhri Wingspan Award who embraced her cause,” said Concordia President and Vice-Chancellor Graham Carr for a Concordia article.

On Oct. 7, the University lowered its flags to half-mast to commemorate Chaudhri. Despite an early end to her inspiring journey, Chaudhri’s contributions to neuroscience and cancer awareness will not be forgotten by the Concordia community and her international supporters.

 

Photo courtesy of Nadia Chaudhri’s six-year-old son.

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Student Life

Illuminating the Night

Feature image by Mackenzie Lad.

Thousands of Montrealers bring light to the darkness of cancer

The Light the Night Walk is organized every year in numerous cities across North America to honour those who have been affected by cancer. Families and friends from all regions of Quebec gathered Saturday, Oct. 13 in Parc Jean-Drapeau on Île Notre-Dame, to walk in remembrance of those who have been lost to cancer.

Many musicians were present, such as the People’s Gospel Choir of Montreal, Vikki Gilmore, a Montreal-based singer who performed during the walk, and many more. “It’s such an important cause,” said Gilmore. She felt the best way to get involved was through music, which can sometimes be more soothing than words. Gilmore volunteered at a psychosocial oncology lab for a year and said it was an incredible experience. “I started performing at the march four years ago,” she said. “My aunt passed away from metastatic lung cancer in 2013, and after that, I wanted to get involved in cancer research awareness.”

Light the Night is hosted by the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Canada (LLS), a charitable foundation whose main mission is to cure blood cancer. The march helps fundraise for the foundation, as well as other research and support programs for patients.

“What’s great about this event is that it allows people to connect with others,” said Gilmore. “Often, when we deal with loss, grief or the stress and the heartache that comes with the disease, we feel isolated and forget that other individuals are potentially experiencing a similar situation,” she explained.

“What’s great about this event is that it allows people to connect with others,” said Montreal-based singer Vikki Gilmore. Photo by Mackenzie Lad.

A crowd of more than 5,000 people gathered in the park before the march, which took place from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. There was almost no industrial light throughout the event. The only light cutting through the darkness came from the colourful lanterns waving in the air. From beginning to end, the march was full of cheerful volunteers, and smooth music set the ambiance for the walk.

Volunteers gently shushed the crowd to have a moment of silence for family members and friends who lost someone to cancer. On each side of the trail, there were small transparent bags with artificial candles in each one. Written on the bags were the names of those who have fought against blood cancer.

“It’s hard when you lose a loved one,” said a mother, who wished to remain anonymous, whose daughter passed away from leukemia at the age of four. “To have the family and friends here supporting you and your loss is such a beautiful gesture,” she added.

At the end of the march, volunteers congratulated the participants. “There is so much that can be done,” said Gilmore. “With foundations like the LLS Canada and fundraising events like Light the Night, so much more can be done.” The annual event creates a community of supporters, survivors, researches, and patients who, for one night, bring light to something typically so dark.

Feature image by Mackenzie Lad.

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News

StrikeOut Cancer grants wishes

The StrikeOut Cancer Fund prepares for their annual Bowl-A-Thon and gala to fundraise money to grant the wishes of children facing severe illness. Photos courtesy of Anthony Pacella

Organization founded by Concordia student helps fundraise for Make-a-Wish Quebec

Anthony Pacella, a Concordia student studying management at the John Molson School of Business (JMSB) created StrikeOut Cancer, an organization which holds events to fundraise for initiatives to help those living with cancer. StrikeOut Cancer was created as a surprise for his mother Mary Melillo Pacella, who was diagnosed with lung cancer. Before the passing of his mother, Pacella told her about StrikeOut Cancer, to which he said she gave Pacella a thumbs up in approval.

“[In] August of 2010, my mother was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer,” Pacella said. His family was devastated—his mother had never smoked cigarettes, he said.

“Unfortunately, my mother lost her life at the age of 52 to cancer on January 6, 2011,” Pacella said. “She left this world with two young children and a great husband.”

Pacella had been raising money for StrikeOut Cancer initiatives during her treatment, however, he began planning his first events for the organization less than a few weeks after his mother’s passing.

Three months after his mother’s passing, StrikeOut Cancer hosted their first event, a Bowl-A-Thon, which is now an annual event held each spring. The Bowl-A-Thon is geared towards families in order to raise money for the St. Mary’s Hospital Foundation in Montreal—the same hospital where Pacella’s mother received treatment. He was 15 years old when he organized the first Bowl-A-Thon.

In addition, StrikeOut Cancer organizes an annual gala in support of Make-A-Wish Quebec to grant the wishes of children with life-threatening illnesses. Pacella said the gala is held in November, with tickets available for $100. The cost covers the event and a full-course dinner.

“We raise thousands of dollars to make a child’s wishes come true,” Pacella said. He wanted StrikeOut Cancer to be involved with Make-A-Wish Quebec to contribute towards making children happy, he added.

“We continue to strive and expand in order to help our community, but most importantly, our goal is to make a young child’s wishes come true,” said Pacella.

Pacella said while he enjoyed working with St. Mary’s Hospital, he wanted to expand the StrikeOut Cancer initiative.

Pacella photographed with his mother Mary Melillo Pacella. Photos courtesy of Anthony Pacella.

“I wanted to make a greater impact, and I feel like my $10,000 [raised] wouldn’t find the cure to cancer,” Pacella said. “But my $10,000 could hopefully impact a child’s life.”

StrikeOut Cancer has helped three children so far. “They all wanted to go to Disneyland,” Pacella said.

The most recent gala, which was held on Nov. 7, 2016, honoured Chakameh, an eight-year-old diagnosed with leukemia.

“During my stay at Concordia, I hope that more people of Concordia hear about StrikeOut and I hope to continuously gain more support,” Pacella said.

