Over the course of the past several years CCC has endeavoured and made considerable progress in fostering patient and patient group partnerships among stakeholders who have been advocating for their engagement in the clinical trial continuum with the goal of increasing patient access to cancer clinical trials in Canada.
The theme for our 6th Annual Patient-Centered Approach to Clinical Trials Conference is: Disruption and Innovation in Cancer Care. This seminal pan-cancer conference continues to inform clinical trial networks, researchers, industry and academic trial sponsors, HTA agencies, Health Canada, and national and international cancer patient groups, to mention a few.
The 6th edition of this Conference with the theme Disruption and Innovation in Cancer Care is structured as follows:
Dr. Winson Cheung, MD, MPH, FRCPC
A GI medical oncologist, a clinician-scientist, and a cancer health services researcher. From 2010 to 2016, Winson was a clinician-investigator at the BC Cancer Agency in Vancouver. He was recruited to Alberta in 2017. He is currently a Full Professor in the Departments of Oncology, Medicine and Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary where he is also the Chair and Provincial Director of the Health Services Research Program at Cancer Control Alberta. He conducts comparative effectiveness and population-based outcomes studies across all tumor groups. He is also involved in a number of patient-centric, patient-oriented research projects. He has contributed significantly to building capacity and knowledge generation in the area of real world evidence in oncology. In addition, Winson is the Co-Lead of the Health Systems, Services, and Policy research program at the Canadian Centre for Applied Research in Cancer Control and the Chair of the International Cancer Health Outcomes Research Database Consortium. Previously, he served as Leader for the Health Services Research Track at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting. Recently, he founded the Alberta Cancer Outcomes Research Network.
Alan J. Forster MD, FRCPC, MSc is the Executive Vice President, Chief Innovation and Quality Officer at the Ottawa Hospital, Canada’s largest Academic Health Sciences Center. His focus is enabling teams to create higher value health care – in which patient centered health outcomes are realized and health system costs are lowered.
Over his career, he has led research on patient safety and quality improvement. He performed the seminal work evaluating the incidence of adverse events following discharge from hospital. He has also led the Ottawa Hospital’s data strategy which has been used to support research, operations, and planning. Overall, his work has led to over 240 publications in peer review journals and innumerable advances in quality of care.
In addition to his role at the Ottawa Hospital, Alan is a leader in the field of healthcare quality. He is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Ottawa and Senior Scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. He provides ongoing advice to agencies at the local, national, and international levels, and he has served as associated editor for several prestigious peer-review journals.
Craig Lipset is an advisor, educator, advocate and innovator focused on novel solutions for clinical trials and medicine development. He is the founder of Clinical Innovation Partners, providing advisory and board leadership with pharma, tech and investors. Craig is Co-Chair for the Decentralized Trials & Research Alliance, Vice Chair of the MedStar Health Research Institute, and Vice President of the Foundation for Sarcoidosis. He is Adjunct Assistant Professor in Health Informatics at Rutgers University.
Craig was previously the Head of Clinical Innovation and Venture Partner at Pfizer, and on the founding management teams for two successful startup ventures.
Cristin Taylor is the Director of Clinical Science at PathAI. She has 15 years of experience in clinical research through industry and academic clinical practice. Prior to joining PathAI, Cristin worked as a consultant for Beckman Coulter in establishing the clinical organization of the Clinical Decision Support/AI business unit, and had previously lead global clinical strategy at Smith and Nephew. In her clinical practice, Cristin's was a physician assistant at Brigham and Women's Hospital and in the MedStar Hospital System and also worked as a physical therapist for a short time. She also currently serves on the Clinical Advisory Board of Boston University's Sargent College.Cristin holds a Doctorate of physical therapy from University of Miami, a Masters of Science degree from The George Washington University, and a Bachelors of Science from Boston University.
Dr. David Klimstra is a founder and the Chief Medical Officer of Paige. Dr. Klimstra received his medical degree from Yale University and also completed an anatomic pathology residency at Yale. Following a fellowship in oncologic pathology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, he joined the faculty at that institution, where he practiced gastrointestinal and pancreatobiliary pathology for 30 years. He served as the Chief of the Surgical Pathology Service and then Chairman of the Pathology Department (2011-2021) and was also Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine. As Chairman, Dr. Klimstra oversaw the implementation of novel diagnostic technology in molecular diagnostics and digital pathology. He worked with Dr. Thomas Fuchs in computational pathology, using machine learning to develop diagnostic and predictive algorithms from pathology digital images, which led to the founding of Paige. Dr. Klimstra joined Paige full-time in August 2021. Dr. Klimstra is also well known for his work on the pathology of neoplastic diseases, particularly related to the pancreatic and hepatobiliary systems. He has published more than 500 scientific papers, 4 books, and numerous book chapters and reviews and has served as an editor for the World Health Organization’s tumor classification series. He has lectured worldwide and has received multiple awards for teaching and academic accomplishment.
