IRIC - Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer

Published on November 2, 2026

David Knapp and Vincent Quoc-Huy Trinh, principal investigators at IRIC, are co-principal investigators on an Alliance grant awarded in May 2026 to Mahdi Hosseini, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Concordia University. The $4.6 million in funding supports the development of computational pathology models for preclinical studies and clinical trials of anticancer drugs.

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) supports, through its Alliance program, collaborations between academia and partner organizations. These grants aim to bring together complementary expertise around research projects and to foster the development and application of new knowledge and technologies.

Artificial Intelligence in Pathology

Mahdi Hosseini, a professor at Concordia University and an affiliate member of Mila, develops artificial intelligence tools to analyze tissue images, particularly in oncology. His work draws on his expertise in deep learning and computer vision.

The funded project aims to develop artificial intelligence models in computational pathology for applications in preclinical research and in clinical trials of cancer drugs. These models are intended to harness the vast amounts of information contained in tissue images to support their analysis in the context of oncology research.

Complementary Expertise at IRIC

At IRIC, David Knapp heads the Cell Engineering Research Unit. His team seeks to better understand the molecular landscape that defines cellular identity and how it becomes dysregulated during the onset and progression of cancer. His work notably combines single-cell approaches, genome engineering, and synthetic biology.

Vincent Quoc-Huy Trinh heads the Digital Histology and Advanced Pathology Research Unit. Also a pathologist at the CHUM, he is developing approaches to better characterize cancerous tissues and to create new diagnostic and therapeutic tools. His team combines computational pathology, deep learning, multiplex imaging, artificial intelligence applied to images, and spatial transcriptomics.

The involvement of the two IRIC researchers will thus bring together expertise ranging from the molecular and cellular characterization of cancers to the digital analysis of tissues, complementing Mahdi Hosseini’s work in artificial intelligence and computational pathology.

Toward Preclinical and Clinical Applications

By leveraging artificial intelligence to analyze pathology data, the project aims to develop tools that can be used downstream in preclinical studies and clinical trials of anticancer drugs.

This funding will thus bring together complementary expertise in artificial intelligence, cell biology, and pathology to develop new approaches for cancer research.

Congratulations to Mahdi Hosseini, David Knapp, Vincent Quoc-Huy Trinh, and all the teams involved in this project!