Department of Breast and Molecular Oncology

Steven Poon graduated in electrical engineering from the University of British Columbia.  He started his career in the development of automated cell imaging systems for the earlier detection of cancer at the BC Cancer Research Centre and obtained his Masters degree in the detection and segmentation of nucleated blood cells.  He later joined Xillix Technologies as a project and product engineer in the development of fluorescence video endoscopy instrumentation.  During this time, he completed his doctoral work at UBC in the development of imaging techniques to estimate the telomere length of individual chromosomes (currently being used in many research laboratories worldwide).   He later became a consultant in video and image processing and develop solutions for video noise reduction, movie/film restoration, video compression, image processing, telomere length analysis in cells and tissue.

Steven Poon is currently working at the BC Cancer Research Centre with Sam Aparicio in the Department of Molecular Oncology and with Peter Lansdorp in the Terry Fox Laboratory.  He is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of British Columbia.  His work includes the development of methods and applications to extract relevant information from images of cells and tissues, and to provide streamline solutions to aid in the analysis of the images and data.

Publications

JOURNALS

1. Poon SSS,Wong JT, Saunders DN, Ma QC, McKinney S, Fee J, Aparicio SAJR^. Intensity calibration and automated cell cycle gating for high-throughput image-based screens. Cytometry 73A:904-917, 2008.
2. Kurabayashi R, Tabuko K, Aida J, Honma N, Poon SSS, Kammori M, Izumiyama-Shimomura N, Nakamura K, Ysuji E, Matsuura M, Ogawa T, Kaminishi M.  Luminal and cancer cells in the breast show more rapid telomere shortening than myoepithelial cells and fibroblasts.  Human Pathology 2008 39:1647-1655.
3. Aida J, Izumiyama-Shimomura N, Nakamura K, Ishii A, Ishikawa N, Honma N, Kurabayashi R, Kammori M, Poon SSS, Arai T,  & Tabuko K.  Basal cells have longest telomeres measured by tissue Q-FISH method in lingual epithelium Experimental Gerontology. Experimental Gerontology 43(9):833-839, 2008.
4. Kammori M , Poon SSS, Nakamura K, Izumiyama N, Ishikawa N, Kobayashi M, Naomoto Y, Takubo K.  Squamous cell carcinomas of the esophagus arise from a telomere-shortened epithelial field. Int J Mol Med. 20 (6):793-799, 2007.
5. Aida J, Izumiyama-Shimomura N, Nakamura K, Ishii A, Ishikawa N, Honma N, Kurabayashi R, Kammori M, Poon SSS, Arai T,  & Tabuko K.  Telomere length variations in 6 mucosal cell types of gastric tissue observed using a novel quantitative fluorescence in situ hybridization method. Human Pathology 38(8):1192-1200, 2007
6. Kammori M, Izumiyama N, Nakamura K, Kurabayashi R, Kashio M, Aida J, Poon SSS & Kaminishi M.  Telomere metabolism and diagnostic demonstration of telomere measurement in the human esophagus for distinguishing benign from malignant tissue by tissue quantitative fluorescence in situ hybridization.  Oncology 71:430-436, 2006.
7. Kammori M, Onoda N, Nakamura K, Izumiyama N, Ogisawa K, Kurabayashi R, Ogawa T, Kaminishi M, Poon SSS, & Tabuko K.  Specific subtelomere loss on chromosome der(11)t(3;11)(q23;q23)x2 in anaplastic thyroid cancer line OCUT-1, Int J Mol Med 18:9-16, 2006.
8. Ding H, Schertzer M, Wu Xiaoli, Gertsenstein M, Selig S, Kamori M, Pourvali R, Poon S, Vulto I, Chavez E, Tam PPL, Nagy A & Lansdorp PM.  Regulation of Murine Telomere Length by Rtel:  An essential gene encoding a helicase-like protein.  Cell 117:873-886, 2004.
