The Cottrell Lab

Looking for a post-doctoral fellowship on the cutting edge of immunotherapy biomarker research?  Join our energetic lab at Queen’s University in Kingston, ON and lead a project that integrates pathology, immunology, data science, and clinical trials leveraging the AstroPath platform.  Our goal is to profile the pre-treatment tumor microenvironment for biomarker identification using tumor tissues collected as part of cutting-edge clinical trials.  You will collaborate regularly with team members at the Canadian Cancer Trials Group, Queen's University, and Johns Hopkins University.

Qualifications:  PhD in an applied quantitative discipline (e.g., computational biology, bioinformatics, biostatistics, mathematics, computer science, biomedical engineering, etc.) with a strong interest in translational biomedical research.  Experience with programming (Python, Matlab, R or other programming language) and SQL databases preferred. Research publications are required. Experience with computational pathology, single cell imaging, spatial analyses or digital pathology image analysis preferred.

Interested?  Email your cover letter and CV to cottrell.laboratory@gmail.com.

Summer Student, Volunteer, and Graduate School Positions  Queen’s students, please apply for our SWEP positions through Queen’s MyCareer.  We have no more room for volunteers for the winter/spring 2023 term.  Non-Queen’s students looking for summer jobs or students looking for graduate school opportunities?  Please send your cover letter and resume to cottrell.laboratory@gmail.com

Photograph of Dr. Tricia Cottrell

Dr. Tricia Cottrell is a clinician scientist whose research focuses on tumour-immune interactions in solid tumours, and the identification of predictive and prognostic biomarkers in pre-treatment and post-treatment tumour tissues. Cottrell completed her MD, PhD, Anatomic Pathology Residency, and post-doctoral training at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine at Queen’s University in Kingston, ON.

One of Dr. Cottrell’s key research contributions was the first characterization of the features of immune-mediated tumour regression following neoadjuvant anti-PD-1 therapy in non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC). This published clinical trial was used to develop a set of proposed immune-related pathologic response criteria for the standardized and reproducible assessment of pathologic response following neoadjuvant immunotherapy. These criteria are now being evaluated in a large clinical trial of neoadjuvant anti-PD-1 therapy in NSCLC. These findings have also been extended to other tumor types and efforts to develop a pan-cancer method for quantifying pathologic response are underway.

Current affiliations

Research interests



Contact

Emailcottrell.laboratory@gmail.com

Select publications

See Dr. Cottrell’s publications on PubMed or on Google Scholar.