Interdisciplinary Cancer Sciences (Ph.D.)
Offered by: Interdepartmental Studies (Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences)
Degree: Doctor of Philosophy
Program Description
The Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Cancer Sciences focuses on cancer as a disease and the breadth of cancer research across disciplines. This program includes a solid foundation in fundamental aspects of cancer biology, “omics” analyses, treatments, and patient care.
Required Courses (4 credits)
| Course | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| CANC 621D1 | Seminars in Cancer Sciences. | 2 |
Seminars in Cancer Sciences. Terms offered: Fall 2025 Exposure to broad range of cancer research disciplines, including: cancer biology, cancer therapeutics and care, cancer epidemiology and global cancer control, and psychosocial oncology. | ||
| CANC 621D2 | Seminars in Cancer Sciences. | 2 |
Seminars in Cancer Sciences. Terms offered: Winter 2026 See CANC 621D1 for course description. | ||
| CANC 701 | Ph.D. Comprehensive Examination. | 0 |
Ph.D. Comprehensive Examination. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. An examination that must be passed by all doctoral students to continue in the doctoral program in cancer sciences. | ||
Complementary Courses (10 credits)
6 credits from the following:
| Course | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| EXMD 635D1 | Experimental/Clinical Oncology. 1 | 3 |
Experimental/Clinical Oncology. Terms offered: Fall 2025 The course will deal, on a site by site basis, with the incidence of cancer, present treatment, treatment outcome, underlying causes, current research and directions for development of new treatments. Chemotherapy, surgery, radiation therapy and nutrition as therapy and treatment of cancer will be included. | ||
| EXMD 635D2 | Experimental/Clinical Oncology. 1 | 3 |
Experimental/Clinical Oncology. Terms offered: Winter 2026 See EXMD 635D1 for course description. | ||
| ONCO 610D1 | Fundamentals of Oncology and Cancer Research. 1 | 3 |
Fundamentals of Oncology and Cancer Research. Terms offered: Fall 2025 A multidisciplinary approach to the entire spectrum of principles and practice in all fields of oncology, as well as to its research domains, from basic science to clinical and population health sciences. Content areas will include mechanisms of carcinogenesis, tumour pathology, cancer epidemiology, prevention, screening, diagnosis, treatment, psychosocial support, palliative care, global cancer control, and quality of cancer care services. The multidisciplinary nature of cancer research and clinical care and how research findings inform clinical practice and policymaking in cancer control will be illustrated. | ||
| ONCO 610D2 | Fundamentals of Oncology and Cancer Research. 1 | 3 |
Fundamentals of Oncology and Cancer Research. Terms offered: Winter 2026 For description see ONCO 610D1. | ||
- 1
Choose either EXMD 635D1/D2 or ONCO 610D1/D2.
4 credits from the following:
| Course | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| BIOC 600 | Advanced Strategies in Genetics and Genomics. | 3 |
Advanced Strategies in Genetics and Genomics. Terms offered: Winter 2026 Advanced technologies and methods in genomics research, presented by experts actively pursuing the experimental approaches discussed. | ||
| BIOC 603 | Genomics and Gene Expression. | 3 |
Genomics and Gene Expression. Terms offered: Fall 2025 Examination of recent developments in analysis of eukaryotic cell genomes and control of gene expression during differentiation and growth control. Molecular genetics; genomics and the bioinformatics of analysis of genomic and functional-genomic data; mechanisms and signal-transduction pathways for regulation of gene expression; applications to human disease with a strong emphasis on cancer. | ||
| BIOC 605 | Protein Biology and Proteomics. | 3 |
Protein Biology and Proteomics. Terms offered: Winter 2026 Examination of recent developments in protein biology and proteomics analysis. Proteomics, modeling and biophysical approaches to characterize the functional interactions of biological macromolecules; applications to biological problems. Lectures and in-class discussions are supplemented by practical training in proteomics. | ||
| BMDE 507 | Formulation and Delivery of Biotherapeutics. | 3 |
Formulation and Delivery of Biotherapeutics. Terms offered: Fall 2025 Introduction to technologies for formulation and delivery of biotherapeutics. Emphasis is placed on the fundamental principles of formulation, delivery systems, manufacturing, analytical techniques, and biomedical applications. Translational aspects are considered for formulated biotherapeutic products. | ||
| BMDE 653 | Patents in Biomedical Engineering. | 3 |
Patents in Biomedical Engineering. Terms offered: Winter 2026 This is a practical course on patents with emphasis on biomedical engineering applications. The course offers an overview of intellectual property, patents, and the patenting process. The course also provides insights into the strategies relating to commercialization and exploiting of patents, as well as enforcing patents. This course is designed to help biomedical engineers who will encounter patents in their work and needs to understand the nature and the scope of the patent system, how patents are obtained, and how to commercially exploit a patent. | ||
