Dr. Sylvia Asa
Pathologist, Laboratory Medicine Program | University Health Network
Toronto, ON, CANADA
Sylvia Asa, MD, PhD is a Pathologist in the Laboratory Medicine Program
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Biography
Dr. Asa is a Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology at the University of Toronto. She received her medical and post-doctorate degrees from the University of Toronto and completed her internship in internal medicine at Toronto General Hospital and the University of Toronto. She received her residency training in pathology at Mount Sinai Hospital, St. Michael's Hospital and the Toronto General Hospital, all affiliated with the University of Toronto. She subsequently was a research fellow in the Department of Pathology at St. Michael's Hospital and the University of Toronto.
Dr. Asa has been extremely active in endocrine pathology. She is recognized as an expert diagnostician in this field, and her research has focused on the pathobiology and pathogenesis of endocrine neoplasia.
Industry Expertise (4)
Research
Health Care - Services
Health Care - Providers
Health and Wellness
Areas of Expertise (8)
Laboratory Diagnostics
Telepathology
Endocrine Tumor Development
Endocrine Tumor Progression
Endocrine Tumor Detection
Molecular Alterations
Transcription Factors
Endocrine Neoplasia
Education (2)
University of Toronto: MD, Medicine 1977
University of Toronto: PhD, Medicine 1990
Media Appearances (1)
A nomination letter for Sylvia Asa
The Globe and Mail online
2010-10-29
Dr. Sylvia Asa is an intelligent and highly educated physician who has devoted her life to medicine. She is highly motivated, caring, conscientious, honest and an outstanding physician. Despite many obstacles on professional and personal level, she has risen to the very top of her profession, and for years has continued to lead with virtually no competition. Dr Asa's love was and continues to be endocrine pathology and she is a pioneer in study of the basic science of thyroid cancers.
Articles (5)
Modeling complexity in pathologist workload measurement: the Automatable Activity-Based Approach to Complexity Unit Scoring (AABACUS)
PubMed.gov
2014-09-01
Pathologists provide diagnoses relevant to the disease state of the patient and identify specific tissue characteristics relevant to response to therapy and prognosis. As personalized medicine evolves, there is a trend for increased demand of tissue-derived parameters. Pathologists perform increasingly complex analyses on the same 'cases'.
The PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway in the pathophysiology and treatment of pituitary adenomas
PubMed.gov
2014-08-01
Pituitary adenomas are common intracranial neoplasms. Patients with these tumors exhibit a wide range of clinically challenging problems, stemming either from results of sellar mass effect in pituitary macroadenoma or the diverse effects of aberrant hormone production by adenoma cells. While some patients are cured/controlled by surgical resection and/or medical therapy, a proportion of patients exhibit tumors that are refractory to current modalities. New therapeutic approaches are needed for these patients. Activation of the AKT/phophotidylinositide-3-kinase pathway, including mTOR activation, is common in human neoplasia, and a number of therapeutic approaches are being employed to neutralize activation of this pathway in human cancer. This review examines the role of this pathway in pituitary tumors with respect to tumor biology and its potential role as a therapeutic target.
Malignant pheochromocytoma secreting vasoactive intestinal Peptide and response to sunitinib: a case report and literature review
PubMed.gov
2014-08-01
Malignant pheochromocytoma is rare and may be sporadic or have a genetic basis. Vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP)-secreting pheochromocytoma has rarely been described in the literature, and treatment remains challenging in the absence of well-controlled randomized trials. The hypoxia-inducible factor-vascular endothelial growth factor axis has been implicated in pheochromocytoma when associated with germline Von-Hippel-Lindau (VHL) or succinate dehydrogenase (SDH) mutations, suggesting potential clinical activity of sunitinib in this setting.
FGFR4 polymorphic variants modulate phenotypic features of Cushing disease
PubMed.gov
2014-04-01
Cushing disease is a potentially lethal condition resulting from hormone excess, usually due to a small pituitary tumor that fails to respond to negative feedback inhibition. A minority of patients develop larger, more aggressive tumors of the same lineage but with modest hormone excess.
Protocol for the examination of specimens from patients with pheochromocytomas and extra-adrenal paragangliomas
PubMed.gov
2014-02-01
During the last decade there have been revolutionary breakthroughs in understanding the biology of pheochromocytomas and extra-adrenal paragangliomas. Discoveries of new susceptibility genes and genotype-phenotype correlations have led to the realization that appropriate patient care requires a complete integration of clinical, genetic, biochemical, imaging, and pathology findings. Clinical practice has in many cases not kept pace with the rate of discovery, underscoring a need for updated procedures for evaluation of patient specimens and reporting of data. We therefore propose a new synoptic reporting approach for pheochromocytomas and extra-adrenal paragangliomas that will provide clear and uniform information to pathologists and clinicians, in order to advance the diagnosis of these neoplasms and optimize patient care.
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