Staff

Dr. Gwyn Bebb

Director

Dr. Gwyn Bebb is a medical oncologist at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre whose main clinical expertise is in the treatment of lung cancer and digestive tract cancers. His main field of research interest is the targeted therapy of lung cancer and mantle cell lymphoma.

Gwyn Bebb was an undergraduate at Cambridge University where he studied Natural Science. He did his pre-clinical studies for two years at St. Mary’s Hospital, Imperial College, University of London before completing three years of clinical medicine studies at Oxford University where he got his BMBCh. After completing house jobs in southeast England, he moved to Victoria where he joined Professor Barry Glickman’s lab at the University of Victoria as a research associate. He then moved to the University of British Columbia to complete a PhD on the “Role of ATM in Breast Cancer” with Dr. Kirsten Skov. He completed his Internal Medicine Residency at UBC in 2000. He subsequently did his Medical Oncology Residency at the B.C Cancer Agency, Vancouver Centre and completed another two year fellowship looking at animal models of mantle cell lymphoma at the same institution. He moved to Calgary to set up his research laboratory in 2004 and established his role as the Director of the Glans Look Research program.

Dr. Bebb is very keen to expand his fundraising capabilities so that he can expand our research initiatives as well. At the moment, he is also organizing the monthly meetings of the Translational Lung Cancer Research Group so that investigators who have nothing usually to do with lung cancer can bring their expertise to the table. Dr. Bebb wants to see whether the clinical pathological database can be interrogated using their expertise to yield new novel knowledge about lung cancer. The vision of course is to try to increase the scope of the database and research initiatives in as many ways as possible. In the future Dr. Bebb is sure that they will have to create a mini board of directors to oversee various aspects of how they conduct their affairs. All in all, Dr. Bebb can definitely say that this is a particularly exciting time to be involved in lung cancer research initiatives here in Calgary.

Michelle Dean

Research Associate

Michelle Dean is a University of Calgary alumnus (B.Sc. Biological Sciences, B.Sc. Anthropology) with ten years of research experience working within the University of Calgary Cumming School of Medicine as well as Translational Laboratories at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre.  After working as an IHC and image analysis specialist with the Functional Tissue Imaging Unit, Michelle assumed the coordinator role for Glans-Look Research in September 2017.  She manages quality improvement studies within the program, and seeks to expand collaborations with other researchers.  Michelle is also working to identify actionable biomarkers using metrics collected by the program to evaluate their ability to predict clinical outcomes, leading to the development of a personalized treatment approach.

Amanda Gibson

Research Assistant

Amanda graduated from the University of Calgary with a B.Sc (Hons) Ecology, and began her career with the (former) Alberta Cancer Board as a Research Assistant. She returned to the University of Calgary in 2012, working first with Student Accessibility Services and the Ohlson Research Initiative before joining the team at the Glans-Look Research program as a Research Assistant in 2016. In addition to collecting clinical data to help grow and refine the repository, Amanda is involved in a variety of research projects including exploring factors influencing the survival of patients with metastatic NSCLC, and investigating the mortality rate of NSCLC patients undergoing chemotherapy at the TBCC.

Dr. Lars Petersen

Research Associate

Lars received his BSc in Genetics from Western University in 2002, and his PhD in Cell and Developmental Biology from the University of Cambridge in 2006. He has completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Toronto and University of Calgary, and keeps an active teaching schedule at the University of Calgary and Mount Royal University. Lars manages the research lab operations for Dr. Bebb. His primary focus is developing and testing methodologies for determining ATM deficiency in patient and cell line samples. Lars has lived in Calgary since 2008 and has been working with Dr. Bebb since 2011.

Anifat Elegbede

Research Assistant

Anifat Elegbede graduated with a Bachelor degree in Medicine and surgery, M.B.Ch.B, from Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria.  She worked as an Intern in Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital Complex and as a Medical officer in Nigerian Law School Medical centre before relocating to Canada in December 2009.  She completed her Master’s degree in Medical sciences under the supervision of Dr. Gwyn Bebb focusing on lung cancer development in the Translational Research laboratory, and lends her expertise to the maintenance of the Glans-Look Research repository.

Dr. Haocheng Li

Statistician

Dr. Haocheng Li is a newly appointed Assistant Professor at the Department of Oncology and Community Health Sciences at University of Calgary in Canada. He obtained PhD degree in Statistics-Biostatistics at the University of Waterloo and conducted 2-year post-doctoral research in biostatistics at Texas A&M University.  His publications appear in biostatistics journals, such as Biometrics and Biostatistics, as well as cancer research journals such as Breast Cancer Research and Radiation Oncology. His current research interests include statistical analysis of electronic health data and cancer research data. Haocheng is currently involved in several projects as he continues to provide contribute his expertise and experience.

Adrijana D’Silva

Research Associate

Adrijana graduated from the University of Calgary in 2011 with a B.Sc. in Biological Sciences and a Master’s in Health Studies from Athabasca University in 2017. Her thesis work, under the supervision of Dr. Jeff Vallance, focused on the relationship between physical activity, sedentary behavior, and patient outcomes among lung cancer survivors. Adrijana worked with the GLD Research team for several years as a Research Associate, and continues to collaborate with the group on several projects. Since September 2017, Adrijana has been a PhD student in the Health & Wellness Lab. She aims to work with lung cancer patients and their healthcare providers to develop and implement a community-based exercise program for lung cancer survivors across Alberta. Adrijana also coordinates the Thrive Centre, a free fitness facility for cancer patients and their support persons.

(https://www.ucalgary.ca/healthandwellnesslab/programs/thrive-centre).

Dr. Shannon Otsuka

Research Associate (former)

Shannon Otsuka began to build a repository for the Glans-Look Research program in 2006 by retrospectively collecting clinical data for patients diagnosed between the years of 1999 to 2010.  During that time, she worked on a number of projects relating to lung cancer and also completed graduate degree in Medical Sciences at the University of Calgary with Dr. Bebb as her supervisor. Her work on the role of the CXCR4/SDF-1 in NSCLC was published in 2011. Shannon is currently a resident in family medicine at the University of Calgary.

Tony Fu

Research Assistant

Tony graduated from the University of Calgary in 2018 majoring in statistics. He joined the Glans-Look team in May 2018 as an intern, helping with statistical analyses and data entry. In September 2018, he started to create the template for a new database in Redcap and began the process of data migration. Tony is interested in medicine, technology, and their intersection. He has lent his expertise to understanding the application of machine learning to the GLD and he is working on creating a web app connected to the database to easily and quickly look for survival trends.