Our Collaborators

Dr. Fabian shares laboratory facilities with our group at the Jewish General Hospital- Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research. His past work provided significant insights into microRNA function and regulation, and his current research extends his expertise to improving our understanding of microRNAs to explore new pathways for cancer treatment. We collaborate closely with his team to study the impact of DICER1 mutations on microRNA profiles and function.

Dr. Huang is a biochemist working on McGill campus whose research method uses functional genomic tools to study cancer-related pathways and to guide cancer therapies. His work includes high impact discoveries using shRNA screens to study drug resistance in cancer. He is a co-investigator on projects that aim to identify the pathways through which mutations in SMARCA4 lead to development of small cell carcinoma of the ovary at the molecular level with the ultimate goal of discovering druggable targets that can be used to improve treatment of the disease.

Barbara, who was a post-doctoral fellow with the lab for four years, now leads her own research. She still collaborates on multiple projects, including genetic characterization of breast tumours, expression profiling of DICER1-related tumours and the search for genetic predisposition genes in rare familial tumours.

Dr Tessier-Cloutier is a molecular pathologist who specialises in gynecological cancers. He was recently recruited by McGill University and the McGill University Health Centre as a clinical pathologist and to set up a research program that focuses on using tumor molecular signatures, clinicopathological features and tumor-derived model systems (organoids) to improve screening and optimize treatments in gynecological cancers, including SCCOHT. He shares lab space with us at the RIMUHC and collaborates closely with us on all our SCCOHT-related projects. He is the pathologist for our SCCOHT-SMARCA4 Registry & Biobank and is instrumental in securing and reviewing biological samples for the Biobank.

Dr Witkowski is an ABMGG-certified Clinical Molecular geneticist. She completed her PhD in Human Genetics in our lab in 2016, where her research was focused on SMARCA4 and the genetics of small cell ovarian cancer of the ovary, hypercalcemic type (SCCOHT). In her current position at the MUHC, her research interests include inherited cancer genetics, with a focus on SMARCA4-related cancers, and she is involved in variant interpretation efforts through ClinGen as the co-chair of the DICER1 Variant Curation Expert Panel. She collaborates extensively with our team on projects that include a variant classification component, including our work on DICER1 syndrome and our SCCOHT Registry.

Dr. Foulkes’ team and Catherine collaborate in the development of a Cancer Genetics Referral Guideline which will take the form of an electronic tool, called the McGill Interactive Pediatric OncoGenetic Guideline. Catherine has collaborated in the past by helping our research on small cell carcinoma of the ovary-hypercalcemic type (SCCOHT). She’s still involved with the lab helping Leanne de Kock and Mona Wu on various DICER initiatives.

Dr. Tischkowitz’s research group shared a laboratory with our team for six years at the Lady Davis Institute before he established himself in the department of Medical Genetics at Cambridge University. Our joint research efforts have largely focused on better defining the role of the Fanconi Anemia gene PALB2 as a breast cancer susceptibility gene, including the discovery and characterization of a Founder mutation in the Quebec population. He has been a driving force in the establishment of the PALB2 Interest Group, a research consortium that includes over 100 members who are clinicians, epidemiologist and researchers from around the world, all working on PALB2.

Dr. Orthwein collaborates often with Dr. Rivera in our RAD51D research. As a world-renowned expert in DNA repair, he helps us functionally characterize mutations in DNA repair genes found in breast and ovarian cancer patients.

Dr. Majewski’s team specializes in the analysis of big genomics datasets. They collaborate with a number of basic researchers and clinicians at McGill and elsewhere. They contributed to most of our projects by applying their expertise to the bioinformatics analyses of our next generation sequencing data, including the development of new, specialized analytic tools to answer specific biological questions. Since most of our current projects include some big data components, Dr. Majewski’s assistance has proven invaluable to the success of our research program as a whole.

Dr. Witcher’s laboratory is also based at the Jewish General Hospital- Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research. His past and present work focuses on exploring the role of key epigenetic regulatory proteins in tumour initiation and development through activation of tumour suppressors, coordinating DNA repair and maintaining genome integrity. He collaborates with us to elucidate how mutations in SMARCA4, whose gene product is a component of the SWI-SNF chromatin-remodeling complex, lead to tumour development.

Dr. Jabado’s research laboratory is located next door to ours at the RIMUHC Glen site. Dr. Jabado’s research focuses on neurological tumours in children. Her group and ours share an interest in identifying predisposing genetic factors to tumour development. We collaborated closely on a project that identified predisposing FGFR1 mutations in familial and sporadic DNETs, with post-doctoral fellow Dr. Rivera from our group sharing her time between both labs to perform the necessary molecular characterisation of these benign developmental brain tumours.

Dr. Priest is a retired medical oncologist who brought profound expertise in the study and treatment of the childhood lung tumours known as pleuropulmonary blastoma, the most common malignant manifestation of the DICER1 tumour syndrome, to our research efforts. He has provided critical insight that has helped us contribute to the definition of the pleiotropic phenotype of DICER1 syndrome

Dr. Narod is a long-time collaborator and a world-leader in the field of breast and ovarian cancer genetics research. He studies various aspects of cancer prevention and screening and has participated in a large number of international studies in this field, including several joint studies with our group, among which is the recent discovery of the new breast cancer susceptibility gene, RECQL.

Dr. Malkin is active in clinical oncology practice as well as in research. He specializes in the genetics of childhood cancers and is an active collaborator on our DICER1 project and he has referred a numbers of patients identified in his clinical practice to our research program. We recently secured joint funding to establish a pan-Canadian DICER1 Network to enable the identification of DICER1 mutation carriers from pediatric medical centers Canada wide, and we collaborate on a new project to develop an app to guide pediatric physicians in making decisions with regards to referral of their patients to genetic services.

Dr. Clarke is a gynecological pathologist with a strong interest in molecular characterisation. He uses his expertise with molecular pathology techniques to study gynecological tumours, common and rare. He was of great assistance to us for our SMARCA4 project and continues to assist with any other project where gynecological tumours play a role.

Dr. Ragoussis has developed expertise in all fields of genomics and functional genomics. His main interest is on developing NGS based approaches to disease gene identification, for example strategies for single cell genomics, long read single molecule sequencing or high sensitivity low copy mutation detection. We collaborate on projects where technological innovation is needed to advance our projects.