Mike Montalto has experience developing digital pathology diagnostic products and driving cutting-edge translational research in a large biopharmaceutical setting. Mike joined PathAI in November 2019 to use AI-powered pathology to support the development of new therapies and diagnostics for patients.
Prior to joining PathAI, Mike led the majority of clinical biomarker central laboratories in Translational Medicine at Bristol-Myers Squibb including translational and digital pathology, immunohistochemistry, clinical genomics, clinical flow cytometry, pre-clinical and clinical non-invasive imaging, biorepository and clinical biomarker sample operations in support of all therapeutic areas for global clinical trials, precision medicine, and companion diagnostics development. Prior to BMS, Montalto was a co-founder and executive of Omnyx, LLC, a joint venture of GE Healthcare and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center that commercialized diagnostic pathology imaging and software products. Prior to this, Montalto was the Molecular Imaging and Diagnostics Advanced Technology Leader at General Electric, where he was a lead inventor of MultiOmyx™, a proprietary pathology-based multiplexing technology for biomarker discovery.
Throughout his career, Mike had a passion for advancing imaging technologies toward unmet scientific and medical needs in a commercial setting to be able to impact patients.
Mike has served as a member of NIH study sections for in vivo molecular imaging centers, designed and led global clinical trials for the registration of digital pathology devices and served as a board member and president of the Digital Pathology Association (DPA). Under his leadership, the DPA successfully collaborated with the FDA to establish industry wide regulatory guidance and clinical trial designs for the clinical use of digital pathology devices. He currently serves on the DPA executive committee as immediate past-president, and on the DPA Foundation’s board of directors. Dr. Montalto earned his PhD in tumor biology from Albany Medical College and received his post-doctoral training in anti-inflammatory drug discovery and whole animal physiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School.
A husband to his wife Leslie and father to his 2 year daughter Kira(who was adopted 2 weeks post chemo!) has spent his life as helper holding a variety of positions in social services and most recently emergency services as a fire captain and working as an Equine Assisted Learning Personal Development Coach focusing on individuals working through trauma and PTSD.
At the age of 36 his life was turned upside when he received the devastating news of a stage 3 colon cancer diagnosis. This life altering experience thrusted him into the world of advocacy and peer support. His areas of passion and focus are young adults affected by cancer and men facing a cancer diagnosis and the unique challenges each demographic face. Quickly realizing there was a large gap in support for young adults and men facing cancer he decided to volunteer with Young Adult Cancer Canada as a chat leader and advocate , in addition to Man Up to Cancer as a Wolfpack Leader and group administrator. Jay has also volunteered on several advisory boards and participated in events with CRCC.
Jay is fortunate and grateful to be just shy of two years NED and continues to passionately shares his story and experience of his journey I’m hopes of educating and bringing awareness to young adult onset cancer and men facing cancer.
Martine Elias is the Executive Director at Myeloma Canada, the only patient-driven, grassroots organization bringing the Canadian myeloma community together and promoting a strong, unified national voice for people living with multiple myeloma. In addition, Martine is the CoChair of the Collective Oncology Network for Exchange, Cancer Care Innovation, Treatment Access and Education (CONECTed), a Canadian based organisation. In 2019 Martine was one of three patient representatives on the PMPRB Guideline Development Steering committee. Martine believes intentional collaboration is key to evolving the knowledge of myeloma for the betterment of patients. In February 2020 she was invited to join the International Myeloma Foundation Board of directors and more recently she was appointed to their Governance and Nominating Committee. She also serves to represent Canada on the Myeloma Patient Europe Community Advisory Board since 2019 where patient advocates address key challenges patients face in accessing diagnosis, monitoring, treatment, care and clinical trial at an international level.
Martine started her career in clinical research in the pharmaceutical industry and has since dedicated her professional life to patient advocacy, empowering the patient voice, and helping patients gain access to essential medical treatments. She is passionate about ensuring that the patient voice is included in all aspects of health policy decisions.
Previously, Martine was Director Access, Advocacy and Community Relations at Myeloma Canada where she developed, led and executed all advocacy strategies and programs.
Prior to that Martine held roles as National Director of Community Relations at Janssen Inc., and Market Access and Health Economics team leader at GSK.