IRIC - Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer

Published on March 22, 2010

IRIC is pleased to announce that its investigators have chosen fellow investigators Katherine Borden and Marc Therrien to be the 2009 recipients of IRIC’s Paper of the Year Honours. Dr. Borden received recognition for her ground-breaking Canada-wide clinical trial and Dr. Therrien, for his instrumental work in the development of target-based cancer therapies. The Paper of the Year Honours aim to reward IRIC Principal Investigators with the most influential papers in two research categories: translational and fundamental. In 2009, over 70 papers were published by the Institute’s research teams in high-impact journals such as Nature, Cell and Blood.

In the ‘Translational Research’ category, Katherine Borden‘s article entitled Molecular targeting of the oncogene eIF4E in acute myeloid leukemia (AML): a proof-of-principle clinical trial with ribavirin, published in the July edition of Blood, shows that the common anti-viral drug ribavirin could be beneficial in the treatment of cancer patients.
In the ‘Fundamental Research’ category, Marc Therrien‘s article entitled A dimerization-dependent mechanism drives RAF catalytic activation, published in the September issue of Nature, highlights the discovery of a new target that may be instrumental in the development of new and more effective cancer therapies.
“Both papers are outstanding examples of what IRIC’s research community aspires to accomplish in cancer research,” explains Damien D’Amours, IRIC Principal Investigator and Chair of the Institute’s Scientific Communication, Prizes and Awards Committee.
Now in its second year, the Paper of the Year Honours are selected by the Institute’s Scientific Communication, Prizes and Awards Committee which is also responsible for overseeing the nomination of IRIC researchers to honours related to the profession as well as the communication of their scientific achievements.

Papers cited:
Sarit Assouline, Biljana Culjkovic, Eftihia Cocolakis, Caroline Rousseau, Nathalie Beslu, Abdellatif Amri, Stephen Caplan, Brian Leber, Denis-Claude Roy, Wilson H. Miller Jr, and Katherine L.B. Borden. Molecular targeting of the oncogene eIF4E in AML: a proof-of-principle clinical trial with ribavirin. Blood, 2009 Jul 9;114(2):257-60.
Thanashan Rajakulendran, Malha Sahmi, Martin Lefrançois, Frank Sicheri and Marc Therrien. A Dimerization-Dependent Mechanism Drives Raf Catalytic Activation. Nature, 2009 Sep 24;461(7263):542-5.