44th Gallie Day Synopsis 2018

44th GALLIE DAY – Friday May 11, 2018

Drs. James Rutka and Michael Fehlings started the day by reflecting on the major medical, scientific, social, and political changes that have occurred over the past 44 years. The theme of this year’s Gallie Day was "Innovation: Pushing The Boundaries of Surgical Care".

It may come as a surprise to most, this is the first Gordon Murray Lecture given by a female. It may have taken 44 years to realize we hadn’t invited a female lecturer as the Gallie Day Gordon Murray Lecturer, but we are tremendously pleased with our choice. As our staff, students, residents and guest speakers can concur, this year’s theme on innovations from bench to bedside was a triumphant success. Our Gordon Murray Lecturer, symposium speakers and complete day complemented the brilliance of the Department of Surgery at the University of Toronto.

The symposium, Innovation: Pushing The Boundaries of Surgical Care, was chaired by Michael G. Fehlings, and featured 4 outstanding speakers. Karen Cross (Associate Professor, Division of Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, Department of Surgery, University of Toronto; Staff Plastic & Reconstructive Surgeon, St. Michael’s Hospital), "MIMOSA: A spectrum to impact the world". Keith Jarvi (Professor, Divisions of Urology, Department of Surgery, University of Toronto; Chief of Urology and Director of the Murray Koffler Urologic Wellness Centre, Mount Sinai Hospital), “’Sperm Olympics’: Nano-Fluidics to Choose the One in a Million”. Mojgan Hodaie (Professor, Division of Neurosurgery, Department of Surgery, University of Toronto; Staff Neurosurgeon, Toronto Western Hospital, University Health Network), "Travelling through the white matter fibres of the brain - adventures in structural brain imaging”. Kazuhiro Yasufuku (Director of Endoscopy; Director, Interventional Thoracic Surgery Program; Division of Thoracic Surgery, Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network; Associate Professor of Surgery, University of Toronto), “Innovations in Image Guided Thoracic Surgery”.

This year’s Gordon Murray Lecturer was Susan E. Mackinnon (Sydney M. Shoenberg, Jr. and Robert H. Shoenberg Professor, Surgery Chief, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Department of Surgery, Washington University School of Medicine, Barnes-Jewish Hospital, St. Louis, Missouri, USA), Her magnificent talk “A celebration of academic surgery and the path to successful innovation”, not only highlighted her amazing scientific journey, but gave us a glimpse into her path from graduate student to Chief and Professor.

As we continue to use E-Poster presentations as opposed to poster presentations, we are able to view presentations at a different level of expertise. Residents, students and post-doctoral fellows wowed the judges, fellow group members and audience with their electronic presentations. There were 18 platform presentation groups with a total of 72 e-poster presentations. The Gallie Bateman Awards (for Surgeon Scientist Training Program participants) and the McMurrich Awards (for any trainee working with a member of the faculty of surgery) were judged for both platform presentations and poster presentations. The range of assorted topics and researchers highlighted the wide-ranging and immeasurably high quality research being conducted throughout our Department.

Ten outstanding oral presentations were scored so closely that they could have all been awardees. The quality of the research and presentations as a result of the research were exceptional. Surgeon Scientist Training Program (SSTP) residents are awarded the Gallie Bateman prizes for best oral presentation and e-poster presentation. First prize oral presentation awardee was Ashton A. Connor (SSTP), [Robert E. Denroche, Gun Ho Jang, Mathieu Lemire, Amy Zhang, Julie Wilson, Faiyaz Notta, Steven Gallinger (Supervisor)] for his remarkable talk on "Comparison of primary and metastatic pancreatic cancer by integration of clinical, pathologic, genomic and transcriptomic features". Second prize was awarded to Alaina Garbens (SSTP), [Bonnie Armstrong, Marisa Louridas, Fred Tam, Allan S. Detsky, Tom Schweizer, Simon Graham, Teodor Grantcharov (Supervisor)], for her very interesting talk on “The association between fMRI brain activation and laparoscopic technical performance in medical students: A pilot study". Third prize was received by Derrick Y. Tam (SSTP) [Jiming Fang, Andrew Tran, Jack V Tu, Dennis T Ko, Saswata Deb (SSTP), Stephen E. Fremes (Supervisor)], for his fascinating talk on “A clinical risk scoring tool to predict readmission after cardiac surgery: An Ontario administrative and clinical population database study”.

