George Zogopoulos
Assistant Professor of Surgery, Department of Surgery
Associate Member, Department of Medicine, Division of Experimental Medicine
George Zogopoulos, MD, PhD, FRCS(C), FACS is an Associate Professor of Surgery and Oncology at McGill University and a hepato-pancreato-biliary and transplant surgeon at the MUHC. He completed his clinical training at the University of Toronto, where he obtained his medical degree, followed by residency in general surgery and surgical fellowship in hepato-pancreato-biliary surgical oncology and abdominal organ transplant surgery. His research training was completed at McGill University and at the University of Toronto. He obtained his Ph.D. in Experimental Medicine at McGill University, where he studied the regulatory mechanisms of a gene responsible for human growth. Dr. Zogopoulos pursued postdoctoral research training during his residency, enrolling in the surgeon-scientist program of the University of Toronto. He undertook his postdoctoral research fellowship under the supervision of Dr. Steven Gallinger at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, where he studied the hereditary aspects of colon and pancreatic cancers and, gained experience in research registry infrastructure, bio-banking and research consortia.
He is a junior 2 clinical research scholar of the Fonds de recherche du Québec and a scientist at the Research Institute of the MUHC and the GCRC. His research program is centered on the genetics and oncogenomics of pancreatic cancer, and his clinical practice is built around and driven by his research focus. He established and directs the Quebec Pancreas Cancer Study (QPCS), which is a translational pancreatic cancer research resource with a knowledge bank. By integrating the QPCS into the hepato-pancreato-biliary clinical practice unit, he has improved access to genetic counseling and testing for patients in the ambulatory setting at the MUHC. He has also used the QPCS infrastructure to establish collaborations with individual scientists, and to contribute to multi-centre initiatives and consortia, such as Pancreatic Cancer Genetic Epidemiology Consortium (PACGENE). More recently, he and his colleagues established the Canadian Pancreatic Oncology Network (PancOne) and the pan-Canadian Pancreatic Cancer Profiling for Individualized Care (EPPIC) study. Over the next 5 years, EPPIC will build a knowledge bank of integrated tumour molecular signatures and outcome data from 400 cases with advanced pancreatic cancer to classify pancreatic cancer into clinical subtypes.
1: Chen YI, Miller CS, Hashim A, Valenti D, Metrakos P, Barkun J, Zogopoulos G,
Barkun AN, Bessissow A. EUS-IR-Guided Revision of Whipple Anatomy for Concomitant
Afferent and Efferent Limb Obstruction. Am J Gastroenterol. 2018
Dec;113(12):1747. doi: 10.1038/s41395-018-0411-2. Epub 2018 Nov 21. PubMed PMID:
30464305.
2: Hallet J, Jayaraman S, Martel G, Ouellet JB, Lin Y, McCluskey S, Beyfuss KA,
Karanicolas PJ; Canadian Hepato-Pancreatico-Biliary Association group. Patient
blood management for liver resection: consensus statements using Delphi
methodology. HPB (Oxford). 2018 Nov 13. pii: S1365-182X(18)34472-1. doi:
10.1016/j.hpb.2018.09.022. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 30446290.
3: Tamura K, Yu J, Hata T, Suenaga M, Shindo K, Abe T, MacGregor-Das A, Borges M,
Wolfgang CL, Weiss MJ, He J, Canto MI, Petersen GM, Gallinger S, Syngal S, Brand
RE, Rustgi A, Olson SH, Stoffel E, Cote ML, Zogopoulos G, Potash JB, Goes FS,
McCombie RW, Zandi PP, Pirooznia M, Kramer M, Parla J, Eshleman JR, Roberts NJ,
Hruban RH, Klein AP, Goggins M. Mutations in the pancreatic secretory enzymes
CPA1 and CPB1 are associated with pancreatic cancer. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A.
2018 May 1;115(18):4767-4772. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1720588115. Epub 2018 Apr 18.
PubMed PMID: 29669919; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5939087.
4: Grant RC, Holter S, Borgida A, Dhani NC, Hedley DW, Knox JJ, Akbari MR,
Zogopoulos G, Gallinger S. Comparison of Practice Guidelines, BRCAPRO, and
Genetic Counselor Estimates to Identify Germline BRCA1 and BRCA2 Mutations in
Pancreatic Cancer. J Genet Couns. 2018 Aug;27(4):988-995. doi:
10.1007/s10897-018-0212-1. Epub 2018 Feb 13. PubMed PMID: 29441441.
