2022 Gairdner Science Week International Symposium

On October 26, there was buzz and excitement in the MaRS Discovery District Auditorium as students, researchers and more flooded in to watch the 2022 Gairdner Science Week International Symposium.

Offered in a hybrid format, the 2022 symposium explored the changing views of the hematopoietic stem cell over time. Inspired by the award-winning research of 2022 Canada Gairdner International Award laureate, Dr. John Dick, Gairdner convened the world’s top researchers in the field of blood stem cells from New York, Sweden, Copenhagen, Israel, Boston and Houston to explore the evolution over the years of the concept of the multipotent blood stem cell first put forward by Till and McCulloch, and how this has impacted our understanding of blood-borne diseases.

Chaired by Drs. Jim Woodgett, President and Scientific Director, Terry Fox Research Institute and Senior Scientist, Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, and John Dick, Senior Scientist and Canada Research Chair in Stem Cell Biology, UHN and University Professor, University of Toronto, the sessions explored everything from clonal hematopoiesis and the origin of blood cancer, to deregulated hematopoietic stem cell behavior in aging and malignancies, and much more.

Video Timestamps

3:00 - "Clonal Hematopoiesis and the Origin of Blood Cancer"

By Dr. Ben Ebert, Chair of Medical Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; George P. Canellos, MD and Jean S. Canellos Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School; Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator; Institute Member of the Broad Institute.

33:00 - "Investigating Human Foetal Blood Development at the Single-Cell Level"

By Prof. Ana Cvejic, Professor at the University of Copenhagen; Group leader at the Biotechnology Research and Innovation Centre (BRIC), Denmark.

58:28 - "Deregulated Hematopoietic Stem Cell Behavior in Aging and Malignancies"

By Dr. Emmanuelle Passegué, Endowed Alumni Professor of Genetics & Development; Director of the Columbia Stem Cell Initiative (CSCI) at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC), New York City.

1:38:40 - "Regenerating T Cell Immunity"

By Dr. David Scadden, Gerald and Darlene Jordan Professor of Medicine at Harvard University; Professor and Chair emeritus of the Harvard University Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology; Co-founder and co-director the Harvard Stem Cell Institute; hematologist/oncologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital where he founded and directs the Center for Regenerative Medicine.

2:07:32 - "Regulation of Hematopoietic Stem Cells and Host Immunity by Light and Darkness Cues"

By Dr. Tsvee Lapidot, Professor of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at the Weizmann Institute, Dept. of Immunology and Regenerative Biology, Rehovot Israel.