Publications

Our recent publication, “Quantitative Intravital Imaging for Real-time Monitoring of Pancreatic Tumor Cell Hypoxia and Stroma in an Orthotopic Mouse Model” was chosen to be the cover of Science Advances! Pancreatic cancer is a lethal disease with few successful treatment options. Recent evidence demonstrates that tumor hypoxia promotes pancreatic tumor invasion, metastasis, and therapy resistance. However, little is known about the complex relationship between hypoxia and the pancreatic tumor microenvironment (TME). In this study, we developed a novel intravital fluorescence microscopy platform with an orthotopic mouse model of pancreatic cancer to study tumor cell hypoxia within the TME in vivo,…

An advisory group at UHN applied an evidence- and consensus-based process to derive measures from published research, and national and international best practices, then engaged researchers and research leaders across all of the institutes through a two-round Delphi survey.  This approach identified measures that reflect the relevance of the research program, funding, innovative outputs, publications, collaboration, recognition, and challenges to research productivity. The group also examined current assessment rubrics at the institutes for these measures to identify gaps and areas for improvement. The resulting publication: “Exploring the merits of research performance measures that comply with the San Francisco Declaration on…

Shortly before the pandemic, the research institutes at UHN signed the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA)—a set of principles aimed at enhancing and modernizing research assessment. DORA promotes the evaluation of the quality and impact of research, and the elimination of using journal-based metrics (e.g., Journal Impact Factor) for decisions related to hiring, appointment, annual review, and promotion. An advisory group at UHN developed measures by which to report and assess research activity, outputs, and impact in a recent publication, “DORA-compliant measures of research quality and impact to assess the performance of researchers in biomedical institutions: Review of published…

After a lengthy journey, our paper “Intraoperative fluorescence imaging with aminolevulinic acid detects grossly occult breast cancer: a phase II randomized controlled trial” has been published in Breast Cancer Research as an open access article. The journal is widely read globally by general surgeons and breast cancer clinicians, so we are pleased it will receive broad clinical exposure and impact specifically in (breast) surgical oncology. This trial, led by Dr. DaCosta, was conducted at The Princess Margaret Cancer Center (Toronto, Canada) and demonstrates the importance of strong collaborations between our (imaging) scientists and clinicians at the Princess Margaret Cancer Center.  For…