Christoph Borchers, PhD, Director of the SCPC. Dr. Borchers is a Professor in the Gerald Bronfman Department of Oncology at the Lady Davis Institute at the Jewish general Hospital at McGill University, and holds the Segal McGill Chair in Molecular Oncology. He became a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences in 2013 and the Life Sciences BC Award/Genome BC Award for Scientific Excellence in 2016. His research encompasses structural and quantitative proteomics as well as quantitative metabolomics, with a clear focus on clinical applications and translation. Dr. Borchers’ lab has developed targeted mass spectrometry assays for the ‘absolute’ quantitation of thousands of proteins from cells, tissues, and biofluids, including members of the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway and the PD-L1 signaling axis. He furthermore developed MS assays to determine mutation rates of known cancer drivers in tumor tissues on the protein level, and to determine the concentration of immune-therapeutics in patient blood, for therapeutic drug monitoring. The targeted MS assays developed in the Borchers lab are being used both for fundamental research and to complement existing genomic assays in precision oncology. Dr. Borchers has over 325 publications in mass-spectrometry based proteomics, with an H-index of 74 and more than 23,000 citations.
René Zahedi, Phd, is Associate Director. He received his PhD from the University of Wuerzburg/Germany in 2008 and has been a PI at the Leibniz-Institute for Analytical Sciences (ISAS) from 2010-2017. He has developed methods for the analysis of proteins and their post-translational modifications (PTMs) in clinical samples, using protein-MS. He has published >130 papers on protein mass spectrometry, including pioneering work on protein- and PTM-changes in human platelets, and their roles in cardiovascular disease and platelet disorders; and he also developed novel methods to study PTM crosstalk. René was head of the Bioanalytics Study Group of the German Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (GBM) from 2010-2017 and a member of the Education Committee of the European Proteomics Association (EuPA) from 2015-2017. In 2017 he joined the SCPC to use protein-MS to dissect cellular signalling and identify both novel therapeutic targets and molecular signatures of disease, that can be used as powerful diagnostic, prognostic, and/or predictive precision medicine biomarkers.
Evgeniy Petrotchenko, MD PhD, Associate Director (Structural Proteomics, Clinical MS, Metabolomics). He received his MD from the Second Moscow Medical Institute, Moscow, Russia and his Ph.D. in bioorganic chemistry from the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Minsk, Belarus. He conducted postdoctoral studies at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health in Research Triangle Park, NC and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC. He was a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Victoria-Genome BC Proteomics Centre, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. His research is focused on the development and application of the structural proteomics approaches for studying protein structure in pathologies such as neurodegenerative protein misfolding diseases. Since recently he is involved in the development and application of the analytical MS methods in clinics and the development of metabolomics analyses.
Vincent Richard, PhD. Dr. Richard is a Research Associate at the SCPC and project manager of a Genome Canada-funded GAPP project. He has joined the SCPC in 2015. He is developing methods for quantitative proteomics (discovery and validation) as well metabolomics (targeted metabolite quantitation). He is involved in multiple collaborative projects within the Lady Davis Institute and McGill Univsersity. Vincent finished his PhD in 2014 in the laboratory of Dr. Vladimir Titorenko where he used LC/MS based proteomics, lipidomics, and metabolomics to elucidate the molecular mechanisms regulating aging and lifespan of model organisms.
Deema Qasrawi, MSc, Deema is a Researcher at the SCPC. Deema graduated with a bachelor’s degree in pharmacy from Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST). Also, she received her master’s degree in medical science (clinical biochemistry) from University of Calgary. She worked as a Laboratory Scientist at JUST and Alberta Precision Laboratories (formerly Calgary Laboratory Services (CLS)). Her main research focus was to develop quantitative tools using mass spectrometry to help early and accurate diagnosis of metabolic disorders such as Lysosomal Storage Disorders (LSDs) and Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH) from dried blood spots (DBS). Deema has joined the SCPC in 2021, to help in performing research and services in clinical mass spectrometry, metabolomics and structural proteomics.
Vanessa Gaspar, PhD, Vanessa is a postdoctoral fellow who joined the SCPC in 2018. Dr. Gaspar received her BSc in Biological Sciences, MSc and PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the State University of Maringa, in Brazil. She is currently working on a FRQNT-funded project in collaboration with the group of Steven Verhelst in Belgium, developing a streamlined proteomics based workflow for the identification of targets and off-targets to which a drug molecule binds within a cellular context.
Connie Sobsey - Connie is a PhD student who joined the SCPC in 2017. She is supervised by Dr. Gerald Batist, and she applying iMALDI assays to study the expression of AKT1 and AKT2 in cancer tissue samples to better predict treatment response in individual patients.
Sahar Ibrahim -Sahar is a graduate student who has joined the SCPC in 2016. She is co-supervised by Dr. Gerald Batist, and she is working on immuno-MS assays to study the role of PTEN as a potential breast cancer biomarker.
Georgia Mitsa - Georgia is a graduate student who has joined the SCPC in 2018. She is co-supervised by Dr. Gerald Batist. Georgia completed her bachelor studies of Applied Biology for Medicine and Pharmacology in 2017 at the Hochschule Fresenius - University of Applied Sciences in Idstein, Germany. Her bachelor thesis was about the targeted discovery and quantification of N-arachidonoyl amino acids in mouse brain regions using sate-of-the-art lipidomics. In 2018, Georgia accomplished her master studies of Bio- and Pharmaceutical Analysis at the Hochschule Fresenius in Idstein, Germany. She joined the SCPC for her master thesis, where she developed a sample preparation pipeline for formalin-fixed clinical samples, enabling retrospective and quantitative proteomics analysis of minuscule sample amounts. Georgia is also a registered nurse with extensive professional experience in intensive care medicine.
Vincent Lacasse - Vincent is a graduate student who has joined the SCPC in 2019. He is co-supervised by Dr. Alan Spatz, and he is working on immuno-MS assays to study PD-L1 signalling to better predict the response of individual tumors to immuno-checkpoint inhibitors.
Hannah Meltzer, Administration and Technician, Hannah joined the Segal Cancer Proteomics Centre in 2016. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from Concordia University.