| BMDE 655 | Biomedical Clinical Trials - Medical Devices. | 3 |
Biomedical Clinical Trials - Medical Devices. Terms offered: Winter 2026 This course will train biomedical engineers to understand the clinical and business aspects of transferring a medical device idea into a commercial product. This course provides an overview of the pre‐clinical and clinical testing of medical devices, clinical trials, reimbursement systems, market analysis, sales models, and business models, as pertaining to medical devices. This course will also cover the design of randomized trials, including statistical principles, hypothesis postulating, bias minimization, and randomization methods. | ||
| CANC 601 | Patient Engagement in Cancer Research. | 1 |
Patient Engagement in Cancer Research. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. An examination of the historical and current aspects of patient involvement in research and the evolution from passive subjects to engaged patients and collaborators in research. | ||
| CANC 602 | Epidemiology in Cancer . | 1 |
Epidemiology in Cancer . Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Introduction to epidemiological methods to study cancer burden, causes and evaluation of preventive strategies including topics of confounding, interaction, mediation, and measures of association. | ||
| CANC 603 | Mouse Models in Cancer . | 1 |
Mouse Models in Cancer . Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Introduction to the use of mouse models to study cancer biology and the design of genetically engineered mouse models. | ||
| CANC 604 | Cancer Genomics Data Analyses . | 1 |
Cancer Genomics Data Analyses . Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. An introduction to the basic principles underlying genome-wide analysis of high-dimensional genomic data such as gene expression, epigenetic, or proteomic or data through the lens of RNA-seq expression data to illustrate concepts such as assessing data quality, the need for normalization, the impact of filtering, and testing for differential expression. | ||
| CANC 605 | Cancer Caregiving: Psychosocial Issues. | 1 |
Cancer Caregiving: Psychosocial Issues. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. An examination in the psychosocial effects of cancer on patients and caregivers, with focus on the responsibilities of caregivers and the consequences of this role. | ||
| CANC 606 | Tumour Microenvironment. | 1 |
Tumour Microenvironment. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Approaches to investigating and dissecting the tumour microenvironment, including exploration and analysis of this environment. | ||
| CANC 607 | Cancer Immunotherapies. | 1 |
Cancer Immunotherapies. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. An examination of the different immunotherapies in use and being developed for cancer treatment. | ||
| CANC 608 | Oncometabolism . | 1 |
Oncometabolism . Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. An examination of the role metabolism plays in cancer progression, metastasis, and resistance to treatment. | ||
| EPIB 507 | Biostats for Health Sciences. | 3 |
Biostats for Health Sciences. Terms offered: Summer 2025, Fall 2025 Basic principles of statistical inference applicable to clinical, epidemiologic, and other health research. Topics include: methods of describing data, statistical inference for means, statistical inference for proportions, non-parametric statistics, correlation and introduction to linear regression. | ||
| EPIB 521 | Regression Analysis for Health Sciences. | 3 |
Regression Analysis for Health Sciences. Terms offered: Winter 2026 The aim of this course is to provide students with basic principles of regression analyses applicable to the health sciences so that they can understand and use appropriate statistical regression techniques for continuous and discrete data. The course will cover: Linear regression: Regression for two or more explanatory variables, Polynomial regression, Dummy variables, Inference for regression parameters, Confounding and collinearity, Effect modification, Model-checking, Model selection, Prediction. Logistic and Poisson regression: Logistic regression for one or more variables, Interpreting odds ratios, Inference for logistic and Poisson regression parameters, Confounding and interactions in logistic regression, Model selection, Prediction. A very brief overview of survival analysis. | ||
| EPIB 635 | Clinical Trials. | 3 |
Clinical Trials. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Lectures and discussions on issues, approaches and techniques of clinical trials including assessment of feasibility, ethics, randomization, strengths and weaknesses of alternative designs, sample size requirements, protocol development, trial management and analysis, reporting and interpretation of trial results. | ||
| EPIB 671 | Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention. | 3 |
Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention. Terms offered: Fall 2025 This course will explore the common epidemiologic approaches to studying etiologic relations in carcinogenesis and for assessing the efficacy of cancer prevention interventions. Emphasis will be given on both molecular and social epidemiology domains with examples of different study designs and data analysis methods and of the impact of measurement error and other biases. | ||
