Hartland W. Jackson

Dr. Hartland Jackson is an Investigator at Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Sinai Health, and an Associate Scientist, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research.

Dr. Jackson’s research involves the use of mass cytometry for highly multiplexed imaging of tumour tissues and the development of methods for the analysis of spatially resolved single cell data.

He obtained his PhD from the University of Toronto and undertook postdoctoral training at the University of Zürich. His work with high-dimension pathology imaging of breast cancer patient samples has revealed the organization of the tumour microenvironment and identified single-cell defined patient subgroups with distinct clinical outcome.

The Jackson lab strives to understand tissues and tumours as the integrated outcome of their single cell components. To do so, they utilize multiplexed imaging to simultaneously quantify single cell phenotypes and markers of their functional state, as well as their interactions, overall organization, and contribution to tissue architecture. These methods facilitate spatially-resolved screening of distinct clones in mouse models of disease and the identification of biomarkers associated with clinical outcome in biobanked patient tissues.

Research efforts are focused on identifying and targeting the multi-cellular tumour microenvironments that drive disease progression and therapeutic resistance in cancers of the breast and other epithelial tissues.