Dr. Ian Watson is a member of the Goodman Cancer Institute (GCI), an investigator at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), and an Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at McGill University. He is a Canadian Research Chair II in functional genomics of melanoma, the Co-Chair for the melanoma disease working group for the Canadian Cancer Trials Group (CCTG) and the former Co-Chair for The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) melanoma project. In 2018, he co-led a successful Terry Fox Research Institute (TFRI) Marathon of Hope Cancer Centre Network (MoHCCN) pilot project that brought together researchers at 7 hospitals and research institutes in Montreal to study mechanisms of immune therapy resistance. The TFRI MoHCCN program has since expanded into a national initiative bringing together clinicians and scientists across the country with the goal of leveraging big data breakthroughs to advance our understanding, diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients to significantly impact patient outcomes.  

Dr. Watson’s research program focuses on understanding how mutated genes identified in next-generation sequencing analysis promote melanoma disease progression and therapy response utilizing an inter-disciplinary approach combining unbiased molecular characterization of melanoma tumors, rapid development of preclinical models using genome-editing technology, and bioinformatic approaches.