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2026 Canadian Hematology Today Symposium on B-Cell Malignancies

April 11, 2026
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Symposium Objectives
Join us April 11 at The Omni King Edward Hotel in Toronto for the Canadian Hematology Today 2026 Symposium on B-Cell Malignancies.
During the symposium, we will:
  • Provide current and high-quality information on the latest developments in the management of B-cell malignancies
  • Create collegial learning opportunities that enable clinicians to incorporate real-world learnings into their practice
  • Foster discussions that allow for the sharing of knowledge and experience among delegates and representatives
  • Respond to emerging professional needs for specific and in-depth information on newly available and forthcoming therapies for B-cell malignancies in the Canadian market
We encourage you to secure your spot by registering for the symposium using the link below. Registration will close on February 14, 2026, or once capacity is reached. A limited number of travel grants are available for this annual meeting, so we strongly encourage you to register early to secure attendance at the symposium.
 
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Scientific Steering Committee
Dr. Diego Villa
MD, MPH, FRCPC
BC Cancer Agency
University of British Columbia
Biography

Dr. Julie Stakiw

MD, FRCPC

Saskatchewan Cancer Agency

University of Saskatchewan

Biography

Dr. Isabelle Fleury

MD, FRCPC

Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital

University of Montreal

Biography
Faculty & Moderators

Dr. John Allan

Biography

Dr. Versha Banerji

Biography

Dr. Neil Berinstein

Biography

Dr. Jorge Castillo

Biography

Dr. Michael Chu

Biography

Dr. Andrew Cowan

Biography

Dr. Jean-Sebastien Claveau

Biography

Dr. Charles Herbaux

Biography

Dr. Patrick Connor Johnson

Biography

Dr. John Kuruvilla​​​​

Biography

Dr. Eva Laverdure

Biography

Dr. Christopher Lemieux

Biography

Dr. Kami Maddocks​​

Biography

Dr. Carolyn Owen​

Biography

Dr. Anthea Peters

Biography

Dr. Steven Shih

Biography

Dr. Pamela Skrabek

Biography

Dr. Sean Young

Biography

Agenda

Time

Topic

Speaker

Moderator

8:00 – 8:30 AM

Keynote: Real-world challenges and insights from the DESCAR-T registry

Charles Herbaux

Isabelle Fleury

8:30 – 8:45 AM

Welcome & Opening Remarks

Steering Committee

Julie Stakiw

8:45 AM–9:15 AM

Sponsored Breakfast Symposium
(Eli Lilly)

TBD

9:15 AM–9:45 AM

MRD Primer

Sean Young

Pamela Skrabek

9:45 AM- 10:15 AM

Sequencing in Myeloma in 2026: The Canadian Algorithm

Steven Shih

Andrew Cowan

10:15 AM–10:45 AM

Rolling out an outpatient bi-specific program

Jean-Sebastien Claveau

Christopher Lemieux

10:45 AM–11:10 AM

Networking Break

ALL

11:10 AM–11:40 AM

CLL in 2026: The U.S. Experience

John Allan

Versha Banerji

11:40 PM–1:00 PM

LUNCH

ALL

1:00 PM–1:30 PM

Sponsored Lunch Symposium
(Astra Zeneca)

TBD

1:30 PM–2:00 PM

Management of relapsed/refractory Waldenström macroglobulinemia

Jorge Castillo

Anthea Peters

2:00 PM–2:30 PM

High risk MCL

Kami Maddocks

John Kuruvilla

2:30 PM–3:00 PM

2L CAR T-cell therapy: Which one to choose?

Patrick Connor Johnson

Michael Chu

3:00 PM- 3:20 PM

Networking Break

ALL

3:20 PM- 3:50 PM

Cell therapy in MCL in 2026

Charles Herbaux

Eva Laverdure

3:50 PM- 4:20 PM

Management of relapsed FL in 2026

Carolyn Owen

Neil Berinstein

4:20 PM- 4:30 PM

Closing Remarks & Adjournment

Steering Committee

Diego Villa

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Dr. Diego Villa is Clinical Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia and a medical oncologist at the BC Cancer – Vancouver Cancer Center. He is involved in the care of patients with lymphoid malignancies and breast cancer. His research interests include the management of transformed indolent lymphomas, management of mantle cell lymphoma, primary and secondary CNS lymphomas, and the role of PET/CT in aggressive lymphoma. Dr. Villa has ongoing research collaborations with Canadian, American, European, and Australian lymphoma groups. He is also the local principal investigator for various international lymphoma and breast cancer clinical trials open in Vancouver. He actively participates in the teaching of medical students, residents, and fellows at BCCA and VGH, and is the faculty coordinator for the medical oncology rotation at BCCA for the UBC Internal Medicine Residency Program. Dr. Villa is a member of the UBC Medical
Oncology Residency Training Program committee and its Competence by Design subcommittee.

