Cassandra Bergwerff reflects on how a personal experience led her to work in cancer research.

Cancer research has had an influence on my life for the past decade or so.

It really started when I was 15, and I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I had a relatively short course of treatment and I was cancer free within a few months.

It was wonderful to be cancer free, but the treatment was really hard because there were a lot of side effects. And then following the treatment, I had a meeting with my oncologist who told me:

“Okay, you’re cancer free now. That’s great, but here are the major side effects you might have long term that we need to look out for. You might get breast cancer, you might get thyroid cancer, you might have heart problems, you might have lung problems, you might have none of those, or all of those. We’ll just kind of keep an eye on you for the rest of your life.”

At 15, that was kind of a lot. So I felt motivated to do something about it. 

When I was looking into university, I picked a program I thought could prepare me to be a cancer researcher because I wanted to work on reducing the short-term and the long-term side effects of cancer treatment.

As I studied, I realized that wasn’t necessarily the path that I wanted to take. I liked different parts of science, and I didn’t necessarily want to be a Principal Investigator in a lab.

But I still ended up here at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research after graduating, and I’m very glad to be here and contribute in some small way to the advancement of cancer research.

It’s so important that this work keeps going, because it makes such a big difference in the lives of so many people.

Cassandra Bergwerff is the Project Lead, Innovation Translation at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, where she has worked for 5 years in a variety of roles. She has a BScH in Biotechnology from Brock University and is currently studying part-time to obtain an MBA from Carleton Unversity. She is a childhood cancer survivor (diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma at age 15) who enjoys spending time with family, reading outdoors, and creating in various mediums.