Each year the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) honours members of the College who demonstrate outstanding achievement. Candidates for the CPSO’s Council Award are nominated for demonstrating excellence in the categories of: Medical Expert/Clinical Decision Maker; Communicator; Collaborator; Gatekeeper/Resource Manager; Health Advocate; Learner; Scientist/Scholar; and, Person and Professional.

Recently, the CPSO released the names of the 2013 recipients of the Council Award. The Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) is thrilled to announce that two out of the four recipients this year are NOSM faculty members. It is with great pleasure that NOSM congratulates Drs. Yvon Gagnon and Paul Mulzer on their outstanding achievement.

Since the School’s opening in 2005, several of NOSM’s dedicated faculty members have been presented with the Council Award, which honours “Outstanding Ontario Physicians.” Past recipients include:

Dr. Mark Dahmer
Dr. George Freundlich
Dr. Robert Hamilton
Dr. William McCready
Dr. Shelagh McRae
Dr. David Marsh
Dr. Malvinda Parmar
Dr. Janice Willett
Dr. Diane Zielke

“It gives me great pleasure to congratulate Drs. Yvon Gagnon and Paul Mulzer as this year’s College of Physicians and Surgeons Council Award recipients.” expressed Dr. William McCready, Acting Dean of NOSM and Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs at NOSM. “It is exciting to see faculty members at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine recognized for excellence by the College. These faculty members are part of a vast network of Northern educators and mentors of an entire future of health-care providers,” he said.

The Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) is pleased to announce Dr. Frank Potestio is the new Regional Program Director of the School’s Obstetrics Gynecology Northern Stream Residency Program.

Based in Thunder Bay, Potestio has operated a Consultant Obstetrics and Gynecology Practice since 1998 and has also worked as an attending physician at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre (TBRHSC). With a medical degree from the University of Toronto, Potestio completed his residency training in Obstetrics and Gynecology at McGill University and Western University.

Since 2007, Potestio has worked as an Assistant Professor in Women’s Health at NOSM and he has taken an active role on the Clinical Practice Gynecology Committee for the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada. Potestio is also the Medical Lead for the Lakehead Obstetrics Gynecology Local Education Group.

“Dr. Frank Potestio is no stranger to the Obstetrics and Gynecology Academic environment at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, and he is very well suited to building on the successes of the program to date,” says Dr. William McCready, Acting Dean of NOSM and Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs. “On behalf of NOSM, I would like to congratulate Dr. Potestio on his new appointment.”

NOSM extends sincere appreciation to Dr. Stephen Fairley, the departing Program Director for the Obstetrics Gynecology Northern Stream Residency Program, for his tireless efforts and dedication to the program.

“I extend my thanks to Dr. Fairley for his significant contribution to residency education in Northern Ontario, and for his vision in championing the Northern Stream program,” says Dr. Catherine Cervin, Associate Dean of Postgraduate Education at NOSM.

The Obstetrics and Gynecology Northern Stream residency program is a Royal College Specialty Training Program that is accredited through the University of Ottawa, and is delivered by NOSM.

For more information about NOSM’s postgraduate medical education programs, please visitwww.nosm.ca/postgrad .

More than half of all patients with ovarian cancer experience recurrent disease and will eventually fail to respond to chemotherapy. The failure of chemotherapy is usually due to the development of resistance to the two main classes of chemotherapy agents used to fight it – platinating agents and taxanes. Now, a study reported in the open-access Journal of Ovarian Research provides novel information that further adds to clinicians’ understanding of the mechanisms involved in the development of resistance to dual-agent chemotherapy.

It was not known whether mechanisms of resistance to dual-agent chemotherapy are a combination of single-agent resistance responses or if novel mechanisms arise as a result of combined platinating agent/taxane therapy. Dr. Carita Lannér and her team, comprised of researchers from the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM), Health Sciences North (HSN), and Laurentian University, provide evidence to suggest that the latter is true: novel and different changes occur to cause resistance to the dual combination of agents.

Ovarian cancer is the most lethal gynecological cancer, with a five-year mortality rate of over 50%. A significant contributing factor to the high mortality rate is the development of resistance to chemotherapy regimens. The differences in mode of action and mechanisms of resistance for platinating agents and taxanes are taken advantage of in dual-agent chemotherapy of advanced cancer. Used together, they achieve increased efficacy and progression-free survival in patients. However, combined resistance to both agents may occur, and is more difficult to overcome than single-agent resistance.

Dr. Lannér and colleagues set out to investigate if the development of dual agent resistance invokes different mechanisms or is a combination of the mechanisms of resistance that arise upon exposure to single agents. To do this, they developed a set of isogenic ovarian cancer cell lines resistant to (1) the platinating agent carboplatin, (2) the taxane docetaxel, or (3) a combination of carboplatin and docetaxel. They analyzed changes in gene expression associated with the specified drug resistance in each cell line using microarray analysis.

The team compared the three resistant cell lines to identify shared and different changes in gene expression amongst all three treatments. The analysis showed that the establishment of carboplatin and docetaxel resistance did not share many changes in gene expression. Most significantly, dual-agent resistance appeared to develop from mostly unique changes in gene expression, different from both single carboplatin and docetaxel resistance in the set of isogenic cell lines studied.

Lead author Dr. Lannér commented, “These results demonstrate that combined drug resistance is not just a combination of changes present in single agent-resistant cells but contains different and new changes. The dual carboplatin-docetaxel resistant cell line will facilitate further investigation into mechanisms underlying the development of dual drug resistance in ovarian cancer.”

Research Background Information

Research Group:
Stephen R. Armstrong, Rashmi Narendrula, Dr. Baoqing Guo, Dr. Amadeo M. Parissenti, Katherine L. McCallum, Stephanie Cull and Dr. Carita Lannér