IRIC - Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer

Published on June 11, 2013

The Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences recognizes the IRIC PI for his work.

The IRIC community congratulates Philippe P. Roux who was awarded the 2013 GE Healthcare New Investigator Award by the Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences (CSMB) in recognition of his outstanding achievements. The award is presented annually to a young Canadian scientist in the fields of biochemistry or molecular and cell biology. Special consideration is given for independent thought and originality in the work of candidates. Philippe Roux is a Principal Investigator at the Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer (IRIC) and Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology and Cell Biology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Montreal. He also holds the Canada Research Chair in Signal Transduction and Proteomics.Dr. Roux receives his prize from Fiona Fitzgerald from GE Healthcare. Philippe Roux seeks to understand the mechanisms by which various oncogenes and tumour suppressors regulate cell growth, survival and proliferation. The work of Philippe Roux and his team his team focuses on signalling pathways often deregulated in metabolic diseases and cancer, including the Ras/ERK and PI3K/mTOR signaling cascades. His lab uses cell biological and biochemical assays, mouse genetics, as well cutting-edge proteomics methods to characterize oncogenic signalling mechanisms and identify novel therapeutic targets for the treatment of cancer, with a particular emphasis on melanoma.
At the award ceremony, at the 56th Annual Conference of the CSMB held at Niagara-on-the-lake, Ontario, from June 3-7, Philippe Roux was invited to deliver a lecture entitled ‘Cell growth regulation by mTOR-dependent signalling’.
Philippe Roux was also recently the recipient of a highly prestigious Young  Investigator research grant from the Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP), an international program funded by 13 countries (including Canada) and the European Union to promote intercontinental collaboration in cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research on the complex mechanisms of living organisms. Dr. Roux will share the $1.5M award with
Dr. G. Charras (University College London, UK), Dr. G. Romet-Lemonne (CRSNG, Gif-sur-Yvette, France) and Dr. E. Paluch (Max Planck Institute-Dresden, Germany), to investigate the interplay between mechanical and biological mechanisms during cell cortex assembly. The cortex, a thin layer of protein fibers that subtends the membrane of animal cells, is the main determinant of cell shape, and as such, it plays a key role in processes such as cell division.

For more information about Philippe Roux, please visit www.rouxlab.org.