LEVERAGING HETEROGENEITY IN ACUTE LEUKEMIAS
RESEARCH FOCUS
Using bulk and single cell genomic approaches, our group aims to understand how recurrent genetic events alter the transcriptome and shape the hierarchy and plasticity of tumor and immune cells in acute leukemia. Ultimately, our goal is to perturb specifically these altered states to reveal context-specific vulnerabilities. We also aim to characterize the evolutionary landscape of mutations that predispose to leukemia in the Québec population. This will in turn help to better understand the underlying cooperative events in these subtypes of leukemia and identify new rationales for targeted therapies.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
NEWS
Dec 2023: CONGRATULATIONS to Marilyse for being awarded Excellence Scholarship of department of biochemistry and molecular medicine and FESP from University of Montreal.
Dec. 2023: Our Acute Myeloid Leukemia single-cell classifier is now available on GitHub.
June 2023: CONGRATULATIONS to Maylis for being awarded a Master's Excellence Scholarship from CHU Sainte-Justine Foundation!
May 2023: CONGRATULATIONS to Rui for being awarded a Cole foundation fellowship!
Sept. 2022: The first official paper from the lab is now available here: Blood Adv - NPM1
May 2022: We are hiring! More details at the bottom of this page.
April 2022: CONGRATULATIONS to Banafsheh for being awarded a Cole foundation fellowship!
February 2022: Severine Landais joins the single cell data analysis platform! More details to follow.
April 2021: CONGRATULATIONS to Simon and Michael who each received an IVADO scholarship to pursue research this summer.
September 2020 Vincent-Philippe Lavallée presents at the 10X Genomics
August 2020 After receiving a post-doctoral fellowship from the Cole Foundation, Nehme Hachem just received a prestigious IVADO post-doctoral fellowship. Congrats!
June 2020 The Lavallée lab Single-cell platform is now up and running to profile single-cell Omics in cancer and immune tissues! For more information, contact Véronique Lisi or Vincent-Philippe Lavallée
April 2020 The Lavallée lab is awarded a Cole Foundation transition award for the project titled "MAPPING LEUKEMIA PREDISPOSITIONS AND PRELEUKEMIC CLONAL EVOLUTION"
February 2020 The Lavallée lab joins the leucegene multidisciplinary team (leucegene.ca) and the Genome Canada Large-Scale Applied Research Project grant to study cellular heterogeneity in AML patients
PEOPLE
Véronique Lisi
Research Associate - Senior Research Scientist
veronique.lisi.chusj@gmail.com
A native Montrealer, Véronique left the Santa Barbara beaches to come back to work in Montréal. After a position at the MUHC, Véronique joined the lab in May 2020. Trained as a computer scientist and a molecular biologist she enjoys learning about and using the possibilities brought forth by technological advances to uncover new biology. In her free time, you will find her scuba diving the St-Lawrence river and the Great Lakes.
Banafsheh Khakipoor
Bioinformatics Researcher
Banafsheh’s background is in computer science and bioinformatics. She has worked on various projects from software engineering to genomics analysis. Now she is delving into AML research. When not at work, she loves exploring new hobbies and hiking locations.
RUI ZHANG
Postdoctoral Fellow
Rui obtained her PhD in 2022 from McGill University. Her background is molecular biology and cancer genetics. She is also interested in extending her knowledge in next generation sequencing data analysis. When not at work, she loves practicing yoga.
Maylis Heussner
Master Student
Maylis graduated from Polytechnique Montreal in June 2022 with a Bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering. Strongly interested in bioinformatics, she completed an internship in the Lavallée laboratory during the summer of 2021. Thanks to this experience, she then joined the team in September 2022 as part of a master's degree in bioinformatics at the Université de Montréal. Her research interests include machine learning applied to pediatric cancer classification.
Marilyse Gallant
Master Student
Marilyse obtained her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and molecular medicine, with a concentration on "genetics and human genomics" in 2023. She is currently doing her master's degree in biochemistry in the lab to pursue her interest in cancer genetics. In her free time, she can be found at the movies or trying a new restaurant.
Edith Sepulchre
PhD Student
Edith Sepulchre graduated as a medical doctor in 2016 from the University of Liège. After a year of training in pediatrics at the Centre Hospitalier du Luxembourg, she pursued her training in clinical biology at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and obtained her specialist diploma in 2021. She directed her training towards pediatrics, onco-hematology, and molecular biology, with a particular focus on pediatric cancer predisposition.
She completed a fellowship at Sainte-Justine Hospital in Montreal, where she devoted most of her time to working on germline sequencing data from two large Quebec cohorts (adult leukemias and pediatric cancers) within the Lavallée laboratory. She is currently part of the human genetics department at CHU de Liège. She divides her time between her thesis work, the molecular biology laboratory, and genetic counseling consultations in pediatric hematology and oncology.
Niloofar Farzad
Master Student
Niloofar has a background in pharmaceuticals, with experience working on cancer vaccine formulations and immunotherapy. Her true passion lies in cancer biology and building a connection between scientific research and clinical practice. Currently, she is doing her master's degree, focusing on AML-derived pDCs (plasmacytoid dendritic cells).
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Université de Montréal
Researcher, CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center
Hematologist, CHU Sainte-Justine
Anshul Budhraja
PhD Student
Anshul’s expertise covers a wide range of programming languages and bioinformatics tools. She focuses particularly on the analysis of transcriptomic data. Currently, she is pursuing a Doctorat en bio-informatique at the Université de Montréal. Her research is dedicated to enhancing single-cell transcriptomic profiling through long-read sequencing.
Anshul’s recent Master’s dissertation at the Gupta Lab, IIT Delhi, India, was a transcriptomic study on the molecular mechanisms underlying inflammatory lung pathologies. With a strong passion for integrating computational approaches with biological research, Anshul is committed to pushing the boundaries of the biological insight that may be gained using bioinformatics.
Alumni
Anissa Djedid - Bioinformatician
Michael Vladovsky - Medical Student
Simon Del Testa - Medical Student
Ève Blanchard - Undergraduate Student in Biotechnology
Thérèse-Marie Poinsignon - Master students in Biomedical Science
Nehme Hachem - Postdoctoral Fellow
Etienne Plante - Intern
Azer Farah - Bioinformatician
Ariane Aymerich - Research Intern
We are HIRING
We are looking for students at all levels (M.Sc, PhD and postdoc) to tackle single cell related research projects. One is more computational oriented, the other, more molecular biology oriented. Please contact us if either of these research project interest you or if you already have a research project in mind.