I am an
Associate
Professor and
clinician-scientist
in the Department of
Pathology
and Laboratory Medicine and an associate member of the Department of Orthopaedics
and the Department of Urologic
Sciences at the University
of British Columbia in Vancouver,
Canada. I am based at Vancouver
General Hospital and at the British
Columbia Cancer Agency,
working out of the Division of Anatomical Pathology, the Genetic Pathology Evaluation Centre,
and the Prostate Centre at the
Jack Bell Research Pavilion.
, where I
help to organize our seminar
series for clinician-scientists. I contribute
to the correlative sciences planning around cancer clinical trials for
the Canadian NCIC-Clinical
Trials Group and the
U.S.-based cancer research cooperative group CALGB
.25% of my time is devoted to clinical work: diagnostic pathology for
bone and soft tissue tumors in the province of British Columbia, weekly
sarcoma and musculoskeletal tumor treatment planning conferences, and
teaching residents and medical students at UBC. The rest of my time is
devoted to translational research into how molecular changes
in cancer
cells impact upon diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment response, and in
developing new
and clinically-practical molecular diagnostics and targeted therapies
for
human cancer (with a focus on breast cancer and sarcomas).
My active research encompasses two
major
areas. As co-director of the 
Genetic Pathology Evaluation Centre
at Vancouver Hospital (working with my close colleagues David
Huntsman and Blake
Gilks) I lead several active tissue microarray
projects, focussing on the confirmation and clinical correlation of
results from gene expression profiling of breast cancer and sarcomas,
and their translation into diagnostic and predictive tests.
As an independent principal investigator, I direct my
lab
(here are pictures of my
research team) in a research program to develop much-needed
systemic
treatments for sarcomas, particularly synovial sarcoma,
myxoid
liposarcoma, and tenosynovial
giant cell tumor, neoplasms most commonly occurring in the limbs of
young adults.
.
to
use gene
expression profiling technology to characterize the molecular profile of
human sarcomas. In breast cancer research, I am working to
translate breast cancer expression profiles
into clinical
tests in collaboration with Chuck
Perou of UNC-Chapel Hill, Matthew
Ellis of Washington
University, and Phil
Bernard of the University
of Utah. My work dissecting the molecular biology of synovial
sarcoma is being done in active collaboration with Michael
Underhill at the UBC Biomedical Research Centre. My other
close collaborators on active grants include Stephen Chia, a
breast cancer oncologist, and Paul
Clarkson, an orthopaedic oncologist, both from at the BC
Cancer Agency. Here is
my publications
list.
McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
My Ph.D. thesis, "Human Origins of DNA
Replication: identification, analysis and application," was completed
at the McGill Cancer
Centre, under the supervision of Gerald
B. Price in the Division of Experimental Medicine. While at McGill,
I also studied and published articles on the
ethics of germline genetic manipulations and euthanasia. My residency
training began in Victoria,
the capital of
British Columbia, with a rotating internship year, where I spent many
nights on call at the Victoria General
and Royal
Jubilee hospitals -- sometimes even running the cardiac arrest
team!
Urban Cyclists! Here are links to 
Physicians for Global Survival, and 
Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada
Escaping to nature was always easy, growing up in Vancouver, a city with many great places to go hiking.
Contact Information:
Torsten O. Nielsen, MD/PhD FRCPC
Anatomical Pathology, JP 1401
Vancouver Hospital & Health Sciences Centre
855 W. 12th Ave, Vancouver B.C. V5Z 1M9
tel: 604.875.4111 x66768 (clinical) or x62649 (research)
fax: 604.875.5707 (attn: T. Nielsen)
email address: torsten[nospam]@interchange.ubc.ca
(remove [nospam] to reply)
Last modified 2009.11.28