Full professor
Department of Molecular Biology, Medical Biochemistry, and Pathology
Faculty of Medicine

Professor Nicolas Bisson holds the Canada Research Chair in Cancer Proteomics. He is a full professor in the Department of Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, and Pathology at the Faculty of Medicine of Université Laval. He is also a member of the steering committee of the Quebec Network for Research on the Function, Engineering, and Applications of Proteins (PROTEO) and a member of the Cancer Research Center of Université Laval. Professor Bisson obtained a PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology from Université Laval (with honors). He completed his postdoctoral training at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute in Toronto, under the direction of Professor Tony Pawson.

Prof. Bisson’s work aims to decipher how healthy cells communicate with each other and how these signaling mechanisms are dysregulated in cancer cells.

Communication between the cells that make up our bodies is essential. It is necessary to ensure that our bodies function properly throughout our lives. When cells do not send, receive, or understand signals correctly, it can lead to problems such as developmental defects or diseases like cancer. The cellular actors responsible for these signals are called proteins. Some of these proteins, called receptors, are located on the surface of cells to receive external signals. Most, if not all proteins, do not act individually but rather function in groups, called networks. The main goal of this project is to decipher how cells establish a specific response to given external signals using receptors to build protein networks that regulate the organization of healthy tissues. To do this, Professor Bisson’s research group aims to determine:

  • how signaling networks are assembled and disassembled,
  • what rules govern the association of proteins into networks, and
  • how cells decide which protein network to use among the many possibilities.

To achieve these goals, the team uses innovative proteomic tools to separate and quantify proteins, cellular imaging to observe them, and classical tools of molecular biology and biochemistry.