DANIEL DUROCHER

Daniel Durocher is a Senior Investigator at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute where he also acts as Director of the Biomedical Program. He is a Full Professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto and a Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Molecular Genetics of the DNA Damage Response. Dr. Durocher studied at Université de Montréal and McGill University before undertaking his postdoctoral training at the University of Cambridge. Dr. Durocher’s overarching interest lies in understanding how cells maintain genome integrity. His work often employs functional genomics as a tool to chart DNA repair and genome stability processes, with the added aim of discovering novel cancer drug targets. In 2016, Dr. Durocher co-founded Repare Therapeutics with Drs Frank Sicheri and Agnel Sfeir with key support from Versant Ventures. Repare is an oncology drug discovery company that aims to discover new drugs that target genome instability in cancer based on the principle of synthetic lethality. Repare Therapeutics went public on the Nasdaq stock exchange (ticker: RPTX) in June 2020 and has progressed two molecules in clinical trials: RP-3500, a highly selective inhibitor of the ATR kinase and RP-6306, a first-in-class inhibitor of the PKMYT1 kinase. Dr. Durocher has received numerous awards for his work, including the 2015 Paul Marks Prize from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He lives in Toronto with his wife Lucy and his daughter Chloë.