IRIC - Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer

Published on May 3, 2018

Marc Therrien and Kathy Borden, Principal Investigators at IRIC, were both awarded a new Canada Research Chair from the October 2017 competition. This federal program supports the recruitment and retention of the best researchers in Canada.

Head of the Intracellular Signaling Research Unit, Marc Therrien is also the Scientific Director of IRIC. He is also a professor in the Department of Pathology and Cell Biology at UdeM. As part of the program, he obtained CRC in intracellular signaling that will allow him to pursue his research on the Ras/MAPK signaling pathway involved, among other things, in the control of cell proliferation and differentiation. This important signaling pathway is often hyperactivated in many types of human cancers. The new knowledge generated by the team of Professor Therrien on these mechanisms of oncogenesis will help develop new types of drugs to slow the progression of several cancers.

Kathy Borden, who heads the Structure and Function of the Cell Nucleus Research Unit at IRIC and is also a Full Professor in the Department of Pathology and Cell Biology at UdeM, was awarded the CRC in Molecular Biology of the Cell Nucleus. She will continue to study how perturbations in the function of the eIF4E protein of the cell nucleus, lead the cells to become cancerous. She will also continue to develop new therapeutic strategies to counter these effects in several types of cancer.