Alister D’Costa has seen how devastating cancer can be, and also how diverse it can be.

Several of D’Costa’s friends and family members have been diagnosed with cancer, and each person experienced a different form of the disease.

“That really [speaks to] how we need personalized approaches to cancer treatment,” he says.

D’Costa is taking steps toward developing those personalized approaches as a PhD student in Dr. Jared Simpson’s lab at OICR. He is studying the changes that happen in tumour cells that drive cancer progression and looking for more accurate ways to detect and understand these changes.

Find out more in OICR’s latest The Next Generation video.