SSTP Resident E-Poster presentations: Joseph Catapano (SSTP) [Kira Antonyshyn, Jennifer J Zhang, Gregory H Borschel (Supervisor)], for his outstanding talk on “Corneal neurotization prevents corneal ulceration and preserves vision in a rat model of neurotrophic keratopathy”, shared 1st prize with Keith Lawson (SSTP) [Xiaoyu Zhang, Rummy Akthar, Qian Huang, Amy Tong, Xiaowel Wang, Kevin Brown, Michael Aregger, Alex Weiss, Antonio Finelli, Laurie Aille, Traver Hart, Jason Moffat (Supervisor)], for his exceptional talk on “Genome-scale discovery of cancer immunotherapy fitness genes”. 2nd prize was also tied by Mitchell G Goldenberg (SSTP) [Hossein Saadat, Jason Y Lee, Antonio Finelli, Teodor P Grantcharov (Supervisor), for his presentation on “Incorporating measures of patient safety into skills assessments in robotic-assisted radical prostatectomy” and Christopher J.D. Wallis (SSTP) [Bheeshma Ravi, Natalie Coburn, Robert K. Nam, Allan S Detsky, Raj Satkunasivam], for his talk on “A comparison of post-operative outcomes among patients treated by male and female surgeons: A population-based matched cohort study”. 3rd prize was awarded to Michael S Taccone (SSTP) [Thanh B Nguyen, John Woulfe, Gerd Melkus, Ian Cameron, Ioana Moldovan, Nadav Berkovitz, Fahad Alkherayf], for his work on “Bringing non-invasive IDH mutation detection to the clinic for glioma patients: Preliminary results”. It is an accurate reflection on the great work our SSTP residents have done while in the Program, since a few of them will be going back to clinic in July 2018 and can boast that they were awarded the Gallie-Bateman Award in their final month before finishing.

The McMurrich Awards are presented to research trainees who are not in the Surgeon Scientist Training Program. The oral presentations were outstanding. The first place award was won by

Marcos T. Galasso [Jordan Feld, Yui Watanabe, Mauricio Pipkin, Cara Summers, Aadil Ali, Robert Qaqish, Amajara Gazzalle, Layla Pires, Natalia Inada, Vanderlei Bagnato, Vera Cherepanov, Thomas Waddell, Mingyao Liu, Shaf Keshavjee, Brian Wilson, Atul Humar, Marcelo Cypel (Supervisor)] for his exceptional presentation on, “Inactivating hepatitis C virus (HCV) from donor lungs using light therapies during ex-vivo lung perfusion (EVLP)”. Second prize was awarded to Kasra Tajdaran [Katelyn Chan, Molly S. Shoichet, Tessa Gordon, Gregory H. Borschel (Supervisor)], for his excellent talk on “A novel local FK506 delivery system for improvement of axon regeneration after surgical peripheral nerve repair”. Third prize went to Abdikarim Abdullahi (Marc G. Jeschke, Supervisor) for his stupendous talk on “Browning of white adipose tissue is mediated by IL-6 during hypermetabolic states”.

McMurrich Awards were also bestowed on a group of individuals who presented remarkable E-posters. 1st prize went to Hwan Hee Oh [Saeid Amini-Nik, Marc G Jeschke (Supervisor)] for his outstanding presentation on “Enhanced decelluarized extracellular matrix hydrogel for skin tissue engineering”. 2nd prize was awarded to Olga Brashavitskaya [Karineh Kazazian, Qinghong Dan, Rick Bagshaw, James Dennis, Tony Pawson, Katalin Szaszi, Carol Swallow (supervisor)] for her presentation on “PLK4 regulates cancer cell motility through RHOA GEF ARHGEF1”. 3rd prize went to Zachary Fishman [Joshua Pope, Jerry Liu, Oleh M Antonyshyn, Jeff A Fialkov, Cari M Whyne (Supervisor)] for is very interesting presentation on “Validating 3D face morphing to provide missing geometry in facial reconstruction surgery”.

