Canadian Blood and Marrow Transplant Group
Cure Stems From Here
Committees
CBMTG Executive Committee
PRESIDENT
Jeff Lipton, PhD MD FRCPC
Jeff Lipton is Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto, Head of the CML Group andDirector of theAllogeneic Blood and Marrow Transplant Service at the Princess Margaret Hospital.He received and honors BSc in Biochemistry at the University of Calgary and went on to a PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Western Ontario.After an MRC post-doctoral fellowship at the Weizmann Institute in Israel andjunior staff at the University of Connecticut, he went back to Calgary to go to medical school, followed by a residency in Internal Medicine.He then completed sub-specialty training in Medical Oncology at the University of Toronto and stayed on at the PMH as a staff physician.His clinical practice is in chronic leukemias and bone marrow failure syndromes as well as allogeneic stem cell transplant.Research interests in particular are in CML and its therapy, outcomes and supportive care in BMT, and in the therapy of bone marrow failure syndromes.He has authored or co-authored more than 180 peer reviewed papers and 200 abstracts.
PAST PRESIDENT
Stephen Couban, MD
Stephen Couban received a Bachelor of Science degree from McGill University in 1982 and his M.D. from Dalhousie University in 1986.He completed a residency in Internal Medicine at Dalhousie University in Halifax and went on to complete a fellowship in Hematology at McMaster University in Hamilton.He also undertook two years of specialty training in bone marrow transplantation at the Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto as a National Cancer Institute of Canada Terry Fox Research Fellow.
In 1997, Stephen Couban joined the Department of Medicine at Dalhousie University and the Capital District Health Authority in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is Service Chief in the Division of Hematology and Director of the Blood and Marrow Transplant Program. He is also Service Chief of the Department of Medicine Medical Teaching Unit.His research interests have focused on allografting and in particular on exploration of different types of grafts including G-CSF stimulated allogeneic peripheral blood allografts and G-CSF stimulated bone marrow allografts. Stephen Couban is Past-President of the Canadian Blood and Marrow Transplant Group, Secretary of the Canadian Hematology Society and Co-Chair of the Hematology Site Group of the National Cancer Institute of Canada Clinical Trials Groups.
PRESIDENT-ELECT
Ronan Foley,
MD, FRCPC
Dr. Ronan Foley is a clinical haematologist and Director of the Stem Cell Laboratory, Hamilton Health Sciences. Over the past 4 years Dr. Foley has acted as Chair of the Clinical Trials Network of the Canadian Bone Marrow Transplant Group (CBMTG). An Associate Professor of Pathology and Molecular Medicine at McMaster University, Dr. Foley completed his medical and subspecialty training in Hamilton and Toronto. He completed a Terry Fox Fellowship in the Centre of Gene Therapeutics, McMaster University. During this time, he became interested in the evaluation of cellular gene transfer in the context of cancer immunotherapy, which led to his current research focus: the development of therapeutic cancer vaccines.In addition to fundamental research the clinical laboratory has been active in novel clinical stem cell manipulations for haploidentical transplants and photodynamic therapy for GVHD and tumor cell purging (NHL).
TREASURER
David Szwajcer, MD
David Szwajcer completed his undergraduate medical training at the University of Western Ontario. He completed a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in hematology at the University of Manitoba. In 2005 David became a staff physician at CancerCare Manitoba. His areas of clinical interest include leukemia, bone marrow transplantation as well as plasma cell dyscrasias. Current areas of research interest include health services research as applied to bone marrow transplantation and stem cell biology.
SECRETARY
Silvy Lachance, MD FRCPC CSPQ
Dr Silvy Lachance received her M.D. degree in 1987 from the University of Sherbrooke where she completed an internship and residency training in Internal Medicine. She then moved to Montreal in 1990 and underwent a Fellowship in Hematology and Oncology at Montreal University. She left Canada in 1992, after receiving the Samuel H. McLaughlin Foundation Grant and a grant from the University of Sherbrooke to pursue a Fellowship in Stem Cell Transplantation in Paris at Henri-Mondor University. In Paris she worked in the transplant unit of Professor Jean-Paul Vernant and in the immunology laboratory of Professor Jean-Pierre Farcet in the exciting and evolving field of allogeneic stem cell transplantation. Her research project focused on Graft-versus-Host and Graft-versus-Leukemia reaction, developing functional assays looking at Cytotoxic and Helper T-cell precursors as predictive factors of GVH and GVL reaction. In 1994, she completed a DEA in immunology at Pasteur Institute.
In 1995, she returned to Canada and joined the Department of Medicine at the CUSE, University of Sherbrooke, and established its first Stem-cell Transplant Program and Unit. She left the University of Sherbrooke for Montreal in 1997, where she became Assistant Professor at McGill University and joined the Hematology and Oncology Division of The Montreal General Hospital as a transplant physician. Her dedication to teaching was recognized by the Douglas G. Kinnear Award in 2003 and by the very special best teacher awards from the hematology Fellows. She became an Associate Professor of Medicine of McGill University in 2005.
She was the chair of the Continuing Medical Education Committee of the Quebec Association of Hematologists and Oncologists from 1999 to 2001 during which period the Association was accredited for the first time for its CME activities. She is currently the elected treasurer of the executive committee of the Hematologist and Oncologist Association. . She was from 2002 and until 2006 the chair of the jury for the hematology specialty exam board of the CMQ (Collège des Médecins du Québec) and contributed to the standardization of the specialty exam, establishing criteria and guidelines in evaluation modalities.
She left the Montreal General Hospital and McGill University in 2006 to join the Stem Cell Transplant team of Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital in June 2006. She became the director of the Fellowship Program and Associate Professor of Medicine at Montreal University. Since 2008, she is the director of the stem cell transplant program of HMR.
