News

Yuanyuan Jiang, a PhD student in the Department of Environmental Sciences has won the runner-up award of the graduate student poster competition at the 13th Annual Conference of the Natural Health Product Research Society (NHPRS) Conference held at UPEI, Charlottetown during May 17th to 20th.

The NHPRS is a federally incorporated non-profit organization founded in 2003 by a collaboration of academic, industry and government researchers from across Canada.

Yuan’s research is focused on investigating anticancer properties of polyphenols isolated from Salvia species in hepatocellular carcinoma cells. Dr. Vasantha Rupasinghe, Yuan’s supervisor, voiced that despite all the recent advancements in early diagnostics and treatments of cancer, the incidence of cancer is continously increasing.

Dr. Rupasinghe’s research team is investigating unique plant-based foods and natural compounds with anti-cancer potential.

“We also believe that cancer prevention through appropriate dietary habits and life style is more realistic”, he explains. "Our pre-clinical experiments demonstrate that anti-cancer phytochemicals present in our diet are much safer when administered therapeutically. In contrast to currently used targeted therapies, plant compounds offer a much broader-spectrum of therapeutic action, thus the risk of relapse should be markedly reduced."

Congratulations!