Clinical professor
Department of Medicine
Faculty of Medicine

Dr. Jacques Brown graduated from the Faculty of Medicine at Université Laval, where he completed his residency in internal medicine. He completed his rheumatology residency at the University of Sherbrooke before undertaking postdoctoral training on metabolic bone diseases at the Inserm Unit in Lyon, France.

He is a clinical researcher at the CHU de Québec-Université Laval Research Center and a clinical professor in the Department of Medicine at Université Laval. His research themes mainly focus on metabolic bone diseases such as Paget’s disease of bone and osteoporosis.

Through the characterization of three large French-Canadian families affected by Paget’s disease of bone, he contributed to the first discovery (2001) of mutations affecting the SQSTM1 gene linked to this disease. With the involvement of Dr. Laëtitia Michou, this cohort now includes 43 families, 263 unrelated individuals affected by the disease, and 298 controls, totaling 1,426 DNA samples with detailed phenotypes. Recruiting new families and unrelated patients helps to better identify new genetic factors for Paget’s disease of bone.

Since 1994, he has been the co-principal investigator and director of the Quebec Center for the Canadian Multicentre Osteoporosis Study (CaMOS), an epidemiological study assessing the prevalence of osteoporosis and the incidence of osteoporotic fractures in a large cohort (9,400 subjects) of the normal Canadian population. He is the principal investigator of the Recognizing Osteoporosis and its Consequences in Quebec (ROCQ) study, a therapeutic management program aimed at evaluating the therapeutic gap in the diagnosis and treatment of osteoporosis following fragility fractures in women aged 50 and over.

Dr. Brown is the author of 298 scientific articles in several high-impact journals. He has received several awards, including two John B Johnson Research Awards from the Paget Foundation (2003 and 2005) and the Lindy-Fraser Tribute Award from Osteoporosis Canada (2004) for his work on clinical practice guidelines for osteoporosis. In 2009, he was appointed Knight of the National Order of Quebec. More recently, he received the 2017 Distinguished Investigator Award from the Canadian Rheumatology Association for his outstanding contribution to rheumatology in Canada, and the Council of Physicians, Pharmacists, and Dentists of the CHU de Québec awarded him the Heritage Tribute Diamond for the development and accomplishment of his journey, leaving a concrete legacy for the future of the institution. In 2020, he was awarded the title of “Fellow” of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research in recognition of his numerous contributions to the field of metabolic bone diseases. He has been a member of the editorial board of Osteoporosis International since January 2016.