Betty Giannias
Laboratory Manager
I am Dr. Ferri’s Lab Manager since the inception of his lab in 2005. Amongst my administrative duties, I am responsible for the day-to-day operation and maintenance of his highly productive lab while ensuring that students work in a safe lab environment following established protocols and guidelines. I also perform wet lab techniques where the goal is to characterize gastroesophageal cancer and ultimately revolutionize and develop personalized therapy for Dr. Ferri’ patients suffering from this poor outcome disease.
France Bourdeau
Animal Health Technician
As an animal health technician, my tasks are related to the welfare and maintenance of the mouse colony. This includes breeding, weaning and keeping records of each mouse strain and inventory, ensuring that we have enough animals for each experiment. I also take part in ongoing projects and experiments, perform surgeries and take care of pre- and post-operative care, treatments, necropsies, follow-up and data collection.
Wotan Zeng
PhD, Research Assistant
Within the dynamic research environment of Dr.Ferri’s lab, I am involved in several groundbreaking projects centered on advancing our understanding of esophageal and gastric cancers. Our multifaceted endeavors aim to revolutionize the way we approach esophageal and gastric cancers. Our ultimate mission is to drive progress in cancer research and improve patient outcomes by leveraging sophisticated models and cutting-edge techniques.
Sanjima Pal
PhD, Research Associates
Dr. Sanjima Pal’s area of expertise is disease modelling for translational oncology. In 2020, she began working as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Ferri's lab at McGill University, where she focused on modelling esophageal adenocarcinoma on a microfluidic chip platform.
Wang Shu Yuan
Postdoctoral researcher
My research project focuses on characterization of patient-derived organoids via omics approaches and testing of new treatment strategies to overcome chemotherapy resistance in gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma.
Qian Qiu
Research Assistant
I perform computational techniques to define novel therapeutic targets and biomarkers and to characterize tumor evolution. I also analyze and interpret large sequencing datasets by applying and developing bioinformatics and statistical methods of whole genome sequencing, RNA-seq, and single cell data.
Xin Daniel Su
Postdoctoral fellow
Dr. Xin Daniel Su is a postdoctoral fellow of Dr. Lorenzo Ferri. He is studying the interaction between esophageal cancer cells and immune/matrix cells using single cell sequencing tools, multiplexing imaging, and the organ-on-chips model in the lab. The goal is to determine biomarkers for this disease.
Iris Kong
PhD Candidate
I am conducting research aimed at understanding the development of chemoresistance in gastro-esophageal adenocarcinoma and discovering alternative treatment strategies for chemo-resistant patients, utilizing a transcriptomic-guided approach combined with functional drug screening.
Ruo Yu Ma
PhD Candidate
My study is to determine the genomic and transcriptomic alterations associated with therapy-resistant microsatellite instability-high esophageal adenocarcinoma and to identify variant-guided therapeutic strategies.
Ece Ozmen
PhD student
The main goal of my research is to dissect the stromal contributors of chemoresistance in gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma by interpreting the single-cell RNA and whole genome/exome sequencing data, and validation of target markers with the use of co-culture models.
Kulsum Tai
M.Sc.
I Identify distinct subtypes of cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) in gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma and investigate their role in chemotherapy resistance, using single-cell RNA sequencing and establishing an organoid-CAF co-culture model.