Pacella hopes to have more support and involve more people in the StrikeOut Cancer initiative. He encourages anyone who is interested to contact him—he is particularly looking for volunteers to promote ticket sales, obtain more sponsors and spread awareness about StrikeOut Cancer.

For more information about StrikeOut Cancer and details on their upcoming Bowl-A-Thon, visit StrikeOut Cancer’s website or Facebook page. This year’s Bowl-A-Thon will be held on May 28 in at 1 p.m. at Le Centre de Quilles 440, 2535 boul Curé-Labelle in Laval.

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News

Game-changing cancer research

Graphic by Florence Yee and Savanna Craig.

Researcher discovers cancer may not be forming in the one way we previously thought

A development in cancer research has been made by researchers from Montreal and London, England. They identified some cancer cells have the ability to co-opt cells—meaning they can obtain nutrients and oxygenation from pre-existing blood vessels—rather than needing to create their own blood vessels for fuel and growth.

Thirty-two researchers from both the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre

(RI-MUHC) and the Institute of Cancer Research in London made the discovery, and published their findings in a report titled “Vessel co–option mediates resistance to anti–angiogenic therapy in liver metastases” in the scientific journal Nature Medicine.

“It’s well accepted that when cancer grows, it requires more nutrients and oxygen—which means they require more blood vessels,” said Dr. Peter Metrakos liver surgeon, a member of RI-MUHC, lead author of the study and director of both the Multi-Organ Transplant Program and of Hepatopancreatobiliary Surgery. He said in order for cancer to grow, new blood vessels have to grow into the tumour. Therefore, he said in order for tumours to grow, cancer cells had to produce their own blood cells. He said the new vessel growth in the tumour is called angiogenesis, treatable with antiangiogenic therapies.

Metrakos said for the last 30 to 40 years, antiangiogenic drugs have been under development to target some of these factors. “But the problem has been that the [treatment] results are mixed—it’s not as good as we thought it was going to be.”

He said he believes that if he and his team can stop the new blood vessels from growing into the tumour, the tumour will not continue to gain proper nutrition and lose the ability to sustain itself. Metrakos said while some tumours do produce new blood vessels, it turns out not all of them do. He said he and the team discovered some kinds of tumours obtain nutrients and oxygen by co-opting existing blood vessels in the body.

“So rather than producing new blood vessels, [the cancer cells] kind of sneak their way around a tumour or around a blood vessel and co-opt it and then get their nutrients and oxygenation from blood vessels that’s existing,” said Metrakos. He said this explains why therapies that target new blood vessel development have had mixed results—co-opting cancer cells don’t produce new blood vessels, so there is nothing for the treatment to target.

Concordia’s cancer research lab is located in the SP building on Loyola campus. Photo by Savanna Craig.

In Metrakos’ research on how cancer evolves in the liver, he said he has found that approximately 40 to 45 per cent of tumours acquire their blood supplies through new blood vessels, while an additional 40 to 45 per cent obtain their blood supply by converting existing blood vessels from the liver. He said this clarifies why current treatments that aim for new blood vessels are not as successful as it was thought.

According to Metrakos, this is reflected in the survival rate following tumour-removal surgery, also known as resection. When patients were treated with antiangiogenic therapy and then had a resection, they had a less than 20 per cent survival rate if their cancer had been co-opting, compared to the 50 per cent survival rate of patients with a cancer that produced its own blood vessels.

Metrakos said he can determine whether the tumour is creating new cells or co-opting cells by staining an organ’s blood vessels. He said he has preliminary data that will be able to identify these different types of tumours using imaging with an MRI and a CT scan—but the research is in its beginning stages.

What the researchers have found through the use of an animal model, is by decreasing the motility of an animal via genetically manipulating cancer cells, they find the cancer cannot co-opt blood vessels. This forces the cancer to develop new blood vessels, which can then be targeted with the traditional method of antiangiogenics.

Professor Alisa Piekny’s research team includeshas three PhD students, a masters student, multiple undergraduate students and visiting scientists. Photo by Savanna Craig.

“That’s an experimental model, and it could pan out in human beings, but it could take a little time,” said Metrakos. For now, this theory has only been tested on animals.

“While we assume that any solid tumour over a certain size needs anti-angiogenesis to stimulate these vessels, their group has found there are a lot of tumours that aren’t doing this,” said Alisa Piekny, an associate professor for Concordia’s biology department.

“What would be really important to do is that each patient would have to be treated as a different case and you would have to get that information about their tumour before you start treating them with angiogenic drugs so that you could tailor the treatment more specifically to them,” said Piekny.

Piekny’s cancer research involves understanding the basic mechanism underlying cell division, and testing compounds that may target cell division and could be used in cancer treatment.

Piekny said this new development in cancer treatment reflects an overall change in the way researchers understand cancer. “You can’t treat [all cancer] the exact same way,” she said. She said insights like Metrakos’ helps improve our understanding of these different types of cancers. However, find the cure for cancer will not be an overnight discovery.

“Now we have a way to attack maybe a subset of cancers that do what they found where they can use the healthy vessel instead,” she said. “We’re going to treat those ones a little bit differently and we can improve the success rate, maybe.”

Piekny has a team of Concordia students that conduct research on cancer at the Loyola campus—which includes three PhD students, a masters student, multiple undergraduate students and visiting scientists. The undergrads switch out every couple of terms, the masters student work for usually two years at a time, while PhD’s work for approximately four years.

When asked how long he had been working on this research, Metrakos chuckled. “I’ve been preparing my whole life for this,” he said. He said he’s been working on this for four and a half years. “Obviously it’s going to be another ten years of work to get this to where we want it to go.”

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