Anthoula Lazaris

Dr. Lazaris is a scientist at the McGill University Health Centre Research Institute (MUHC-RI). Her current research focuses on metastatic disease and translational research, with an emphasis on precision therapy through the application of liquid biopsy. Together with her colleagues, their research on predictors of therapeutic responses to antiangiogenic agents in the context of disseminated colon cancer has led to a ground-breaking study demonstrating that different histological types of metastasis have distinct patterns of vascularization and immune profiles. They reported that patients with predominant angiogenic lesions receiving anti-angiogenic therapy plus chemotherapy have a more than double 5-year overall survival compared to patients with non-angiogenic lesions. Extension of this work revealed that these phenotypes are reflected in extracellular vesicles (EVs) circulating in the blood of cancer patients, with considerable implications for future EV biomarker development and translation.

Dr. Lazaris has spearheaded the Quebec Extracellular Vesicle consortium and is Scientific Director of the MUHC-RI Liver Disease Biobank. She has over 26 years combined experience in academia (McGill University), biotechnology, management, and senior level positions. In 2002, she led the team awarded by Scientific America for the category of Research Leader in Chemical and Materials Science.

Dr. Lazaris received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from McGill University, where she made the discovery, under the supervision of Dr. Sonenberg, that eIF-4E acts as a proto-oncogene, a seminal discovery which led to new scientific avenues in cancer research. She further worked as a postdoc in the area of gene therapy for hemophilia at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and then as a Senior Scientist at Nexia Biotechnologies, heading the molecular and cellular biology teams developing transgenic animals which produce recombinant proteins in their milk.