Simon Drouin

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT SIMON DROUIN

As Team leader of Applied Genomics at the NRC Human Health Therapeutics (HHT) research center, I am responsible for the development and implementation of cutting-edge techniques and technologies to support the Canadian academic clinical and industrial research communities. My vision is to accelerate the bench-to-bedside development cycle, and thus improve patient outcomes, by building bridges and strong partnerships in the Canadian (and abroad) academic, clinical and industrial biomedical ecosystem, leveraging leveraging NRC capacities and powerful cutting-edge research tools. Under my leadership, my team, composed of 3 research officers, 6 technical officers and 3 computer scientists, has implemented and applied large-scale assays for therapeutic target discovery and validation- Whole-genome CRISPR/Cas screens in clinically-relevant model cell lines (cancer, blood-brain barrier, etc.)- Advanced and multiplexed single-cell sequencing experimental designs- Bioinformatics approaches for cancer risk-based prognostic stratification- High-throughput, semi-automated CRISPR/Cas biallelic knockout clone generation platform. Furthermore, I have spearheaded the creation of the NRC-CHU Sainte-Justine Collaborative Unit for Translational Research (CUTR), where both parties expertise is put together to accelerate patient-oriented discovery and its translation. I am currently NRC-HHT Scientific Lead for that initative which has just launched its first wave of peer-reviewed projects. Finally, as part of the NRC Disruptive Technologies for Cell and Gene Therapies Challenge Program, I am co-leading the \"Development of precision editing platform to accelerate genome engineering of mammalian/iPSC cells\" Master project. This has led to multi-million collaboration agreements with key strategic partners in Canada and abroad to build tools, expertise and research infrastructure (CHU Sainte-Justine, Concordia Center for Applied Synthetic Biology, uOttawa, Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (Japan)).