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Originally from Saskatchewan, Dr. Julie Stakiw completed her Bachelor of Science, MD and internal medicine training at the University of Saskatchewan prior to moving to Ontario to complete hematology training at Queen’s university followed by a 1 year fellowship at PMH in Lymphoma and Stem Cell Transplant. After working as a hematologist-oncologist at Peel Regional Cancer Center in Mississauga, Ontario for
3 years, she moved back to Saskatchewan in 2010 to be closer to family. Dr. Stakiw has held several leadership positions including Provincial Leader of Hematology for Saskatchewan, the Medical Director of the Saskatchewan Blood and Marrow Transplant Program and most recently Medical Director of Oncology at the Saskatoon Cancer Clinic.

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Dr. Isabelle Fleury is a hematologist and medical oncologist who worked at Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital before joining the CHU de Québec in 2025. She completed a bachelor’s degree in microbiology and pursued a master’s degree in biomedical sciences concurrently with her medical training. She also completed a lymphoma fellowship at Hôpital Saint-Louis in Paris. She is a Clinical Associate Professor at Université Laval.
 
She established the fellowship program in lymphoma and immune effector cells at Université de Montréal, has participated in clinical trials involving CAR-T therapies since 2015 and played a pivotal role in implementing CAR-T therapy as a standard of care in the province of Quebec since its introduction in 2019.
 
Her primary interest is improving the care of patients with lymphoma. She is actively involved in clinical research, participating in phase I to III clinical trials. Dr. Fleury is also the instigator of the C3i Lymphoma Registry, which collects clinical and bioclinical data to better understand lymphoma in real-world settings.
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Dr. Allan is an Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine in the Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology at Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Allan completed his undergraduate education at the University of Missouri-Columbia and graduated with a B.S. in both Biochemistry and Finance. He subsequently obtained his medical degree from Saint Louis University. Seeking an internal medicine residency program with particular strength in oncology, Dr. Allan moved to New York in 2009 to train at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell Medical Campus, where he also completed his hematology and medical oncology fellowship.


Dr. Allan treats all lymphoid malignancies and has a particular interest in improving therapies for
patients with CLL and Richter’s Syndrome, which is the focus of his research.

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Dr. Versha Banerji obtained her MD and residency training in internal medicine and hematology at the University of Manitoba. She then completed a post-doctoral fellowship in translational research at the Harvard Cancer Centre/Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of MIT. She is a senior scientist at the CancerCare Manitoba Research Institute, Associate Professor at the University of Manitoba, and a clinician-scientist at CancerCare Manitoba. She co-leads the CLL clinic and is involved in several clinical trials and population-based treatment studies. As co-chair of the CLL research program she manages a multi-disciplinary research team in clinical, fundamental and translational research. Her own laboratory is evaluating mitochondrial bioenergetics and function as a measure of cancer cell metabolism.
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Dr. Neil Berinstein is a Hematologist and Affiliate Scientist at the Odette Cancer Centre at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, ON and a Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto. He completed his Medical Degree at the University of Manitoba (1978), as well as fellowships in both Internal Medicine (1982) and Medical Oncology (1984) from the Royal College of Physicians of Canada, followed by a Postdoctoral research fellowship at Stanford University (1988). Dr. Berinstein’s research focuses on novel approaches to treat hematologic malignancy including combination immunotherapy and new targeted agents. He has led several multicentre translational clinical trials looking at novel therapeutics and identification of novel biomarkers

