Congratulations to Sofia Graham, Postdoctoral Fellow in Dr. Govind Kaigala’s Lab for receiving a $60,000 grant from the Prostate Cancer Foundation Canada for her research project “Spatial Multi-Omic Profiling of Cribriform Prostate Carcinoma via a Morphology Guided Microfluidic Sampling Workflow.” The funding will support research in uncovering heterogeneity in prostate carcinoma by connecting between observed tissue architecture and corresponding cellular multi-omic profile. This is conducted by developing a microfluidic technology for spatial sampling of cellular material from prostate cancer tissue sections and their downstream molecular profiling.

“There is a high variability in types of prostate cancer and treatment decisions can be challenging.” comments Sofia Graham, “As such, there is a pressing need to map the molecular identity of prostate cancer to its histological morphology when it is associated with an aggressive clinical course to discover diagnostic markers and drug targets and ultimately provide the best treatment decisions.”

The project is conducted with Dr. Aditya Kashyap, a Research Associate in the Kaigala Lab, and in collaboration with Dr. Miles Mannas and Professor Colin Collins from the Vancouver Prostate Centre. The microfluidic technique used to do the research is guided in real-time by the user and has the flexibility to sample material from different regions of interest and architectures found on the prostate cancer tissues and will provide other researchers the opportunity to use this technology instead of expensive multi molecular testing on limited biopsies.