Each year we honour our faculty with research awards that demonstrate the continuous array of magnificence. Bernard Langer Surgeon Scientist Training Program Award - awarded to an outstanding graduate of the Surgeon Scientist Training Program in the Department, who shows the greatest promise for a career in academic surgery went to Jaskarndkp Chahal (Surgeon Investigator, Orthopaedic Surgery, Toronto Western Hospital, UHN and Women’s College Hospital). Jas received his MSc under the direction of Dr. Aileen Davis through IHPME. George-Armstrong Peters Prize - awarded to a young investigator who has shown outstanding productivity during his initial period as an independent investigator as evidenced by research publications in peer reviewed journals, grants held, and students trained was awarded to Catherine O’Brien (Surgeon Scientist, General Surgery, Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network); Charles Tator Surgeon Scientist Mentoring Award - recognizing individual supervising participants in the SSTP who emulate Professor Tator’s qualities, namely excellence in research, commitment to SSTP mentoring and dedication to promotion of Surgeon-Scientists was presented to Carol Swallow (Surgeon Investigator, General Surgery, Mount Sinai Hospital); Marc Jeschke (Surgeon Scientist, Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre) received the Lister Prize - awarded to an investigator who has shown outstanding and continuing productivity of international stature as evidenced by research publications, grants held, students trained and other evidence of stature of the work produced.

Bryce Taylor Mentoring Award, established in 2017 to recognize those faculty members who emulate the traits that Dr. Taylor exhibited throughout his long and illustrious career at the University of Toronto, was awarded to Nancy Baxter (Surgeon Scientist, General Surgery, St. Michael’s Hospital) for her tremendous mentorship throughout her illustrious career to date. The Shafie Fazel Award, established in memory of Dr. Shafie Fazel is presented to an individual who has demonstrated outstanding accomplishments during his/her residency both as a surgeon and as an investigator, was presented to Christopher Witiw (Neurosurgery Resident). The Zane Cohen Clinical Fellowship is presented to a clinical fellow who has practiced and achieved at the highest level while being a clinical fellow in the Department of Surgery was awarded to Joao Paulo Cavalcante de Almeida (Clinical Fellow, Neurosurgery). The Tovee Award is presented to an academic staff member of the Department of Surgery who has made the greatest contribution to the educational activities of the Department, as exemplified by Dr. E. Bruch Tovee during his outstanding career. This year’s recipient of the Tovee Postgraduate Prize is Mitchell Brown (Surgeon Teacher, Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, Women’s College Hospital), and Fuad Moussa (Surgeon Teacher, Cardiac Surgery, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre) received the Tovee Undergraduate Prize. The Surgical Skills Centre DH Gales Outstanding Educator Award demonstrates the Centre’s commitment to surgical skills education. This award recognizes those individuals who have made exemplary, innovative contributions to teaching and learning in the Surgical Skills Centre over the past year. This was presented to Abhaya Kulkarni (Surgeon Scientist, Neurosurgery, Hospital for Sick Children). D.R. Wilson Award for teaching is made annually to the surgical resident who is rated by undergraduate students as being an outstanding teacher. This year the recipient of this award, whose teaching has been highly evaluated by medical students, is Ryan Perlus (Orthopaedic Surgery resident). Ryan constantly displayed a positive attitude toward teaching and was considered to be an exemplary surgical role model for undergraduate medical students.

The 47 judges for the e-poster competition as well as the 14 Timers, who volunteered their time for the e-poster judging deserve special thanks, as well as the Research Committee members who reviewed and judged the oral presentations. As we take pride on how great the Day and Evening awards ceremony went, we need to acknowledge the tremendous effort it took from everyone involved. The Day could not have gone as well as it did without everyone’s participation and collaborative efforts. Thanks again this year to Andrea McCart for assigning the judges to the posters, Kristen Davidge and Ian McGilvray for expertly moderating the sessions, and Sylvia Perry for making sure the day’s and evening preparations were adhered to flawlessly. A very special thanks to Val Cabral for her incredible dedication and hard work in bringing together different facets of Gallie Day to perfection.

As we look forward to the next Gallie Day spectacular, mark Friday May 3, 2019 in your iPAD, iPOD, Smartphone. Dr. Diane M. Simeone [Pancreatic Cancer Center, New York University] has accepted our invitation to be the Gordon Murray Lecturer for 2019.

Val Cabral (with input from Michael G. Fehlings)