Sheila K. Singh MD, PhD, FRCSC[1] is a chief pediatric neurosurgeon at McMaster Children's Hospital in Ontario, Canada.
[1][2] She holds a Tier 1/ Senior Canada Research Chair in Human Brain Cancer Stem Cell Biology, and is Director of the McMaster Surgeon Scientist Program (SSP), which is a part of McMaster's pre-established Clinical Investigator Program (CIP) that provides research training for surgical residents.
She is active in the European Society for Medical Oncology and is on the editorial boards of Acta Neuropathologica Communications and of Current Pathobiology Reports.
[1] Singh's lab currently studies the regulation of BTIC signaling pathways in medulloblastomas (MB), glioblastomas (GBM), and brain metastases (BM).
Singh's lab aims to study genes that regulate stem cell signaling pathways in MB patients in order to provide specific and individualized therapies that target BTIC.
[1] Singh's lab found that the poor patient survival associated with glioblastomas correlates with the increased frequency of BTICs along with the high degree of intratumoral heterogeneity, which affect the development of treatment in GBM.
Using these BMICs, they have generated preclinical patient-derived xenograft (PDX) mouse models of brain metastases, allowing them to perform genomic studies to identify drivers of pre-metastatic and fully metastatic tumor cell states which they hope will allow them to identify druggable targets in order to uncover new therapies that can prevent and/or eradicate BM.
[1] Singh and her research colleagues won a Terry Fox New Frontiers Program Project Grant from the TFRI in 2016, worth $2.75M over five years.