Odette Cancer Program

Administrative Assistant: Lorenda Williams
Phone: 416-480-4757
Email: Lorenda.williams@sunnybrook.ca

Education:

• BA, 2000, molecular biophysics and biochemistry, Yale University, Connecticut, U.S.
• MD/PhD, 2009, anatomy/structural biology and cell biology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, U.S.
• FRCPC, 2013, internal medicine
• Board certification, 2013, American Board of Internal Medicine, U.S.
• FRCPC, 2015, medical oncology, Canada

Appointments and Affiliations:

• Affiliate scientist, Biological Sciences, Odette Cancer Research Program, Sunnybrook Research Institute
• Staff medical oncologist, Odette Cancer Centre, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre
• Assistant professor, department of medicine, University of Toronto

Research Foci:

• Immunotherapy
• Microbiome
• Targeted therapies

Research Summary:

A key focus of Dr. Pezo’s research is investigating novel therapeutics and methods for enhancing drug delivery to tumors to create a more personalized approach to treat melanoma and breast cancer. Improving our understanding of the immune system and molecular pathways involved in cancer will lead to the development of new therapeutic approaches for advanced solid tumors. She is actively involved in clinical trials focused on identifying genomic alterations in solid tumors that may mediate resistance to targeted therapies as well as in translational studies investigating the role of the gut microbiome in modulating the host immune system and response to anti-cancer therapies.

Selected Publications:

See current publications list at PubMed:

1. Pezo RC, Chen TW, Berman HK, Mulligan AM, Razak AA, Siu LL, Cescon DW, Amir E, Elser C, Warr DG, Sridhar SS, Yu C, Wang L, Stockley TL, Kamel-Reid S, Bedard PL. Impact factor of multi-gene mutational profiling on clinical trial outcomes in metastatic breast cancer. Breast Cancer Res Treat. 2018 Feb 1;168(1):159­–168.
2. Bailey SD, Desai K, Kron KJ, Mazrooei P, Sinnott-Armstrong NA, Treloar AE, Dowar M, Thu KL, Cescon DW, Silvester J, Yang SY, Wu X, Pezo RC, Haibe-Kains B, Mak TW, Bedard PL, Pugh TJ, Sallari RC, Lupien M. Noncoding somatic and inherited risk-variants converge to promote ESR1 expression in breast cancer. Nature Genetics. 2016;48(10):1260–66.
3. Belcheva A, Irrazabal T, Robertson SJ, Streutker C, Maughan H, Rubino S, Moriyama EH, Copeland JK, Surendra A, Kumar S, Green B, Geddes K, Pezo RC, Navarre WW, Milosevic M, Wilson BC, Girardin SE, Wolever TMS, Edelmann W, Guttman DS, Philpott DJ, Martin A. Gut microbial metabolism fuels colorectal cancer in Msh2-deficient hosts. Cell. 2014;158(2):288–99.