Biography
Dr. Jean-Simon Diallo obtained his bachelor鈥檚 degree in biochemistry with honours in bioinformatics from the University of Ottawa in 2000. He went on to Montreal to pursue a masters鈥 degree in biochemistry at McGill University where he studied the epigenetic regulation of globin genes with the late Dr. Lee Wall. In 2003, he began his Ph.D in molecular biology at the Universit茅 de Montr茅al, in the laboratory of Drs. Anne-Marie Mes-Masson and Fred Saad. There he studied prognostic markers/models for prostate cancer as well as the use of naturally occurring phytochemicals for prostate cancer therapy. Funded by the Fonds de Recherche en Sant茅 du Quebec (FRSQ) fellowship, he joined Dr. John Bell鈥檚 lab as a postdoctoral fellow in 2007, applying his broad expertise and collaborative approach to the field of oncolytic viruses. In Dr. Bell鈥檚 group, Dr. Diallo pioneered high-throughput methods to identify compounds that enhance viral replication. Now an Associate Scientist at the OHRI working with a multidisciplinary network of collaborators, he and his team are using medicinal chemistry, mass spectrometry and high-throughput molecular biology approaches to study how 鈥渧iral sensitizer鈥 drugs work. He is also expanding the scope of application of viral sensitizer drugs, which in addition to oncolytic virotherapy, show tremendous promise in virus/vaccine manufacturing and gene therapy applications.