5: Smith AL, Wong C, Cuggia A, Borgida A, Holter S, Hall A,Connor AA, Bascuñana C,
Asselah J, Bouganim N, Poulin V, Jolivet J, Vafiadis P, Le P, Martel G, Lemay F, Beaudoin A,
Rafatzand K, Chaudhury P, Barkun J, Metrakos P, Marcus V, Omeroglu A, Chong G, Akbari MR,
Foulkes WD, Gallinger S, Zogopoulos G. Reflex testing for germline BRCA1, BRCA2, PALB2 and ATM
mutations in pancreatic cancer: mutation prevalence and clinical outcomes from two Canadian
research registries. Journal of Clinical Oncology - Precision Oncology DOI: https://doi.org/10.1200/PO.17.00098
Published online on ascopubs.org/journal/po on January19, 2018. (Research Support Non-U.S. Gov’t).
6: Grant RC, Denroche RE, Borgida A, Virtanen C, Cook N, Smith AL, Connor AA,
Wilson JM, Peterson G, Roberts NJ, Klein AP, Grimmond SM, Biankin A, Cleary S,
Moore M, Lemire M, Zogopoulos G, Stein L, Gallinger S. Exome-Wide Association
Study of Pancreatic Cancer Risk. Gastroenterology. 2018 Feb;154(3):719-722.e3.
doi: 10.1053/j.gastro.2017.10.015. Epub 2017 Oct 24. PubMed PMID: 29074453;
PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5811358.
7: Cassinotto C, Dohan A, Zogopoulos G, Chiche L, Laurent C, Sa-Cunha A, Cuggia
A, Reinhold C, Gallix B. Pancreatic adenocarcinoma: A simple CT score for
predicting margin-positive resection in patients with resectable disease. Eur J
Radiol. 2017 Oct;95:33-38. doi: 10.1016/j.ejrad.2017.06.028. Epub 2017 Jul 3.
PubMed PMID: 28987689.
8: Penafuerte C, Feldhammer M, Mills JR, Vinette V, Pike KA, Hall A, Migon E,
Karsenty G, Pelletier J, Zogopoulos G, Tremblay ML. Downregulation of PTP1B and
TC-PTP phosphatases potentiate dendritic cell-based immunotherapy through
IL-12/IFNγ signaling. Oncoimmunology. 2017 Apr 28;6(6):e1321185. doi:
10.1080/2162402X.2017.1321185. eCollection 2017. PubMed PMID: 28680757; PubMed
Central PMCID: PMC5486178.
9: Rivera B, Di Iorio M, Frankum J, Nadaf J, Fahiminiya S, Arcand SL, Burk DL,
Grapton D, Tomiak E, Hastings V, Hamel N, Wagener R, Aleynikova O, Giroux S,
Hamdan FF, Dionne-Laporte A, Zogopoulos G, Rousseau F, Berghuis AM, Provencher D,
Rouleau GA, Michaud JL, Mes-Masson AM, Majewski J, Bens S, Siebert R, Narod SA,
Akbari MR, Lord CJ, Tonin PN, Orthwein A, Foulkes WD. Functionally Null RAD51D
Missense Mutation Associates Strongly with Ovarian Carcinoma. Cancer Res. 2017
Aug 15;77(16):4517-4529. doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-17-0190. Epub 2017 Jun 23.
PubMed PMID: 28646019.
10: Cassinotto C, Chong J, Zogopoulos G, Reinhold C, Chiche L, Lafourcade JP,
Cuggia A, Terrebonne E, Dohan A, Gallix B. Resectable pancreatic adenocarcinoma:
Role of CT quantitative imaging biomarkers for predicting pathology and patient
outcomes. Eur J Radiol. 2017 May;90:152-158. doi: 10.1016/j.ejrad.2017.02.033.
Epub 2017 Feb 22. PubMed PMID: 28583627.
11: Wieczorek M, Tcherkezian J, Bernier C, Prota AE, Chaaban S, Rolland Y,
Godbout C, Hancock MA, Arezzo JC, Ocal O, Rocha C, Olieric N, Hall A, Ding H,
Bramoullé A, Annis MG, Zogopoulos G, Harran PG, Wilkie TM, Brekken RA, Siegel PM,
Steinmetz MO, Shore GC, Brouhard GJ, Roulston A. The synthetic diazonamide
DZ-2384 has distinct effects on microtubule curvature and dynamics without
neurotoxicity. Sci Transl Med. 2016 Nov 16;8(365):365ra159. Erratum in: Sci
Transl Med. 2017 Dec 20;9(421):. PubMed PMID: 27856798; PubMed Central PMCID:
PMC5291303.
