The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research

Dr. Rebecca Gladdy

Clinical Investigator, Selective Therapies Program

Research Description

Soft tissue sarcomas (STS) are a diverse group of tumors derived from connective tissue (muscle, fat and bone). Current treatment of STS is limited primarily to surgical procedures (e.g., removing the sarcoma), with selective use of radiation therapy and the use of conventional chemotherapy in some subtypes of the disease. Unfortunately, these treatment options are limited in their effectiveness and more than 50 per cent of STS patients succumb to this disease. Researchers have recognized that there is an urgent need to develop subtype-specific molecularly targeted therapeutics that can provide new treatment options unique to each histologic type of sarcoma.

The main goals of the Selective Therapies program are:

  1. to identify targeted therapeutic agents through the use of high-throughput screens in collaboration with the Ontario Node of the Terry Fox Research Institute and the SMART facility at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute;
  2. to develop faithful and genetically flexible mouse models of sarcoma as a tool to functionally validate genomic data and for pre-clinical drug testing;
  3. to readily translate laboratory findings via clinical trials to sarcoma patients in Ontario.

Contact Information

Telephone
416-586-4800 ext 3922 (Research lab, please no patient phone calls)
416-586-4800 ext 3812 (Clinical office, patient phone calls)

Mailing Address
Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute
1070B-600 University Avenue
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5G 1X5

Mailing Address (Clinical Office)
Mount Sinai Hospital
1225-600 University Avenue
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5G 1X5

Email
gladdylunenfeld.ca

Current

2008 - Clinical Investigator, Selective Therapies Program, OICR.
2008 - Associate Scientist, Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, Centre for Systems Biology.
2008 - Assistant Professor of Surgery, Mount Sinai Hospital, University of Toronto.


Background        

2006 - 2008 Surgical Oncology Fellowship, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY.
2005 - 2006 Postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Jim Dennis and Dr. Carol Swallow, Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, University of Toronto.
2005 Completion of General Surgical Residency, University of Toronto.
2003 PhD, Biomedical Science, University of Toronto.
1996 MD Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario

                                             

Selected Publications

  1. Gladdy RA, Qin L, Moraco N, Edgar MA, Antonescu CR, Alektiar K , Brennan MF and Singer S. Do radiation associated soft tissue sarcomas have the same prognosis as sporadic soft tissue sarcomas? Journal of Clinical Oncology. In press.
  2. Matei IR, Gladdy RA, Nutter LMJ, Guidos CJ and JS Danska. ATM deficiency disrupts TCRalocus integrity and the maturation of CD4+CD8+thymocytes. Blood. 2007;109(5):1887-1996.
  3. Gladdy RA, Nutter LMJ, Kunath T, Danska JS and CJ Guidos. p53-Independent Apoptosis Disrupts Early Organogenesis in Embryos Lacking Both ATM and Prkdc.  Mol Cancer Res. 2006;4(5):311-8.
  4. Khalifa MA, Rowsell CH, Gladdy RA, Ko JY, Hanna S, Smith AJ, and C Law. Immunohistochemical Assessment of Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor in Primary Colorectal Adenocarcinoma as a Predictor of Recurrence. 2006;125:1-5. American Journal of Clinical Pathology.
  5. Gladdy RA, Taylor MD, Williams CJ, Rutka JT, Karaskova J, Squire J, Guidos CJ and Danska JS. The RAG-1/2 endonuclease causes genomic instability and controls CNS complication of lymphoblastic leukemia in p53/Prkdc-deficient mice. Cancer Cell. 2003;3:37-50.

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