Cécile Tremblay

Cécile Tremblay is an infectious diseases/medical microbiologist specialist and the Université de Montréal/Pfizer Chair on Translational HIV Research. She is full professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Infectious Diseases at University of Montreal and a researcher at Centre de Recherche du Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM). She obtained her M.D. at University of Montreal in 1992. She did her residency in medical microbiology and infectious diseases at University of Montreal and was certified by the Royal College of Physician of Canada in 1997. She then pursued a post-doctoral fellowship in HIV research at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. She came back to Montreal in 2001, where she developed a research program focused on studying the virological determinants of HIV disease progression as well as molecular pathways involved in drug resistance. She is the founder and director of a pan-Canadian cohort of HIV-infected subjects with slow disease progression, which is a collaborative effort by Canadian researchers to better understand HIV immunopathology. She is also coordinating a research initiative on premature aging and cardiovascular disease in HIV in Canada. From 2012 to 2015, she served as Director of the Laboratoire de Santé Publique du Québec (Quebec Public Health Laboratory). During her mandate, she developed a research program on HIV epidemiology in Québec and was responsible for the coordination of the laboratory response to biological threats and emerging infectious diseases. She has been involved in several initiative on HIV prevention both in West Africa as well as in Canada. She was the Canadian principal investigator for the Ipergay trial which demonstrated the efficacy of pre-exposure prophylaxis in a population of gay men. She has set up a prospective cohort of MSM to study the uptake of PrEP and its impact on HIV incidence. She is piloting several projects on HIV prevention in various key populations such as people from HIV endemic countries living in Quebec and vulnerable indigenous populations. She is the P.I. of an Ebola vaccine trial in HIV-infected individuals. She is now the Director of the Réseau SIDA-Maladies Infectieuses supported by the Fonds de Recherche du Québec en Santé.