Brandon Lieng wins 2025 Jennifer Comyn Graduate Award for Cancer Research

The Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research recognizes outstanding graduate students conducting cancer research in its labs with the Jennifer Comyn Graduate Award for Cancer Research.

The 2025 recipient of the award is Brandon Lieng, a PhD student at the University of Toronto who is conducting research under the supervision of Rafael Montenegro Burke, assistant professor of molecular genetics and Canada Research Chair in Functional Metabolomics and Lipidomics.

“The Jennifer Comyn Graduate Award selection committee is delighted to offer the 2025 award to Brandon Lieng,” said Gary Bader, professor of molecular genetics, Ontario Research Chair in Biomarkers of Disease and chair of the Jennifer Comyn Graduate Award for Cancer Research selection committee. “Brandon exemplifies the possibilities for exploration and innovation in research through his willingness to learn new skills and his resilience throughout the learning process. He is now addressing large and critical issues in health and medicine through his broader range of skills.”

The award was established in 2023 by the family of Stéphane Angers, professor of biochemistry and pharmaceutical sciences, Charles H. Best Chair of Medical Research at U of T and director of the Donnelly Centre, as a tribute to Jennifer Comyn, a loving mom and spouse and an advocate for cancer research.

Before joining the Montenegro Burke lab at the Donnelly Centre, Lieng earned a Bachelor of Medical Science degree from Western University, specializing in medical health informatics. For his undergraduate thesis project, Lieng delved into data analysis to identify signatures within the gut microbiome of Parkinson’s disease patients that set them apart from those who don’t have Parkinson’s. While the restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic hindered Lieng from finding conclusive evidence of these signatures, he was determined to continue pursuing opportunities in research to improve disease treatment.

During his time at Western University, Lieng also completed a year-long co-op position with Sanofi Pasteur, where he conducted genomic analysis of vaccine components and developed computational tools to assess the genetic stability of these components. Lieng was inspired during his time at Sanofi Pasteur to pursue a career in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. He realized, however, that he would need to a PhD degree to qualify for a role within the industry in which he could help drive scientific innovation.

After graduating from Western University, Lieng joined U of T’s PhD program in Molecular Genetics in 2020. Lieng was introduced to Montenegro Burke through his rotations to determine which lab to join for his research.

“Rafa is super supportive,” said Lieng. “He encourages us to pursue things outside of our comfort zone. I was one of his first lab members in 2020, which meant that we had to build the lab together. Rafa worked with us collaboratively to approach challenges—especially those that come with establishing a new lab—so we developed a ‘get your hands dirty and figure it out kind’ of attitude.”

The Montenegro Burke lab is dedicated to advancing the field of metabolomics—the study of metabolites—to catch up with similar fields, like transcriptomics and proteomics. With this goal in mind, Lieng led a project to find a low-cost way to expand high-resolution multi-stage mass spectrometry (MSⁿ) databases. Improving these databases would help scientists identify the metabolites detected in their own research more accurately. Lieng and his colleagues were able to do this for a database of low-resolution MSⁿ data purely through the development of a new computational method. This method was published in Analytical Chemistry in 2023, providing the mass spectrometry and metabolomics community with a resource to have higher confidence in their metabolite identifications.

Lieng’s PhD research was initially more computational in nature, with a focus on mass spectrometry and metabolomics. However, he decided a couple of years in that he needed to expand his skillset to gain a comprehensive understanding of human health that goes beyond data points. A pivotal decision in the third year of his PhD career resulted in Lieng moving away from computational work to wet lab-focused research. Without much wet lab experience, Lieng started learning about a whole new side of health research from scratch while supported by his lab and other members of Donnelly Centre community.

Following this transitional phase, Lieng is now conducting a project focused on characterizing metabolic differences in single cell-derived populations of breast cancer cell lines. Citing that the technology used in metabolomics research lags behind that of other fields in biomedicine, Lieng is using single-cell cloning approaches to determine how individual cancer cells from the same growth might differ from one another.

“Instead of resting on his laurels or continuing solely in his computational domain, Brandon sought to tackle a project with broader societal impact,” said Montenegro Burke. “His curiosity and ambition led him to shift focus toward metabolic heterogeneity in cancer subclonal populations, an area that has not been explored metabolically but holds significant potential for advancing cancer treatment.”

The project has already led to interesting results, with Lieng and his colleagues discovering a group of breast cancer cells that rely more on fatty acids than other cells; fatty acids are involved in various cellular processes, such as energy metabolism and cell signalling. Now, the team is focusing on the function of this metabolic anomaly and its impact on cancer growth, in the hopes of informing targeted treatment development to prevent recurrence.

“Over the past few decades we’ve improved our ability to treat cancer through targeted therapies, but there are still patients who experience their cancer coming back,” said Lieng. “I want to figure out how recurrent cancers evolve. How do differences in a cell population allow a cancer to hedge it bets against what we throw at it? If we can better understand how cancers diversify what they can tolerate, we can hit them with more effective and specific treatments to ultimately improve patient outcomes.”