Full professor
Pharmacy - Direction
Faculty of Pharmacy

Prof. Chantal Guillemette, PhD FCAHS, holds the Canada Research Chair in Pharmacogenomics since 2003. She is a full professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy and Director of the Cancer Research Center (CRC) at Université Laval.

The overarching goal of the Chair research program is to :

  • improve therapeutic interventions by refining prognostic tools for better therapeutic decisions;
  • enhance the accuracy of treatment response prediction, so as to propose strategies better adapted to the patients and their disease profile.

Groundbreaking discoveries have emerged from this research program, and have significantly influenced the fields of endocrinology, pharmacology and oncology. They have positioned Prof. Guillemette’s group at the forefront of hormonal metabolism and pharmacogenomics research applied to cancer. Prof. Guillemette has authored nearly 200 scientific publications, and thus offers a productive, dynamic, and creative training environment, supported by the strong record of scientific and graduate trainees, including 25 PhD, 58 MSc, and 8 PDF, totalizing nearly 150 highly qualified personnel. Their innovative findings have already transformed clinical practice, by a deepened molecular understanding of variable responses to pharmacotherapies and cancer progression, and by the development of non-invasive tools to help prognostication and therapeutic decisions.

The research, well integrated to clinical needs and led in close partnership with clinicians, is focused on hormone-dependent diseases such as genitourinary cancers and leukemia. It relies on a variety of preclinical models and on patient-centered investigations. The team applies innovative ‘omics approaches including genomics, and the monitoring of small molecules (metabolomics) and proteins (proteomics) integrated with clinicopathological data. The team investigates the influence of the hormonal environment on cancer development, progression and pharmacotherapeutic responses. In addition, this research strongly contributes to a better understanding of cancer biology, and to identify novel therapeutic targets and combination therapies. Other research avenues focus on the resistance to therapeutic treatments, highlighting the crucial role of the glucuronidation pathway mediated by UDP-glycosyltransferase enzymes (UGTs), for which Prof. Guillemette is an internationally renowned expert. This metabolic pathway is essential for the homeostasis of a wide variety of small molecules, well beyond sex steroid hormones. Their findings have also uncovered non-canonical functions of UGTs that considerably expand the scope of physiological and pathological roles of the glucuronidation pathway.

Pre Guillemette has been leading the metabolomics platform since 2009, providing support for research and training. This platform is supported by highly qualified staff with over 25 years of experience. We offer personalized services to meet the specific needs of clients in targeted metabolomics and are involved in collaborative projects, according to the researcher’s preference.