Full professor
Department of Surgery
Faculty of Medicine

Dr. Pouliot earned a medical doctorate (MD) and a doctorate in physiology-endocrinology (PhD) from Laval University. After completing a residency in urology (FRCSC), he undertook a post-doctoral fellowship in molecular imaging and uro-oncology at the University of Los Angeles in California (UCLA). Since 2010, he has been a uro-oncology clinician at the CHU de Québec-Université Laval. He also holds a position as associate professor in the Department of Surgery at Laval University. In 2014, he received the Rising Star in Prostate Cancer award from Movember/Prostate Cancer Canada. He has received career grants from the Junior 1 and 2 Clinician Scholar Program and the Senior Clinician Scholar Program of the FRQS, and in 2023, he obtained the status of Senior Clinician Researcher from the Quebec Health Research Fund (FRQS).

His clinical and preclinical research interests focus on the detection and characterization of high-risk, castration-resistant, and metastatic prostate cancer cells using molecular imaging techniques such as transcriptional amplification systems or positron emission tomography (PET) with tracers like fluoro-choline or fluoro-deoxyglucose. He is also involved in the development of new radioactive agents for treating metastatic prostate cancer through radioligand therapy.

His research program has four objectives: 1) Develop a dynamic imaging method based on a transcriptional amplification system to detect the light activity of a reporter gene controlled by specific promoters for prostate cancer. This bioluminescence microscopy method aims to predict patients’ response to antiandrogenic treatments. 2) Use PET/CT imaging as a quantitative method to identify very high-risk prostate cancers and assess individual response of metastases, as well as clinical response to systemic treatments. 3) Develop an immunotherapy based on a prostate cancer-specific transcriptional amplification system. This vaccine will introduce recombinant genes into the patient’s prostate cancer cells to induce an effective immune response against cancer cells. 4) Characterize androgen receptor (AR) activation in patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer. This project aims to determine which steroids activate AR under chemical castration and identify new partners interacting with AR using proteomics.