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Cutting for Cancer

34TH ANNUAL GALLIE DAY 2008

All of our surgical specialties deal with patients with cancer. Members of our Department of Surgery have an impressive level of research productivity in this area. In the past five years, our faculty had close to 500 peer reviewed articles published on cancer research. This included publications in the highest ranked journals, such as Nature and the New England Journal of Medicine.

This work has improved the way we diagnose and treat cancer. As such, it is fitting that the theme for this year's Gallie Day was cancer research. The day included a symposium entitled "Cutting for Cancer: A Role for Surgeons in Oncology Research." This symposium posed the questions: (1) do surgeons make contributions to cancer research, and (2) will cancer research make surgical management of cancer unnecessary? Steven Gallinger (General Surgery), Abhijit Guha (Neurosurgery), Robert Nam (Urology), and Jay Wunder (Orthopaedic Surgery) discussed their research work in cancer, clearly demonstrating that surgeons make substantial contributions to cancer research. They gave eloquent talks about new advances in genetic predisposition to gastro-intestinal and prostate cancers, mouse models in brain cancer, and developmental signaling pathways in musculoskeletal tumours. Introductory remarks discussed the complexity of biologic systems, and similarities of predicting biologic outcome to predicting the weather. Applying mathematical principles of predicting outcome in complex systems (chaos theory), it is clear that small changes can still lead to oncologic changes in cells, despite the ability to modulate many of the pathways important in initiating or maintaining neoplasia. This suggests that while these research advances will improve cancer outcome, surgeons will still be needed in cancer management, for the foreseeable future.

Richard Reznick, R.S. McLaughlin Professor and Chair
Richard Reznick, R.S. McLaughlin Professor and Chair
Benjamin Alman, Vice Chair Research
Benjamin Alman, Vice Chair Research

The exciting advances in cancer research from our department were complimented by the Gordon Murray Lecturer, Randy Rosier, Professor of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation and Senior Associate Dean for Clinical Research, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, New York, who gave a fascinating lecture entitled: "Bench to Bedside and Back: Translational Journeys in Surgery." He demonstrated how clinical findings lead to a line of basic science research, which then resulted in the development of new therapeutic approaches. This clearly showed the importance of surgeons engaging in fundamental research to drive improved patient care. Randy ended the talk by discussing the ingredients necessary to continue a productive surgeon-research enterprise, some of which he has reviewed in a recent publication (Clin Orthop Relat Res. 2006 Aug; 449:159-64).

There was a change in the format of the talks by trainees, in that both members of the Surgeon Scientist Program and non-residents training with our departmental faculty members gave platform presentations. There were 10 platform presentations and close to 50 poster presentations. Both the Gallie Bateman Awards (for Surgeon Scientist Program participants) and McMurrich Awards (for any trainee working with a member of the faculty of surgery) were judged from both platform presentations and poster presentations.

Randy Rosier
Randy Rosier

The diversity of the topics and types of trainees highlighted the variety and high quality of the research being conducted in our department. There was a much larger than usual attendance, and for much of the day there was a standing room only crowd.




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