Guillaume Lettre, Ph.D.
Guillaume Lettre is a professor of medicine at the Université de Montréal and a principal investigator at the Montreal Heart Institute. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Complex Trait Genetics and is an elected member of the College of the Royal Society of Canada.
In December 2008, he completed 3.5 years of postdoctoral training in the lab of Joel N. Hirschhorn at the Broad Institute and Children’s Hospital Boston working on the genetics of complex human traits using genome-wide association studies. Guillaume obtained his BSc in Biology from the Université de Sherbrooke (2000) and his MSc in Biological Sciences from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (2001). In 2005, he completed his PhD in Developmental Genetics at the University of Zurich. Beside genetics, Guillaume likes running, ice hockey and old red Bordeaux.
Staff
Ken Sin Lo
Ken Sin Lo joined the group in March 2009 as lead bioinformatician. He oversees computational work in the lab, manages the big data and acts as webmaster.
Ken Sin previously worked at the CHUL Research Center in proteomics. He holds a BSc in computer sciences from the Université de Sherbrooke, Canada, and completed a DESS (advanced graduate diploma) degree in bioinformatics at the Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada, in 2005. He is most passionate about aquascaping and adventurous exploration, both virtual and in real.
Chao-Sheng Lo, Ph.D.
Chao-Sheng Lo joined Dr. Lettre’s lab in August 2023 as a research assistant. He works closely with bioinformaticians in his lab using a range of techniques including CRISPR knockout, inhibition activation, and base editing to understand the impact of single nucleotide polymorphisms on cardiovascular disease-associated genetic variants. He completed his post-doctoral training at the Centre de recherche de l’Hôpital de l’Université de Montréal (CRCHUM) and the Montreal Diabetes Research Center (MDRC). He has gained extensive experience in the field of hypertension and diabetes. He has elucidated the complex mechanisms of gene regulation under pathophysiological conditions using tissue-specific transgenic and knockout mouse models. He is passionate about discovering causative variants and mechanisms in the genetics of human disease.
Hicham Belhaj, M.Sc.
Hicham Belhaj joined Dr. Guillaume Lettre’s laboratory in November 2021 as a research assistant. He works jointly with members of the laboratory to identify, among thousands of genes, those involved in hypertension and endothelial dysfunction by CRISPR/Cas9 screen. Hicham obtained a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in molecular and cellular biology at the University of Montreal. During his master’s degree, he became interested in the molecular mechanisms of the last step in cell division, cytokinesis. In particular, he was interested in a protein known to be overexpressed in various cancers: anillin.
Students
Rose Laflamme
Rose Laflamme started her master in bioinformatics in Dr Lettre’s lab in the fall semester of 2022. She obtained her bachelor in bioinformatics at the Université de Montréal in spring 2022. Rose discovered the lab and its team when she did a summer internship in 2021, working on transcriptomics changes caused by the aging of vascular endothelial cells. Her field of interest is genetics and genomics, hence her master project studying structural variants in a population cohort of Quebec.
Wenmin Zhang, Ph.D.
Wenmin Zhang joined the group in the winter of 2024 as an IVADO postdoctoral fellow, after obtaining her PhD in Quantitative Life Sciences from McGill university. Her research focuses on developing robust, efficient, and interpretable statistical and machine learning methods to understand the multifactorial nature of cardiovascular diseases.
Jordan Jalbert-Ross
Jordan Jalbert-Ross joined Dr. Guillaume Lettre’s laboratory in September 2024 as a master’s student in biochemistry. Jordan obtained his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry at the University of Montreal. He is interested in the impact of genetic variants associated with CAD and blood pressure on the chromatin state of endothelial cells.
Pegah Hejazi, M.Sc.
Pegah Hejazi joined Dr. Lettre’s lab in January 2022 as a PhD student. She is working on single cell methods to study cardiovascular diseases. Precisely, she is interested in transcriptomic and epigenetic of cellular senescence in cardiovascular dysfunction.
Pegah has finished her Masters in Biotechnology. During that time she was involved in cancer research and drug discovery.
Cristian Groza, Ph.D.
Cristian Groza joined Dr. Lettre’s lab as a post-doctoral fellow in May 2024. He is working on integrating the latest pangenomic techniques in genotyping structural variants with association studies. He is also participating in the creation of a Quebec pangenome with the aid of cutting-edge genome sequencing technologies. Cristian completed his PhD at McGill University, where he explored the utility of human pangenomes in the fields of epigenetics, transposable elements and rare disease genomes.
Nicolas Brosseau, M.Sc.
Nicolas Brosseau joined the group in june 2020 as a PhD student. He is working on the influence of genetique variations on red blood cells traits and the influence these variations have on the severity of sickle cell disease.
Nicolas obtained is BSc and MSc in biomedical sciences at the Université de Montréal. During his master, he studied the resistance mechanisms of cancer cells to chemotherapeutic treatments. More specifically, he was interested by the involvement of membrane transport in the uptake of anthracyclines by targeted cells.
Jennifer Zevounou
Jennifer Zevounou joined Dr. Guillaume Lettre’s laboratory in the fall of 2023 as a master’s student in Biomedical Sciences, after obtaining her bachelor’s degree in Life Sciences/Bioinformatics in June 2023 at the University of Paris Cité. She is interested in genetic variants affecting endothelial function and associated with the development of cardio- and cerebro-vascular diseases.
Vanessa Bellegarde
Vanessa Bellegarde joined Dr. Guillaume Lettre’s laboratory in May 2022 as a summer intern to study structural variants in a Quebec cohort. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in bioinformatics from the University of Montreal in the spring of 2023. She rejoined Dr. Lettre’s team in the fall of 2023 to pursue her master’s degree in bioinformatics, which focuses on transcriptomic analysis of hematopoietic stem cells in sickle cell anemia.
Arnaud Chignon, Ph.D.
After completing a PhD that combined both wet and dry lab work in genetics and 2D/3D epigenetics of complex traits, Arnaud Chignon joined the Lettre lab as a postdoc. There, he develops causal inference methods using proteomic data to aid in drug discovery for diseases such as cardiovascular disorders and sickle cell disease. Outside the lab, Arnaud enjoys running and exploring the beautiful landscapes of Canada!
Social
Lipsync
Stronger et al. 2013
Alumni