9. Martens UM, Brass V, Engelhardt M, Glaser S, Waller CF, Lange W, Schmoor C, Poon SS & Lansdorp PM. Measurement of telomere length in haematopoietic cells using in situ hybridization techniques.  Bichem Soc Trans 28:245-250, 2000.
10. Martens UM, Chavez EA, Poon SSS, Schmoor C & Lansdorp PM. Accumulation of short telomeres in human fibroblasts prior to replicative senescence.  Exp Cell Res 256:291-299, 2000.
11. Poon SSS, Martens UM, Ward RK and Lansdorp PM..  Telomere length measurements using digital fluorescence microscopy.  Cytometry 36(4):267-278, 1999.
12. Wan TSK., Martens UM, Poon SSS, Tsao SW, Chan LC and Lansdorp PM. Absence of low number of telomere repeats at junctions of dicentric chromosomes.  Genes, Chromosomes & Cancer 24:83-86, 1998.
13. Martens UM, Zijlmans JMJM, Poon SSS, Dragowska W, Yui J, Chavez EA, Ward RK & Lansdorp PM. Short telomeres on human chromosome 17p.  Nat Genet 18:76-80, 1998.
14. Poon SSS Telomere length measurements using fluorescence microscopy.  PhD Thesis Dissertation, University of British Columbia.    1998.
15. Zijlmans JMJM, Martens UM, Poon SSS, Raap AK, Tanke HJ, Ward RK, and Lansdorp PM.  Telomeres in the mouse have large inter-chromosomal variations in the number of T2AG3 repeats.  Proc. of National Academy of Science USA, Genetics 94:7423-7428, 1997.
16. Poon SSS, Ward RK and Palcic B.  Automated Image Detection and Segmentation in Blood Smears.  Yearbook of Medical Informatics, pp 271-279, 1993.
17. Poon SSS, Ward RK and Palcic B.:  Automated image detection and segmentation in blood smears.  Cytometry 13:766-774, 1992.
18. Poon SSS, Ward RK and Palcic B.:  Feature Extraction From Three-Dimensional Images in Quantitative Microscopy.  Micron and Microscopica Acta, Vol. 23, No. 4, pp. 481-489, 1992.
19. Jaggi B., Poon SSS, Pontifex B, Fengler JJP and Palcic B.:  Computer vision in early cancer detection.  Electronic Imaging BIS CAP Int’l, pp. 271-274, 1990.
20. Spadinger I, Poon SSS and Palcic B.:  Effect of focus on cell detection and recognition by the cell analyzer.  Cytometry 11:460-467, 1990.
21. Spadinger I, Poon SSS and Palcic B.:  Automated detection and recognition of live cells in tissue culture using image cytometry.  Cytometry 10:375-381, 1989.
22. Palcic B, Poon SSS, Thurston G and Jaggi B.:  Time lapse records of cells in vitro using optical memory disk and Cell Analyzer.  J. Tissue Culture Methods 11(1):19-22, 1988.
23. Jaggi B, Poon SSS, MacAulay C and Palcic B:  Imaging system for morphometric assessment of conventionally and fluorescently stained cells.  Cytometry 9:566-572, 1988.
24. Jaggi B, Poon S and Palcic B:  Optical Memory Disks in Image Database Management for Cytometry.  Applied Optics 26:3325-3329, 1987.

BOOK CHAPTERS

1. Poon SSS & Lansdorp PM. Quantitative fluorescence in situ hybridization (Q-FISH). In: Current Protocols in Cell Biology, 18.4 (eds. JS Bonifacino, M Dasso, JB Harford, J Lippincott-Schwartz & KM Yamada), John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY, p 18.4.1-18.4.21, 2001.
2. Poon SS & Lansdorp PM. Measurements of telomere length on individual chromosomes by image cytometry. In: Methods in Cell Biology: Flow Cytometry, Chapter 33, Edition 64, (eds. Z Darzynkiewicz, HA Crissman & JP Robinson), Academic Press, San Diego, CA, pp 69-96, 2001.
3. Lansdorp PM, Poon S, Chavez E, Dragowska V, Zijlmans M, Bryan T, Reddel R, Egholm M, Bacchetti S and Martens U.  Telomeres in the hematopoietic system.  In Telomeres and Telomerase (eds.) Chadwick DJ and Cardew G, John-Wiley & Sons Ltd.  West Sussez UK, 209-222, 1997.