Dr. Trevor Shepherd

How has your work evolved over the course of the last year?

“Science can sometimes be somewhat slow going in terms of generating new data and new ideas and moving things forward. But, I would say that looking back over the last year, a lot of things have really taken shape with my own research program and for those working in my lab. There’s been really nice progress on every trainee’s project and it’s contributed to a couple of different research publications. I was also successful in getting three new grants to support my research. It was an excellent year – one of those rare times where in one year you get that much success with grant funding and publications. It’s been a combination of a few years of work to get preliminary dataandputting that data together to get publications into scientific journals to ultimately be successful with those grants. But what’s most exciting with getting grant fundingmeans I foreseea lot of evolution in my research over the next few years.”

Generally, what does your day to day look like?

“Overall, this involves theperspective of short-and long-term goals for my own research program. The highest priority are my own trainees, my own research, getting publications, and getting grants. Long-term thinking involves recognizing that we've experiments to do fora publication that may be a year from now, so I can submit a grant following that. You have to recognize that the things you're doing on a day-to-day basis will contribute to things that are going to be requiredinthree months, six months, or a year down the road. This is balanced with other little things that just crop up on a daily basis. For example, editing an abstract for one of my trainees or taking a look at a grant for a colleague. It’s about that balance of things that are going to be dropped on your plate for the shortterm, as well as the ongoing day-to-day responsibilities that contribute to the long-term.”

Associate Professor, Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology (Cross Appointment with Anatomy and Cell Biology) More about his research http://bit.ly/ShepherdLab

Contact Info tshephe6@uwo.ca (519) 685-8500 Ext. 56347

“what’s exciting is getting grant funding means I foresee a lot of evolution over the next few years”

Where do you see the field heading in the next 5-10 years?

“One of the grants that was funded is fora Pan-Canadian Initiativesupported by Ovarian Cancer Canada and Health Canada. Federal money is there to specifically build a network of ovarian cancer researchers, where we have research modelsand patient samples todo preclinical work on. Another part of the initiative is to test new therapeutics and new ideas. The last part of the initiative is to support clinical trials. The whole idea of this five-year initiative is that there will be major progress in all three of those priorities. I'm lucky to be contributing to two of those priorities with some of the grant funding that I've received and some of the collaborative work that I am actively doing. Also, on an international level, there's a huge network of collaboration to make inroads on this devastating disease. I've been watching this happen over the last decade and I will continue to see this happening over the next five or 10 years. It took a long time to get to this level where we're at now in Canada with the number of different research labs that are focused on ovarian cancer, the great amountof funding support available, and the level of collaboration.”

“The most important is funding – biomedical research is not cheap. Another is having a good team so you can have access to expertise. It's about being able to attract the right people into your lab and maintain an interactive team– that's something that takes time and effort to do. It can be tough because if you don't have the funding, you can't do the research, and you can't attract the students. It’s like a ‘catch-22’: to have a great team you have to have sufficient funding, but they only come together. ” From the science perspective, what are some of the major areas that scientists still are trying to work out? “It comes down to the idea that cancer isextremely heterogeneous. There are some malignancies thatseem to be very straightforward with one driver mutation and a similar phenotype in every tumour. But we know that in most malignancies, with their genomic instability, every patient's tumour is different, and even within one patient over the course of their disease. After treatment, the tumourcan changeand evolve. Itfeels like it's a whack-a-mole game that you're playing in terms of trying to predict what's going to happen. I think scientifically we know that that's our challenge and we've got a lot of tools and technologies to try to understand that. But it's still recognizing that cancer always seems to be that one step ahead. You can almost take one of two routes – you either throw up your hands and go, ‘There's nothing we can do’, or, you accept that challenge and try to understand that complexity.”

“You either throw up your hands and go, ‘There’s nothing we can do’, or you accept that challenge and try to understand that complexity.”

What were some influential steps you took for your career?