Department & Program:

• Human Nutritional Sciences, M.Sc.

Research Focus:

• Sonal is a Masters student in the department of Human Nutritional Sciences, doing her research work at the National Research Council (NRC) - Institute for Biodiagnostics. She came to Canada in 2003 as a Post-doctoral fellow in CancerCare Manitoba after completing her MD.  Her project involved the use of Proton Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (1H MRS) to evaluate the extent of tumor hypoxia in head and neck cancer. This fuelled her interest in 1H MRS so much that she decided to pursue a Masters degree in the area of Biodiagnostics.
• She is currently working on an NSERC-funded project under the supervision of Dr. Tedros Bezabeh at the NRC and Dr. Michael Eskin in the Department of Human Nutritional Sciences. Her project focuses on analyzing the effect of different dietary fatty acids on the modulation of inflammatory bowel disease-induced colon cancer.  Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a known risk factor for developing colon cancer later in the life. Various fatty acids, particularly, omega –3 and omega – 6 types have been shown to differentially modulate inflammatory changes in the body. The transition from IBD to colon cancer takes a few years and if during this process the inflammatory changes can be slowed down or stopped, there is a possibility of controlling the progression to cancer.  Her supervisor’s group has previously shown that 1H MRS is a sensitive technique and can detect very early changes occurring in colon cancer and IBD. She is using the same technique for analyzing inflammatory and neoplastic changes in colon. Sonal received the Katherine M. S. Middleton award for outstanding academic and research achievement and has recently published a review article and an abstract.