Scientist profiles A-F

Education:

• MD, 1978, University of Manitoba, Canada
• FRCP(C), 1982, internal medicine, University of Toronto, Canada
• FRCP(C), 1984, medical oncology, U of T, Canada
• Postdoctoral research fellowship, 1988, Stanford University, U.S.
• ABIM, Internal Medicine and Medical Oncology, U.S.

Appointments and Affiliations:

• Affiliate scientist, Biological Sciences, Odette Cancer Research Program, Sunnybrook Research Institute
• Professor, departments of medicine, immunology and medical biophysics, U of T
• Member, department of laboratory medicine, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre
• Scientific or clinical advisor, IRX Therapeutics, Immunovaccine, BioVax, Roche Canada, Gilead Canada

Research Foci:

• Immunotherapy of cancer
• Preclinical and clinical development of cancer vaccines and combination immunotherapies
• Novel treatments and biomarkers for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma

Research Summary:

Dr. Berinstein's lab develops molecular assays to monitor and prognosticate human lymphomas. Using real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR), his lab has developed highly sensitive and reproducible assays to detect minimal residual disease, and is applying them to monitor patients undergoing standard therapies and experimental therapies, including stem cell transplants. His lab has also developed real-time PCR-based assays to assess for single-nucleotide polymorphisms (known as SNPs) of immunologically relevant genes to determine whether enhanced prognostic models can be developed for patients undergoing routine or experimental cancer therapies. High-throughput assays using multi-colour dyes and high-resolution melting-point methods are being used and further developed.

In addition, Dr. Berinstein has a longstanding interest in cancer immunotherapy and continues to develop novel vaccine and immunomodulator therapeutic approaches.

He is working with biotechnology companies and cancer researchers to develop novel clinical strategies to augment anti-tumour immune responses to cancers.

Specific research interests include using genomic information to develop personalized therapeutic vaccines for patients with cancer and developing combination immunotherapy treatment approaches.

Selected Publications:

See current publications list at PubMed.

1. Berinstein NL, Bhella S, Pennell NM, Cheung MC, Imrie KR, Spaner DE, Milliken V, Zhang L, Hewitt K, Boudreau A, Reis MD, Chesney A, Good D, Ghorab Z, Hicks LK, Piliotis E and Buckstein R. Prolonged clinical remissions in patients with relapsed or refractory follicular lymphoma treated with autologous stem cell transplantation incorporating rituximab. Ann Hematol. 2015 May;94 (5):813–23.
2. Berinstein NL, Karkada M, Oza AM, Odunsi K,Villella JA, Nemunaitis JJ, Morse MA, Pejovic T, Bentley J, Buyse M, Nigam R, Weir GM, MacDonald LD, Quinton T, Rajagopalan R, Sharp K, Penwell A, Sammatur L, Burzykowski T, Stanford MM and Mansour M. Survivin-targeted immunotherapy drives robust polyfunctional T cell generation and differentiation in advanced ovarian cancer patients. Oncoimmunology. 2015 May 7;4(8):e1026529.
3. Weir GM, Hrytsenko O, Stanford MM, Berinstein NL, Karkada M, Liwski RS and Mansour M. Metronomic cyclophosphamide enhances HPV16E7 peptide vaccine induced antigen-specific and cytotoxic T-cell mediated antitumor immune response. OncoImmunology. 2014 Nov 14;3(8):e964407.
4. Da Sliva DM, Woodham AW, Naylor PH, Egan JE, Berinstein NL and Kast M. Immunostimulatory activity of the cytokine-based biologic, IRX-2, on human papillomarviurs-exposed Langerhans cells. J Interferon Cytokine Res. 2015 May;36(5):291–301.

5. Berinstein NL, Karkada M, Nigam R et al. First-in-man application of a novel therapeutic cancer vaccine formulation with the capacity to induce multi-functional T cell responses in ovarian, breast and prostate cancer patients. J Transl Med. 2012 Aug 3;10:156.

Related Links:

• U of T profile, department of immunology
• U of T profile, department of medical biophysics