| EXMD 504 | Biology of Cancer. | 3 |
Biology of Cancer. Terms offered: Fall 2025 An introduction to the biology of malignancy. A multidisciplinary approach dealing with the etiology of cancer, the biological properties of malignant cells, the host response to tumour cell growth and the principles of cancer therapy. | ||
| EXMD 602 | Techniques in Molecular Genetics. | 3 |
Techniques in Molecular Genetics. Terms offered: Winter 2026 Precise description of available methods in molecular genetics, and rationales for choosing particular techniques to answer questions posed in research proposals for targeting genes in the mammalian genome. Emphasis placed on analysis of regulation of gene expression and mapping, strategies for gene cloning. Course divided between lectures and student seminars. | ||
| EXMD 607 | Molecular Control of Cell Growth. | 3 |
Molecular Control of Cell Growth. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. A course for graduate students in Experimental Medicine, Biology, Biochemistry, Microbiology and Physiology, dealing with molecular control in normal and malignant cell growth, including cell cycle and physiological controls (nutritional and hormonal), mammalian DNA replication, viral effects on host cell growth for DNA and RNA-tumour viruses and oncogenes, and tissue and organ growth-renewal mechanisms. | ||
| EXMD 608 | Molecular Embryology. | 3 |
Molecular Embryology. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Modern molecular approaches in animal embryogenesis, with emphasis on embryonic patterning, organogenesis, and cell-cell communication. | ||
| EXMD 614 | Environmental Carcinogenesis. | 3 |
Environmental Carcinogenesis. Terms offered: Winter 2026 Methods for identification of carcinogens, including epidemiological studies, animal modelling and molecular biomarkers, and characteristics of known environmental carcinogens (viruses, chemical and physical agents and diet). Environmental factors will be placed in the context of overall cancer risk, which involves interaction of genetics, host and environment. | ||
| EXMD 617 | Workshop in Clinical Trials 1. | 1 |
Workshop in Clinical Trials 1. Terms offered: Winter 2026 Intensive day-long workshop discussing Industrial/Academic/Governmental interactions in the design, testing and approval of drugs. | ||
| EXMD 618 | Workshop in Clinical Trials 2. | 1 |
Workshop in Clinical Trials 2. Terms offered: Fall 2025 Intensive day-long workshop discussing the role of the physician in drug testing. | ||
| EXMD 619 | Workshop in Clinical Trials 3. | 1 |
Workshop in Clinical Trials 3. Terms offered: Fall 2025 Intensive day-long workshop discussing the pharmacoeconomics of drug design and testing. | ||
| EXMD 647 | Epigenetics and Cancer. | 3 |
Epigenetics and Cancer. Terms offered: Winter 2026 Exploration of the field of epigenetics and its relevance to cancer, including modern methods used to study epigenetics. | ||
| EXSU 500 | Artificial Intelligence in Medicine . | 3 |
Artificial Intelligence in Medicine . Terms offered: Fall 2025 Introduction to artificial intelligence (AI) applied to issues in medical diagnosis, therapy selection and learning from health data. Various AI methods, electronic medical records, and ethical/security concerns. Machine learning approaches including deep learning and reinforcement learning without delving too deeply into the technical details. | ||
| EXSU 606 | Statistics for Surgical Research. | 3 |
Statistics for Surgical Research. Terms offered: Fall 2025 Review of statistics for surgical research. | ||
| HGEN 676 | Lab Course in Genomics. | 3 |
Lab Course in Genomics. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Introduction to Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) Based Genomics in the form of seminars and laboratory work. Lectures in state of the art sequencing technologies and their applications. Laboratory work in the preparation of high quality libraries for analyzing DNA and large/small RNAs. Hands on experience in setting up next Generation Sequencing using specialized equipment. Tutorials in use of Bio-informatics Analysis tools in experimental design, quality control, and in depth analysis of data. Practicum in using computational tools for personalized data analyses. Technology paper presentation, as well as production of a report on course data generation and analysis. | ||
| HGEN 677 | Statistical Concepts in Genetic and Genomic Analysis. | 3 |
Statistical Concepts in Genetic and Genomic Analysis. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. This course will introduce key statistical concepts that motivate and underlie the many statistical analysis methods currently used in analysis of genetic and genomic data. Emphasis will be placed on understanding how these concepts can influence study designs and analysis choices, and when substantial unanticipated biases can occur. Concepts include an understanding of variability and error, bias and its sources, independence, how distributions of variables impact analysis, outliers, covariates, missing data, the goals of data cleaning, multiple testing, and some consideration of clustering and prediction models. | ||
| HGEN 679 | Cancer Genetics: Precision Oncology. | 3 |
