The Department of Surgery has offered the Master of Science Degree Program since 1969, and receives more than 200 applications per year. The faculty members in the Department of Surgery engage in research to advance our knowledge in areas relevant to human health and to improve clinical care. Now, it has 38 supervisors specialized in divisions including cardiovascular surgery, general surgery, neurosurgery, otolaryngology, pediatric surgery, plastic surgery, radiation oncology, thoracic surgery and vascular surgery.
Every year, colleagues in the Department of Surgery gather as a whole to celebrate their research endeavors (basic, clinical and education research) at The W.B.& M.H. Chung Research Day – an event that has become the premier event of the academic calendar. This forum was established in the early 1990s by Doctors Wally Chung and Madeleine Chung. Together, they recognized that the Department of Surgery lacked a department-wide research forum, so they endowed a fund to support it. Over the past 20 years, this platform has given students and researchers opportunities to become familiar with new and innovative research techniques, and to foster an atmosphere of collaborative research within the Department of Surgery. It also informs members of the types of clinical and basic sciences research being conducted in the Department of Surgery.
The Master of Science in Surgery is a research degree. Applicants with an MD degree or equivalent are accepted once they have been deemed to be satisfactory by the M.Sc. Program Director and fulfill the admission requirements of the Faculty of Graduate Studies. A supervisory committee will be chosen to represent the area of specialization elected by the candidate. The M.Sc. program consists of an 18-credit thesis (SURG 549), plus 12 credits of coursework, for a total of 30 credits. The 12 credits of coursework must be at the 500-level, of which 8 credits should be from Department of Surgery courses numbered 502 to 548. The student, with the advice of the committee, may select other approved courses in related fields.
For further information, please contact Eva Germann, email ubc.surgery.msc@ubc.ca, and more details in the Department of Surgery website.
Selected Recent Publications
Wang X, Hao J, Metzger DL, Mui A, Lee IF, Akhoundsadegh N, Chen CL, Ou D, Ao Z, Verchere CB, Warnock GL. Blockade of both B7-H4 and CTLA-4 co-signaling pathways enhances mouse islet allograft survival. Islets. 2012 Jul 1;4(4).
Wong J, Lee C, Zhang K, Rennie PS, Jia W. Targeted oncolytic herpes simplex viruses for aggressive cancers. Curr Pharm Biotechnol. 2012 Jul 1;13(9):1786-94.
Ming-Lum A, Shojania S, So E, McCarrell E, Shaw E, Vu D, Wang I, McIntosh LP, Mui AL. A pleckstrin homology-related domain in SHIP1 mediates membrane localization during Fcγ receptor-induced phagocytosis. FASEB J. 2012 Aug;26(8):3163-77.
Student Profiles
Michael Bleszynski
Michael finished medical school from Jagiellonian University, in Krakow, Poland in 2011 and is currently entering the second year of the M.Sc. in Surgery program. His group focuses on the surgical management of abdominal sepsis. Now, they examine the role of surgical intervention in modulating the pathophysiology of inflammatory cytokines. The other goal of their work is to identify trends in observed and predicted clinical outcomes of abdominal sepsis using clinical scoring systems. Michael is also interested in the immunological response to implanted biological scaffolds for abdominal reconstruction. The results of their work will help guide further interest and research into the evolving management of surgical abdominal sepsis.
Abdulrahman Al Sabban
Abdulrahman Al Sabban is a second-year MSc student, supervised by Dr. Michael Cox at the Vancouver Prostate Centre. He graduated from medical school in Saudi Arabia and won a scholarship from King Abdulaziz University. His group is mainly interested in the molecular basis of prostate cancer, with a special interest in the advanced CRPC (Castration-resistant prostate cancer). They believe that under many theories of developing CRPC status in prostate cancer cells, one of them is through the IGF (Insulin like growth factor) pathway. IGF promotes cell growth and proliferation in various human tissues. These IGFs circulate in the blood bound to different types of binding proteins (IGF binding proteins). These IGFBPs generally have a very high affinity to IGF, but differ in their effect on tissue growth. In CRPC there is an increase in the production of IGFBP-2 and -5 in the local environment of prostate cancer, which will result in the accumulation of the IGF around the cancer cells by taking the circulating IGFs and releasing them to the tumor tissue. This will cause the growth and proliferation of the cancer cells, and the development of the castration-resistant status.
Abdulrahman is now working on developing a drug that can affect the binding of IGF to the IGFBP-5, to decrease the amount of IGF around the prostate cancer cells, and thus treating the disease.
Jingyan Zhu
Jingyan got her MD degree in China in 2009, specializing in anesthesia. During her residency she found that she had more interest in basic research of disease. Now, she is a 2nd year student in the M.Sc. Surgery program, supervised by Dr. William Jia at the Brain Research Centre. The Jia lab focuses on neurodegenerative diseases, especially the molecule biological mechanisms of diseases.
Jingyan’s research focuses on a novel protein (TDP43) usually involved in neurodegenerative diseases like FTLD and ALS. TDP43 is a kind of hnRNP, and its function in brain tumors has never been discovered. Jingyan’s research demonstrates how it works in cancer circumstances which develops the unknown function of this key protein. Recently, Jingyan found out some stop codon mutations of TDP43 in cancer cell lines which may have great meaning for cancer cells and may affect abnormal cells apoptosis. TDP43 has been reported in cleavage involved in neuron apoptosis, but Jia’s group found the cleavage itself may not be the key factor leading to PCD. Till now, the related researches are still in progress.