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Dr. Castillo was born in Peru, received his medical degree in Mexico City, and completed his training in Internal Medicine and Hematology and Oncology at the University of Massachusetts and Brown University, respectively. Dr. Castillo is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, an Institute Physician at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and the Clinical Director of the Bing Center for Waldenström Macroglobulinemia. Dr. Castillo is the principal investigator in innovative clinical trials evaluating highly effective non-chemotherapeutic approaches for patients with Waldenström macroglobulinemia. Dr. Castillo is a Scientific Advisory Committee member at the International Waldenström Macroglobulinemia Foundation and a Scientific Committee member of the International Workshop for Waldenström Macroglobulinemia. He has authored over 350 peer-reviewed articles and has published his research in high-impact journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet Oncology, Journal of Clinical Oncology, and Blood. Dr. Castillo has been awarded the Innovation Award by the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Robert A. Kyle Award by the International Workshop for Waldenström Macroglobulinemia. He is the Founder and Director of the WM-NET, a consortium composed of academic researchers in the United States focused on designing and executing clinical research in patients with WM.

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Dr. Michael Chu is a clinician scientist at the Cross Cancer Institute. He completed his medical training including General Internal Medicine residency and Medical Oncology fellowship at the University of Alberta. Dr. Chu was then awarded a Leukemia and Lymphoma Society fellowship for a combined clinical and research fellowship at Stanford University. Upon returning to Edmonton, his clinical focus includes lymphoma and myeloma. Academically, his research focuses on basic and translational cancer research with an emphasis on immune therapy (including monoclonal antibodies and cellular therapy) including one of the first point of care manufactured CAR T-cells in Canada. He also has a wide range of clinical research where he serves as principal investigator and sub-principal investigator on multiple phase I, II, and III clinical trials. Dr. Chu is actively involved in trainee education particularly with the local Medical Oncology fellows providing both didactic and bedside teaching. When not working hard at the Cross Cancer Institute, Dr. Chu is also a loving husband and father while maintaining his interests in various hobbies including basketball, photography, and piano.

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Dr. Andrew Cowan is an associate clinical professor at BC Cancer / University of British Columbia, where he specializes in treatment and clinical research on plasma cell disorders. He has an interest and background in early phase cellular therapy and immunotherapy trials, global oncology, and informatics.

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Dr. Jean-Sébastien Claveau is a specialist in multiple myeloma and monoclonal gammopathies. He also has an interest in biostatistics and mass spectrometry. His research focuses on the epidemiology and prognosis of patients with multiple myeloma or plasma cell dyscrasia.

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Pr Charles Herbaux is a MD PhD whose work is primarily focused on lymphoproliferative diseases. He obtained his MD in the University and CHRU of Lille in 2014. He did his PhD in 2017 working on pathophysiology of T prolymphocytic leukemia. In 2018, he joined Dana-Farber Cancer Institute as a postdoctoral fellow. His postdoctoral work focused on the development of a BH3 profiling method to assess the tumor cells dependency to anti-apoptotic proteins from the Bcl-2 family. Pr Herbaux come back to France in 2020, where he carries out his care and clinical research activities in the department of Clinical Hematology – CHU de Montpellier. He is also leading translational research projects at Institute of Human Genetics (IGH CNRS) in Montpellier. He is studying how cellular signaling cascades and cell death are affected by BCR and TCR pathway inhibition, and how these results correlate with clinical outcomes in trials. Ultimately, the aims of his clinical and research efforts are to help develop novel therapies that improve outcomes for patients afflicted with lymphomas and lymphoid leukemias.

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I am a medical oncologist specializing in the care of patients with lymphoma and those receiving cellular therapies. After completing my training in internal medicine at MGH and Hematology/Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, I joined the faculty at MGH and Harvard Medical School in July 2021, where I am currently an Assistant Professor of Medicine and the Medical Director for Hospital Performance on Lunder 9, our inpatient lymphoma/myeloma unit.

My research has focused on developing care delivery interventions to enhance patient quality of life, therapy tolerability, and care delivery, clinical trials to improve the care of older adults with aggressive lymphomas, and integrating patient-reported outcomes into clinical trials of novel therapies, including cellular therapies. I have received a Career Development Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology Conquer Cancer Foundation, an NCI K08 Career Development Award, an ACS Pilot Grant Award, an ASH abstract achievement award, and membership in the Lymphoma Research Foundation Scientific Mentoring Program.

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Dr. John Kuruvilla is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto and a hematologist in the Division of Medical Oncology and Hematology at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto. He is a member of the Lymphoma, Autologous Transplant and Immune Effector Cell Therapy programs. Dr. Kuruvilla’s research interest is the development of novel therapeutics in lymphoid malignancies and incorporating translational research into clinical trials. He is the Lymphoma Co-Chair for the Canadian Cancer Trials Group (CCTG) as well as the Chair of the Scientific Advisory   Board of Lymphoma Canada. 

