Hematologist and researcher Denis Claude Roy was awarded the 2020 Persillier-Lachapelle Career Recognition Award, one of the prestigious awards of excellence from the health and social services network. Dr. Denis Claude Roy has always made the choice to devote his energies, his talent and his expertise to improving the health of the population. While making a difference in the lives of thousands of Quebecers suffering from cancer, this clinician and full professor in the Department of Medicine at the Université de Montréal has become, over the course of his functions and his work, a leading figure in the world of research and the deployment of cutting-edge treatments, not only in our community, but in Canada and internationally.
Thanks to its determination and its cell therapy laboratory, the CIUSSS de l'Est-de-l'Île-de-Montréal (CIUSSS-EMTL) recently became the first Canadian establishment to offer the revolutionary CAR T-cell treatment. The Centre d'excellence en thérapie cellulaire (CETC) that Dr. Roy founded is now the largest cell therapy center in Canada and one of the most developed in the world. Moreover, it is because it placed all its confidence in the inestimable quality of the work carried out and the care offered by the teams led by Dr. Roy that the government of Quebec recently granted the Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont the designation of Institut universitaire d’hémato-oncologie et de thérapie cellulaire (IUHOTC). It is certain that hemato-oncology and cell therapy would not be at their current levels of development and success without Dr. Roy's research work and its clinical deployment.
It is his vision and his passion and those of his teams that have positioned the CIUSSS-EMTL and all of Quebec at the forefront of cell therapy. Today Director of IUHOTC, Dr Roy is also Medical Director of the Centre d'excellence en thérapie cellulaire, Managing Director of CellCAN, the Canadian Network of Regenerative Medicine and Cellular Therapy for Knowledge Mobilization, and Scientific Director of the Centre pour la commercialisation de l’immunothérapie du cancer (C3i).
"On behalf of the entire team at the Centre de recherche de l’Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont and on my own behalf, I would like to congratulate Dr. Roy on this great honor. The 2020 Persillier-Lachapelle Career Recognition Award recognizes his invaluable contribution as a clinician and researcher, "says Dr. Sylvie Lesage Ph. D., Scientific Director of the Centre de recherche de l’Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont.