Arena, Goffredo

Arena, Goffredo

MD, CHIR. VASC (ITA), FACS, FRCS (Ca)

Academic Rank(s): Adjunct Professor, Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, UBC

Affiliation(s): VGH / McGill University

Research and Scholarly Interests:horizontal transfer of malignant traits, extracellular vesicles trafficking and their biological effect, validation of a novel blood test for detection of cancer, liquid biopsy

Clinical Interests: cancer, surgery

garena@mail.ubc.ca

Social Media: linkedin

Short Bio
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Dr. Goffredo Arena graduated from Catania medical school (Italy) in 1997. He completed his Vascular Surgery Residency in 2003 and his General Surgery Residency at McMaster University (Canada) in 2007. He then moved to Montreal, where he completed back to back a fellowship in Minimally Invasive Surgery and a fellowship in Hepatobiliary and Multiorgan Transplantation at McGill University. He joined McGill University as an Assistant Professor of Surgery in 2010 and was promoted to Associate Professor of Surgery in 2017.

Beside a very busy surgical practice, which has spanned from oncology surgery and minimally invasive surgery to transplant surgery, he has been heavily involved in academic teaching and basic science research. He has developed a new model to explain metastatic disease called Horizontal Transfer of Malignant Traits (HTMT) and he has invented a new cell line (BRCA1 Knocked-Out Fibroblasts) to study neoplastic diseases. He has developed a biological platform (Metastatic And Transforming Elements Released Discovery platform-MATERD) for early cancer screening and he has published on the application of Artificial Intelligence in liquid biopsy. He is currently practicing surgery in Italy and he is involved in bench side research whose aim is to understand the mechanisms behind the metastatic disease, to find new markers for liquid biopsy and to test new drugs to inhibit cancer vesicles uptake

Academic
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Academic Background

  • University of Catania Medical School, Catania, Italy, First class honors (110/110 cum laude) 1997

Awards and Recognition

  • 2005 Principal Surgical Investigator Resident Award  Province of ONTARIO
  • 2005 Division of General Surgery Research Day McMaster University 1st prize
  • 2005 Surgery Research Day McMaster University 3rd prize
  • 2011 Certificate of Recognition for the Outstanding Commitment to Postgraduate Teaching McGill University
  • 2013 Recipient of the Outstanding General Surgeon Teacher Award McGill University
  • 2016 Taormina Culture of Excellence. Excellency in Medicine (Italy)
  • 2017 Europa Award for Excellence in Science (Italy) Sicilia Award for Excellence in Medicine (Italy)

Publications

Publications

Selected Publications

  1. Mohamed Abdouh, Shufeng Zhou, Vincenzo Arena, Manuel Arena, Anthoula Lazaris, Ronald Onerheim, Peter Metrakos and Goffredo Orazio Arena.  Transfer of Malignant Trait to Immortalized Human Cells Following Exposure to Human Cancer Serum Journal of Experimental & Clinical Cancer Research (2014) 33:86
  2. Dana Hamam; Mohamed Abdouh, PhD; Zu-Hua Gao, Vincenzo Arena, Manuel Arena, Goffredo Arena. Transfer of Malignant Trait to BRCA1 Deficient Human Fibroblasts Following Exposure to Serum of Cancer Patients Journal of Experimental & Clinical Cancer Research (2016) 35:80
  3. Mohamed Abdouh, Dana Hamam, Vincenzo Arena, Manuel Arena, Hussam Alamri, Goffredo Arena. Novel blood test to predict neoplastic activity in healthy patients and metastatic recurrence after primary tumor resection Journal of Circulating Biomarkers November 4 2016
  4. Shufeng Zhou, Mohamed Abdouh, Vincenzo Arena, Manuel Arena, Goffredo Orazio Arena. Reprogramming Malignant Cancer Cells toward a Benign Phenotype following    Exposure to Human Embryonic Stem Cell Microenvironment PLOS ONE http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0169899 January 9, 2017
  5. Goffredo Arena, Vincenzo Arena, Manuel Arena, Mohamed Abdouh. Transfer of malignant traits as opposed to migration of cells: A novel concept to explain metastatic disease. Medical Hypotheses Medical Hypotheses 100 (2017) 82–86
  6. Mohamed Abdouh, Dana Hamam, Zu-hua Gao, Vincenzo Arena, Manuel Arena, Goffredo Arena. Exosomes isolated from cancer patients’ sera transfer malignant traits and confer the same phenotype of primary tumors to target cells. Journal of Experimental & Clinical Cancer Research (2017) 36:113
  7. Mohamed Abdouh, Zu-hua Gao, Vincenzo Arena, Manuel Arena, Miguel N. Burnier, Goffredo Arena Oncosuppressor-Mutated Cells as a Liquid Biopsy Test for Cancer-Screening.  Scientific Reports, 2019, 9(1), 2384 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-38736-y
  8. Mohamed Abdouh, Matteo Floris, Zu-hua Gao, Vincenzo Arena, Manuel Arena, Goffredo Arena  Colorectal cancer-derived extracellular vesicles induce transformation of fibroblasts into colon carcinoma cells Journal of Experimental & Clinical Cancer Research (2019) 38: 257
  9. Mohamed Abdouh, Roger Tabah, Vincenzo Arena Manuel Arena, Zu-Hua Gao, Aurelio Lorico, Goffredo Orazio Arena. Oncosuppressor-Mutated Cell-Based Diagnostic Platform for Liquid Biopsy Diagnoses Benign Head and Neck Masses and Predicts Malignancy in Patients with Thyroid Nodules: Results from a Consecutive Cohort of Patients. European Thyroid Journal 2021;10:285–294 (DOI:10.1159/000516421)
  10. Abicumaran Uthamacumaran, Samir Elouatik, Mohamed Abdouh, Michael Berteau-Rainville, Zu-hua Gao, Goffredo Arena. Machine Learning Characterization of Cancer Patients-Derived Extracellular Vesicles using Vibrational Spectroscopies. Applied Intelligence February 2022 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10489-022-03203-1
  11. Abicumaran Uthamacumaran, Mohamed Abdouh, Kinshuk Sengupta, Zu-hua Gao, Stefano Forte, Thupten Tsering, Julia V. Burier, Goffredo Arena. Machine intelligence-driven classification of cancer patients-derived extracellular vesicles using fluorescence correlation spectroscopy: results from a pilot study. Neural Computing and Applications, Dec 22 2022 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00521-022-08113-4
  12. Goffredo Arena, Stefano Forte, Mohamed Abdouh, Cheryl Vanier, Denis  Corbeil, Aurelio Lorico Horizontal transfer of malignant traits and the involvement of extracellular vesicles in metastasis Cells 2023; 12(12):1566.
Research
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Research Interest

  • Horizontal transfer of malignant traits (HTMT)
  • Extracellular Vesicles (EVs) trafficking and their biological effect
  • Validation of a novel blood test for detection of cancer
  • Artificial Intelligence and liquid biopsy
  • Testing of a new generation of drugs to block cancer EVs internalization and shuttling to the nuclei of the cells to prevent metastases.

Current Projects In My Lab Include

Teaching
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Teaching Interest

As an educator, Dr. Arena teaches medical students, general surgery residents and surgical fellows.