Kerri Smith, a PhD student supervised by Dr. Ann Dorward, was awarded a $3,000 Teal Heart Scholarship in a national competition. This fellowship is awarded by Ovarian Cancer Canada for graduate students engaged in ovarian cancer research. Ms. Smith also received a travel award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Cancer Research to attend the Inaugural Canadian Cancer Research Conference held in Toronto in November 2011.

Ms. Smith’s research is on the identification of tumour susceptibility genes that lead to spontaneous appearance of a particular sub-type of ovarian tumour, called juvenile-onset granulosa cell tumours. Using a mouse model that develops these tumours and mimics pediatric cases, she uses this model for gene discovery and to provide information about genetic etiology that could be translated to human cases. 

Ms. Smith presented a research poster at the Canadian Cancer Research Conference. The title of her submission was A candidate gene short list for a granulosa cell tumour susceptibility locus (Gct1) in a spontaneous mouse model of early-onset tumourigenesis.  Her work has also been submitted to the journal Cancer Research for publication.