Cancer Genetics: Precision Oncology. Terms offered: Fall 2025 The past, present, and future of cancer research and treatment with an emphasis on precision medicine driven by significant advances in genomics. Precision medicine uses genomics, RNA and protein abundance, as well as key metabolic and physiological markers to best design and implement treatment. | ||
| HGEN 693 | Using Bioinformatics Resources. | 3 |
Using Bioinformatics Resources. Terms offered: Winter 2026 Study of internet resources relevant to biomedical research. | ||
| NUR2 515 | Applied Statistics for Nursing. | 3 |
Applied Statistics for Nursing. Terms offered: Fall 2025 Principles of data analysis and statistical inference with an emphasis on the utilization and interpretation of analysis of variance and regression procedures in nursing research. An additional emphasis will be on critiquing data analysis in current nursing research articles. | ||
| NUR2 783 | Psychosocial Oncology Research. | 3 |
Psychosocial Oncology Research. Terms offered: Winter 2026 This seminar focuses on evidence-based research developments in psychosocial oncology. Students will explore state-of-the-art theory, research methods, findings, and intervention programs from a variety of disciplines including nursing, psychology, medicine, health services management and social work that have contributed to the emergent field of psychosocial oncology. | ||
| ONCO 611 | Proteomics for Precision Medicine. | 3 |
Proteomics for Precision Medicine. Terms offered: Winter 2026 Proteomic applications in medicine, including an introduction to mass spectrometry and related state-of-the-art proteomics techniques, and how these techniques can be used to answer important medical questions using clinical samples. The determination of levels and post-translational modifications of diagnostic/prognostic protein markers, the concentration of protein therapeutics in plasma, the simultaneous imaging of multiple proteins on tissue slices by MALDI-MS, and global proteome and phosphoproteome analyses to study signaling pathways. Additionally, strategies for data analysis and data interpretation using modern bioinformatic tools. | ||
| ONCO 615 | Principles and Practice of Clinical Trials. | 3 |
Principles and Practice of Clinical Trials. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. An overview of the design, conduct and analysis of clinical trials. Topics include types of clinical trials, study designs, practical considerations when setting up a clinical trial, ethics, regulatory requirements, trial monitoring, data management, investigator responsibilities and statistical analysis. | ||
| ONCO 620 | Best Practices in Biomedical Research. | 3 |
Best Practices in Biomedical Research. Terms offered: Winter 2026 Overview of research ethics as well as best practices and guiding principles in planning, conducting and publishing a research investigation. Topics include (i) ethics in biomedical research, (ii) reading and reviewing papers, (iii)research integrity and (iv) scholarly publishing. Examples will be taken from the field of cancer research. The importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in enhancing the value of biomedical research will be illustrated. | ||
| ONCO 625 | Quality Improvement Principles and Methods. | 3 |
Quality Improvement Principles and Methods. Terms offered: Fall 2025 Principles and methodology of quality improvement in the delivery of health services with a focus on clinical care in oncology. Topics include developing and conducting quality improvement initiatives, data collection, data analysis and implementation of change in clinical practice. | ||
| ONCO 635 | Qualitative and Psychosocial Health Research. | 3 |
Qualitative and Psychosocial Health Research. Terms offered: Fall 2025 An overview of the theoretical, methodological and analytical skillsets required to design, conduct and analyze qualitative health research studies, with emphasis on psychosocial oncology and palliative care research. | ||
| ONCO 645 | Seminars in Global Oncology. | 3 |
Seminars in Global Oncology. Terms offered: Winter 2026 Identification of the challenges and strategies for addressing cancer prevention, diagnosis and care, as well as cancer research and education from an international perspective. | ||
| PATH 652 | Molecular Biology of Disease. | 3 |
Molecular Biology of Disease. Terms offered: Fall 2025 Lectures and seminars dealing with concepts and current techniques in molecular biology applied to the study of human diseases with emphasis on cancer. | ||
| PHAR 508 | Drug Discovery and Development 3. | 3 |
Drug Discovery and Development 3. Terms offered: Winter 2026 The design of biologically-relevant drug screens for molecular targets in a cell, tissue, and in vivo setting. Explore the use of stem cells and tissue-based disease models for the understanding of disease and for drug discovery. Situate modern pharmacology into broader medical and societal issues such as personalized medicine and the ethics associated with research. | ||
| PHGY 513 | Translational Immunology. | 3 |
Translational Immunology. Terms offered: Winter 2026 Advanced key concepts in immunology as they relate to health and disease, including infectious diseases, non-infectious diseases and autoimmunity, and cancer immunology. | ||
| POTH 637 | Cancer Rehabilitation. | 3 |
Cancer Rehabilitation. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Cancer pathology, risk stratification, the treatment process and rehabilitation needs throughout the disease trajectory. | ||