Network names three outstanding early-career clinician-scientists as recipients of its 2025 Clinician-Scientist Awards

Three promising, early-career clinician-scientists have been named recipients of the 2025 Clinician-Scientist Awards, funded by the Marathon of Hope Cancer Centres Network (MOHCCN). Each will receive $450,000 ($225,000 from the Network and $225,000 in matching funds) to support groundbreaking research in precision oncology. 

This new injection of funding totaling $1.35M will support research for lung cancer, melanoma and glioblastoma.

"We are proud to support these remarkable clinician-scientists as they embark on new research that will shape the future of precision medicine in Canada," says Dr. André Veillette, MOHCCN executive director. "By investing in their ideas and training, we are not only advancing discoveries in lung cancer, melanoma and glioblastoma, but also building the expertise needed to position Canada as a global leader in precision oncology."

"When I was first diagnosed with an aggressive form of melanoma, it was a sober reality to learn that there weren’t many treatment options available," says Jennifer Coish, a melanoma survivor from Mt Pearl, NL and member of the MOHCCN’s Patient Working Group. “These awards, not only highlight the amazing dedication and work by these clinician-scientist, they provide everyone that is touched by this disease hope—hope that we can not only survive these cancers that normally have poor outcomes, but we can thrive and live long and meaningful lives with our families."

The award recipients and their project titles are:

• Dr. Teresa Purzner (Kingston Health Sciences Centres and Queen’s University) for Investigating biomarkers of migration and predictors of recurrence in glioblastoma
• Dr. Simon Roy (McGill University Health Centre and Rosalind and Morris Goodman Cancer Institute) for Deciphering the Spatial Transcriptomic and Circulating Epigenetic Landscape of Acral Melanoma
• Dr. Antoine Desilets (Centre de recherche du Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal) for Whole-Genome Sequencing Liquid Biopsy in Neoadjuvant Immunotherapy for Early-Stage Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Drs. Antoine Desilets, Teresa Purzner and Simon Roy have been named recipients of the 2025 MOHCCN Clinician-Scientist Awards.

About the award

The MOHCCN Clinician-Scientist Award provides outstanding early-career clinician-scientists with funding to support high-quality research in precision oncology. The award is designed to support early-career investigators as they develop their careers as independent clinician-scientists, in close collaboration and mentorship with established MOHCCN-funded teams.

In addition to new funding, the researchers will have access to expertise, data and resources generated by the Network. In turn, they will contribute knowledge from their projects to the Network, helping to accelerate the implementation of precision medicine for cancer in Canada.