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Dr. Eva Laverdure is a hematologist at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Sherbrooke and an assistant professor in the Faculté de médecine et des sciences de la santé de l’Université de Sherbrooke. She completed her hematology training at the Université de Sherbrooke, followed 

by a postdoctoral fellowship in lymphomas and immune effector cell therapies at Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont, affiliated with the Université de Montréal. Her main clinical interests include lymphomas, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and the use of T-cell–based immunotherapies.

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Dr. Christopher Lemieux is a Hematologist at the CHU de Québec-Université Laval. He completed specialized training in transplantation and cell therapy at Stanford University in California, for which he received the Detweiler scholarship from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and the Stephen Couban prize of the Canadian Hematology Society. He is currently director of the CAR-T program at the CHU de Québec-Université Laval and is a member of the immunocellular therapy network in Québec. He is a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine and director of the Hematology fellowship program at Université Laval.

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Dr. Kami Maddocks is a Professor of Clinical Internal Medicine and Director of the Lymphoma Program in the Division of Hematology. She specializes in treating patients with B-cell lymphomas. Dr. Maddocks conducts research evaluating new-targeted therapies for these lymphomas, with a particular interest in mantle cell lymphoma and diffuse large B cell lymphoma.

Dr. Maddocks is an investigator on several clinical trials in lymphoma, evaluating non-chemotherapeutic approaches to the treatment of lymphoma and the role of minimal residual disease in predicting outcomes and making therapeutic decisions. She serves on the Alliance Lymphoma Committee, serving as the Alliance Chair on two MCL trials through the AFT and NCTN. In collaboration with colleagues at OSU and Cornell, they were awarded an LLS and NCI P01 to study functional genomics in mantle cell lymphoma therapy and mechanisms of resistance. 

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Dr. Carolyn Owen is an Associate Professor in the Division of Hematology & Hematological Malignancies at the University of Calgary. She completed internal medicine training in Ottawa, Hematology training in Vancouver followed by a research fellowship in molecular genetics at Barts and the London School of Medicine in London, UK.  Her prior research is focussed on familial myelodysplasia and acute myeloid leukemia. Her current clinical interests are low grade lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia and she is the local principal investigator at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre for several clinical trials in these areas.  

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Dr. Peters is a hematologist based at the Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton, Alberta and an Associate Professor in the Department of Oncology at the University of Alberta. She completed her MD at the University of Saskatchewan, internal medicine residency training at the University of Alberta and hematology training as well as a lymphoma fellowship at the University of Calgary. Her clinical and research interests are centred around lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), with a special interest in post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorders.

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Dr Steven Shih is a haematologist specialising in myeloma and immune effector cell therapy at the Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton, Alberta. His clinical research focus is on novel drug combinations and immunotherapies in myeloma. Dr Shih completed his clinical and laboratory haematology training in New Zealand, and subsequently a myeloma fellowship at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre.

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Dr. Pamela Skrabek is a Hematologist and Associate Professor in the Section of Hematology and Medical Oncology in Winnipeg with a Masters in Community Health Sciences. Her position is dedicated to clinical work with a focus in lymphomas including a leadership role as chair of the Lymphoproliferative Disease Site Group for CancerCare Manitoba.

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Dr Young is currently a Clinical Molecular Geneticist at the Cancer Genetics & Genomics Laboratory, BC Cancer.  He completed his undergraduate studies in Biochemistry at the University of Waterloo (1992), obtained a Master’s degree in chemistry from Laurentian University (1995), and subsequently completed his doctoral studies at the University of Ottawa in human molecular genetics under the supervision of Dr Robert Korneluk (2000).  After a brief stint in discovery science, Dr Young trained in clinical molecular genetics (BC Children’s Hospital) and was certified by the Americal Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ABMGG, 2005) and the Canadian College of Medical Geneticists (CCMG, 2006).

As a Clinical Molecular Geneticist, Dr. Young has been involved in the results interpretation and reporting of the bulk of molecular genetic tests stemming from CGL.  His main interests lie in molecular genetic service delivery, molecular monitoring (MRD), and the development of new tests and testing paradigms.