E185 - Teresa Purzner on Developing a Cure for Pediatric Brain Tumors, Entrepreneurship, and Design-Thinking in Healthcare

Dr. Teresa Purzner MD PhD FRCSC is a clinician scientist neurosurgeon with a special interest in neuroncology and general neurosurgery.  She completed her residency training at the University of Toronto, and her PhD training at Stanford University.  Her lab, run jointly with her husband Dr. James Purzner, is focused on interdisciplinary approaches to identifying novel drug targets for brain cancer as well as the translation of promising new drug targets into human-ready therapeutics.  Her work has led to the identification of a critical new drug target in the brain tumor medulloblastoma – a discovery that she has since translated into a novel drug for both brain cancer and skin cancer, currently being tested in phase 1 and phase 2 clinical trials.  This work has resulted in her being named a Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate fellow, Biox fellow and SPARK fellow, and has earned her both national and international recognition including the Annual Award of the American Academy of Neurological Surgery, the K.G. McKenzie prize for Basic Science Research, AANS Louise Eisenhardt Award and the Neurosurgery Research and Education Fellowship.She is a mom, an entrepreneur, and design-thinker, having created her own baby food company as well as redesigned the Integrated Brain Tumor Program. Links:Integrated Brain Tumor Program: https://surgery.queensu.ca/administration/announcements/integrative-brain-tumor-program-achieving-best-class-patient-outcomeshttps://www.ibtp.ca/purzner-labhttps://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/economy/article-how-a-neurosurgeon-used-her-entrepreneurial-background-to-revamp-a/