Director 2000-
Chairholder of the Canada Research Chair in Pharmacogenomics
Prof. Chantal Guillemette is a full professor at Université Laval in Québec city, Qc, Canada since 2000 and her laboratory is located at the CHU de Québec Research Center. She holds a Canada research chair in pharmacogenomics from CIHR.
She has developed an innovative research program, focused on the pharmacogenomics of human UGTs, pushing her group to the forefront of research of drug metabolism and pharmacogenomics, establishing techniques and methodologies while bringing fundamental findings made at the bench back to the clinic, particularly in the oncology area with a strong components of translational research and involvement of several clinical faculty members onto the research program. Prof Guillemette, coworkers and external collaborators have significantly advanced several areas of drug metabolism and cancer biomarkers.
Her research program has been focused primarily on a wide range of efforts designed to elucidate determinants of interindividual variability in drug and steroid metabolism mediated by phase II drug metabolizing UGT enzymes. Her work has improved our understanding of the mechanisms contributing to variations in biotransformation by UGTs, and how this affects drug response and disease, more precisely cancer. Her work also has extended to the discovery of cancer predisposing genes and more recently, discovery of new prognostic markers uncovered for hormone-related cancers such as prostate cancer, endometrial and breast cancers, and chronic lymphocytic leukemias. She has been highly productive with over 130 peer-reviewed papers, the majority as senior author and graduate students as first authors. The translational nature of my research is supported by key studies published in high impact clinical journals.
The objective is also to provide supervision and a stimulating environment that has an impact on the training of students and highly qualified personnel. So far, her mentorship has provided an excellent and stimulating environment that has an impact on the training of health professionals (pharmacists and MDs), graduate students (n=52), HQPs (n=68) and undergrad (n=50); with several pursing a successful academic career.