The Segal Cancer Proteomics Center (SCPC) is a well-equipped state-of-the-art facility in proteomics and metabolomics whose operation is supported by Genome Canada and the Canada Foundation for Innovation. The SCPC is located within the Lady Davis Institute of the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. It is led by Dr. Christoph Borchers, who is a full professor at the Gerald Bronfman Department of Oncology at McGill University and a leading figure in the field of protein mass spectrometry.
About Us
Meet the Team
Christoph Borchers, PhD
Director
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 77 and more than 25,000 citations.
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.
Yassene Mohammed, PhD
Yassene is an assistant professor at the Center for Proteomics and Metabolomics at Leiden University Medical Center, the Netherlands. He is also head of bioinformatics at the Proteomics Centre of the University of Victoria, Canada, where he is also an adjunct assistant professor at the Division of Medical Science. He received his PhD from the University of Göttingen, Germany. A large portion of Yassene’s recent activities focuses on quantitative targeted proteomics and its clinical applications. He has co-authored multiple works on the methods and applications of precise quantitation of blood plasma proteins using mass spectrometry and heavy labeled surrogate peptide internal standards. He is also active in perusing new approaches for mass spectrometry data analysis, -omics integration, as well as automation of information extraction from such data.
Bioinformatics Group Leader
Adriano Pimenta, PhD
Senior Administrative Coordinator
Adriano is a Senior Administrative Coordinator at the SCPC. He was an Associate Professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil, for 18 years before moving to Canada in 2022 and joining the SCPC on November/22. Graduated in Biological Sciences (Bachelor in Zoology) and Ph.D. in Biological Sciences (Physiology and Pharmacology) from UFMG, Adriano was also a postdoctoral fellow at the Universitée de la Mediterranée (Marseille, France; 1999/2001) and visiting professor at the University of Alberta (2013-2014). He has a strong background in leading structurally- or functionally-driven drug discovery research projects combining biochemistry, molecular pharmacology, cell biology, and proteomic approaches. Adriano is responsible for overseeing and managing the operations, budgets and activities of the proteomics research and its team at the SCPC.
Ute Borchers
Administrative Technician
Ute joined the Segal Cancer Proteomics Centre in 2019. She obtained her Bachelor’s Degree in Chemistry from Natural Science-Technical Academy, Isny, Germany.
Georgia Mitsa
Graduate Student
Georgia Mitsa is a PhD candidate in the Department of Experimental Medicine at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Her research combines proteomics, metabolomics and genomics to gain mechanistic insights into hard-to-treat malignancies. Georgia aims to advance the translation of multi-omics into the clinic to generate a complete phenotypic picture of oncogenic molecular changes. The ultimate goal is to enable quick and reliable clinical decision-making using multi-omics analysis of clinical biopsies. To this end, Georgia has developed several quantitative mass spectrometry-based methods for multi-omics molecular characterization of biobanked clinical samples. She is currently spearheading a large-scale study to investigate the molecular changes in metastatic colorectal cancers that are refractory to standard-of-care treatment. She further initiated and conducts a large-scale study targeting proteomic changes in pre-invasive breast ductal carcinoma; this project applies her recently-published method for mass spectrometry-based quantitative proteomics from core-needle biopsies embedded in formalin and paraffin.
Connie Sobsey
Graduate Student
Connie is a PhD candidate who joined the SCPC in 2017. She is supervised by Dr. Gerald Batist. Her project involves validating and applying quantitative proteomics technologies in cancer tissue samples to better predict patients’ individual responses to targeted treatments.
Vincent Lacasse
Graduate Student
Vincent is a PhD student who joined the SCPC in 2019. He is Co-supervised by Dr. Alen Spatz, and He is working on immuno-MS assays to study PD-L1 signaling to better predict the response of individual tumors to immune-checkpoint inhibitors.
Neda Booshehri
Graduate Student
Neda is a graduate student who has joined the SCPC in 2022. She is co-supervised by Dr. Allen Spatz, and she is working on immuno-Ms assays to study PD-L1 signalling.
ForoughSadat Absar
Graduate Student
Forough is a graduate student who has joined the SCPC in 2022. She graduated with a MD degree from Beheshti University of Medical Science (SBMU) and she is working on structural proteomics.
Constantinos Blidjios
Graduate Student
Costa is graduate student who has joined the SCPC in 2022 and he is working on Bioinformatics approaches on cancer research.
Graduate Student
Negar Mostoolizade
Negarsadat Mostolizadeh is a MSc. student at McGill University and has become a member of the SCPC in 2022. She is co-supervised by Dr. Mark Basik. Her current research project involves the use of the MRM assay to quantify Her2 expression in Her2-low tumors. The purpose of this work is to distinguish between HER2-low and HER2-negative cases and to provide improved information for therapeutic decision-making for cancer patients.
Negin Mostoolizade
Graduate Student
Neginsadat Mostolizadeh is a MSc. student at McGill University and a member of the SCPC. She joined the team in 2022 and is co-supervised by Dr. Gerald Batist. Her Master's thesis project focuses on testing and optimizing the performance of a proteomic profile that is associated with the response of Capivasertib in cancer cell lines and patient tumor samples. Her ultimate goal is to make proteomic profile data useful in clinical settings.
Graduate Students
Alumni
Research Associates/ Managers/ Directors
Dominik Domanski
André Leblanc, Facility Manager, 2016-2018
René P. Zahedi, Associate Director, 2018-2022
Graduate Students/ Post-Doctoral Fellows
Vanessa P. Gaspar, Post-Doc (2018-2021), Experimental Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
Sahar Ibrahim, PhD (2016-2022), Experimental Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
Visiting students (more than 5 months)
Margherita Dell’Aica , PhD (2018), Leibniz-Institute of Analytical Sciences, ISAS e.V., Dortmund, Germany
Tamara Scheidt, PhD (2019), Department of Biosciences, University of Salzburg, Austria