News
IRIC Welcomes its 26th Principal Investigator
Published on novembre 15, 2010
IRIC has recently named Dr. Brian Wilhelm as Principal Investigator of the High-Throughput Genomics research unit. He is also Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, at the Université de Montréal.
In Canada, acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is the leading cause of cancer deaths in young adults. Despite significant progress made in treating a rare subset of acute leukemias, most patients diagnosed with AML will die from this disease within a few years after diagnosis. Dr. Brian Wilhelm and his team will focus their research on mutations present in this specific type of leukemia in order to understand how the disease originates and evolves. “Still today, a physician has no way of precisely knowing which genes are at the source of the disease,” explains Dr. Brian Wilhelm, “Our research aims to identify the defective genes to be able, over the long term, to develop a drug that targets them specifically.”Using a very high throughput sequencing approach developed at IRIC’s Genomics core facility, the team seeks to obtain a detailed description of the transcriptome, i.e., the set of genes expressed in the cancerous cells of many patients with AML: “In order to clearly understand the exact nature of the defect, it is often necessary to acquire a global view of the system. The ability to sequence the whole genome of patients has tremendous potential to provide novel insight into the mechanisms of diseases,” concludes Dr. Brian Wilhelm.
The High-Throughput Genomics Laboratory will help IRIC advance its research capabilities in leukemia as well as in other research fields. “IRIC is proud to count Dr. Brian Wilhelm among its principal investigators. Brian brings with him an outstanding experience that will help us to continue making important contributions in the field of leukemia,” said Dr. Guy Sauvageau, IRIC Chief Executive Officer and Scientific Director. “His technological expertise and his use of cutting-edge equipment will also allow us to further our research in other complementary fields such as bioinformatics, transcriptional regulation and the role of genetic variation in disease.” The creation of the High-Throughput Genomics Laboratory brings the number of research teams working at IRIC to twenty-six.