Jean-Yves Masson

Jean-Yves Masson is an internationally recognized expert in DNA repair mechanisms. He was recruited at the Laval University Cancer Center in 2002 and became in 2013 the director of the Molecular Biology, Medical Biochemistry, and Pathology Department. Dr. Masson was awarded with a FRQS Junior 1, CIHR new investigator, FRQS Junior 2, FRQS Senior, Chercheur National and a FRQS Chair. He currently holds a Tier I Canada Research Chair in DNA repair and Cancer Therapeutics. He has over 140 publications in several high-impact journals such as Nature Genetics, Science, and Molecular Cell. He is a member of the editorial board of NAR cancer and Nucleic Acids Research.

Throughout his career, Dr. Masson focused on radiation and chemicals that impede DNA replication to induce DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs). Failure to remove these breaks leads to cell death, genetic mutations, gross chromosome rearrangements, and to cell transformation and cancer. He is one of the few world experts on PALB2, a protein which is getting scientific and public attention as PALB2 mutations increase breast cancer by 6-8 fold. He established that PALB2 deficient cells are very sensitive to PARP inhibitors, a very promising therapeutic avenue for breast/ovarian cancer. Dr. Masson was inducted as a Canadian Academy of Health Sciences fellow.