Posted on July 24: Research award raises McMaster biologist’s profile

[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Juliet_Daniel.JPG” caption=”Juliet Daniel”]McMaster's Juliet Daniel is one of the brightest young researchers in Canada.

A $150,000 grant will help her shine even brighter.

The assistant professor of biology is one of 34 researchers from greater Toronto universities included in round six of the Premier's Research Excellence Award (PREA), announced minister of enterprise, opportunity and innovation Jim Flaherty.

The funding — $100,000 from the Ontario government and $50,000 from the university — will allow Daniel to continue her investigation into new regulators of cell adhesion and tumour progression. Her findings will increase scientists' understanding of tumour metastasis and significantly contribute to the development of improved therapies for cancer patients.

“We're trying to understand what causes a tumor cell to break away from the primary tumor and spread to other organs,” Daniel says. “We understand how a tumor arises, but we don't understand how it progresses to that really malignant and devastating state when it spreads to other organs.”

Daniel's lab is looking at the major epithelial cell adhesion complex, the “E-cadherin-catenin complexs”, which is defective in human tumors. “We're studying a protein that I discovered when I was a post-doc, a transcription factor named Kaiso, after the Caribbean calypso music,” she says.

“The focus of our lab is to elucidate the relevance of the interaction between Kaiso and one of the adhesion catenins, p120ctn,” she says. “We're trying to understand Kaiso's mechanism of action and identify the genes that it regulates, to see if any of those genes are directly linked to cancer.”

Daniel, who joined McMaster in November 1999, will use the funding to pay for personnel, students and technicians.

Established in 1998, the 10-year, $127.5-million PREA program includes an $85-million provincial investment, and an additional $42.5 million from research institutions and private-sector partners.

To date, 378 Ontario researchers have received $56.8 million in awards from the Ontario government and its partners.