Executive Team

Dr. Black is a surgeon scientist with clinical subspecialty interest in the treatment of urologic cancers, including especially bladder and prostate cancer. He maintains a grant-funded translational research program in urothelial carcinoma with a focus on genomic analysis of response to chemotherapy, mechanisms of resistance to chemotherapy, and novel targeted therapies for bladder cancer. One of his main laboratory projects relates to Notch signaling in bladder cancer. His group was the first to identify Notch2 as an oncogene in bladder cancer, and they are now working to elucidate differential regulation of these oncogenic properties of Notch2 compared to the tumor suppressive properties of Notch1, with the objective of modulate both pathways independently for therapeutic purposes.

Dr. Gleave is a Distinguished Professor and Chairman of the Department of Urologic Sciences at UBC, and a British Columbia Leadership Chair. He is Co-Founder and Director of the Vancouver Prostate Centre, now a UBC and National Centre of Excellence. He is amongst the top cited and funded scientists in Canada, publishing > 600 papers with >60,000 citations, an H-Index of 122, and attracting >$120M in research funding. Dr. Gleave is a surgeon-scientist whose research characterizes molecular mechanisms mediating treatment resistance in cancer, and designing co-targeting strategies to improve cancer control. He patented several anti-cancer drugs and founded OncoGenex Pharmaceuticals to develop OGX-011 and OGX-427, inhibitors of cytoprotective chaperones clusterin and Hsp27 which progressed to Phase III and Phase II trials world-wide. OncoGenex was awarded Canadian Biotech Company of the Year in 2010. Dr. Gleave also recently co-founded Sitka and Sustained Therapeutics.

Dr. Goldenberg (CM, OBC, MD, FRCSC, FACS, FCAHS) is a urologic surgeon and clinical scientist with an international reputation for excellence in prostate cancer research and treatment. His current research interests involve the evaluation of artificial intelligence algorithms in reading digitized prostate pathology and MRI to risk stratify active surveillance patients, the identification of targeted radioactive Theranostics ligands (aptamers) for diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer, prostate cancer supportive care and patient education. He has been recognized for his contributions to health care by being inducted into the Order of British Columbia and the Order of Canada.

Dr. Boniface joined the Prostate Centre in 2008 as COO, after more than 20 years in drug development in both the academic and private industry sectors. Prior to joining our Centre, he was Senior Director of Clinical Research at QLT Inc. where he oversaw the clinical development of the company’s drug platform in Oncology, Urology, Dermatology, and Endocrinology indications. Trials conducted by his team have lead to successful regulatory marketing approvals by the US FDA, Canadian, and European agencies.

Brian Shankaruk has over 25 years experience in the financial field. For 20 years prior to joining the Centre, Brian worked in the insurance and financial services industry, focusing on Canadian and US statutory government reporting. Brian studied accounting at UBC and received his Certified General Accountant designation in 1990. Much of Brian’s recent work has involved systems design and implementation, especially as it relates to operations management and government regulations.

Dr. Zoubeidi is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Cancer Therapy Resistance. Her research program aims to uncover how standard care of prostate cancer therapy targeting the androgen receptor (AR) induces treatment resistance and controls phenotypic plasticity, which has been associated with the clinically relevant problem of drug resistance in prostate cancer. Importantly, amplification of different signaling pathways may be unique to an individual and their disease; therefore, her research program is designed to identify and understand common signaling nodes responsible for the emergence of resistance to ultimately design the best combination therapy to guide clinical decisions.

Dr. Artem Cherkasov is a Professor in the Department of Urologic Sciences, Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia, and Senior Scientist at the Vancouver Prostate Centre. His research interests include computer-aided drug discovery (CADD), structure-activity modeling, drug reprofiling, new cancer therapeutics discovery and development of novel CADD tools and applications. Dr. Cherkasov has co-authored more than 200 research papers, 80 patent filings and several prominent book chapters. During his tenure at UBC, Dr. Cherkasov has been a principal applicant or co-applicant on a number of successful grants totalling over 70M dollars, and has licenced 6 drug candidates to big pharma companies (AZ, Roche), major international venture funds (5AM) and spin-off companies.

Dr Collins is a Senior Research Scientist at the Vancouver Prostate Centre and a Director of The Laboratory for Advanced Genome Analysis (LAGA). In addition, he is an associate adjunct professor at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and a visiting scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He has held positions at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at UCSF. His current research is best described as translational genomics where mathematics, genomics, computer science, and clinical science converge in diagnostics and therapeutics.