Canada

medulloblastoma

dna replication stress

sonic hedgehog

Colleagues and Friends:

I am very happy to welcome you to the 14th annual Canadian Neuroscience Meeting, and to the first virtual edition of our meeting. I want to highlight the important work the CAN meeting chair, **Roger Thompson** and co-chair, **Alyson Fournier**, did to put together the great program we are offering this year. Moving to a virtual format required a complete re-design of the program, and both Roger and Alyson did a splendid job in providing us with an appealing and well adapted program for our first virtual event. I wish to thank them for this very important effort.

Highlights of this year’s scientific meeting include invited speakers **Michael Hausser, Franck Polleux, Gwyneth Card, Magdalena Götz**and Brain Prize winner **Huda Zoghbi**. Plenary and parallel symposia, proposed by our members complete our diverse [scientific program.](https://can-acn.org/meeting-2021/program-2021/)

The 2021 Advocacy session, chaired and organized by CAN advocacy committee chair **Karun Singh**, will feature a special lecture and question period with Member of Parliament and past Science Minister **Kirsty Duncan**. This will be followed by a short overview of CAN’s advocacy activities over the last year. We invite you to participate in this session for insight from Dr. Duncan on the workings of Parliament Hill, and to learn more about what CAN has been doing to promote neuroscience research in Canada.

We are also excited to host **Lisa Willis** in the Equity Diversity and Inclusion session, organized by EDI committee chair **Jibran Khokhar**.

A special highlight of our meeting will be the lectures by award-winning young neuroscientists. We are please to host the CAN 2020 Young Investigator Award winner **Mihaela Iordanova**, and CAN 2021 Young Investigator Award winners **Aaron Phillips** and **Tabrez Siddiqui**. Highlights will also include presentation by the top three winners of the CAN-CIHR-INMHA Brain Star Award winners, **Claire Gizowski, Nuria Daviu Abant** and **Lukas Tamayo-Orrego**.

Independently organized satellite symposia complement and complete this exciting program, check them out here: https://can-acn.org/meeting-2021/2021-satellite-symposia/

Some of the most engaging sessions are always the poster sessions featuring the work of our trainees, so make sure to log in to Gather Town during the poster sessions to chat with the presenters.
We hope you enjoy this program, and look forward to welcoming you, virtually.

Shernaz Bamji

President of the Canadian Association for Neuroscience

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Please head to https://can-acn.org/meeting-2021/registration-2021/ to register. 

CAN-ACN 2021

14th Canadian Neuroscience Meeting from August 23rd-25th

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Molsamp 2021

Cancer is a multi-stage disease caused by sequential mutations; however, the molecular mechanism generating cancer-initiating mutations for many cancers is not well understood. Using the developing cerebellum as model system, here we delineate a molecular mechanism for tumor initiation in medulloblastoma (MB), the most frequent malignant pediatric brain tumor. Activation of the Sonic hedgehog (SHH) pathway is frequent in MB, with mutations in the tumor suppressor PTCH1 (a negative regulator of SHH signaling) being the most common initiating event for SHH-MB. However, how SHH as a developmental mitogen promotes early carcinogenesis in the cells of origin, granule cerebellar progenitors (GCPs), remains to be determined. 
Here we report that physiological exposure of GCPs to Shh causes a distinct form of DNA replication stress, altering DNA replication dynamics to increase both origin firing and fork velocity. Shh promotes DNA helicase loading and activation in GCPs, with increased levels of Cdc7-dependent replication origin firing. S-phase duration is reduced and hyper-recombination consequently occurs. Such elevated recombination causes copy-number neutral LOH, an event seen frequently at the PTCH1/ptch1 locus. Moreover, Cdc7 inhibition to attenuate origin firing in a MB mouse model is sufficient to reduce somatic recombination and preneoplastic tumor formation. We therefore establish that tissue-specific replication stress induced by Shh acts to promote LOH, which in tumor-prone Ptch1+/- GCPs can result in loss of this tumor suppressor, as an early cancer initiating event.


Sonic hedgehog causes replication stress promoting cancer initiation in medulloblastoma

keynote

Using novel rodent models of audiovisual perception to assess the influence of prior sensory exposure on audiovisual perceptual judgments

Afferent input "re-organization" after a complete thoracic spinal cord injury in rats

Gaze behaviour with height-induced postural threat

A retrospective investigation of short- and long-latency afferent inhibition data from six years of published studies

The role of descending pathways in population coding of 2nd order electrosensory stimuli

A role for a persistent subthreshold K+ current in generating rhythm within larval zebrafish spinal locomotor circuits

The coordination of thermoregulation by circadian and thermosensory mechanisms

The effect of self-motion on electrosensory inputs

Whole-brain optical imaging in zebrafish larvae to investigate neural circuit development and connectivity

Long-range hypothalamic neuronal projections to the subventricular zone neurogenic niche regulates neural stem cell function through endocannabinoid signaling

poster

https://d3smihljt9218e.cloudfront.net/transcript/20945/subtitle/bacde33df6a49ec086dd80515aa29c5a.vtt

English (automatic)

Sonic hedgehog causes replication stress promoting cancer initiation in medulloblastoma

Downloads

Next from CAN-ACN 2021

Using novel rodent models of audiovisual perception to assess the influence of prior sensory exposure on audiovisual perceptual judgments

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