Rob Bristow

Weiss Medallist 2021

Professor Bristow completed his PhD in Medical Biophysics (University of Toronto, 1997) and was a Visiting Scientist to MD Anderson Cancer Centre and Massachusetts General Hospital at Harvard. He completed his MD followed by a Residency in Radiation Oncology (University of Toronto, 1996). 

Seminal contributions include his pioneering work on hypoxic tumour cell characterisation and understanding the sporadic and hereditary (e.g. BRCA2) prostate cancer genome. He showed that hypoxia can lead to a “mutator” phenotype due to decreased protein synthesis of DNA repair genes (homologous recombination defects), acquired chromosomal instability and subsequent tumour aggression. Leading the Canadian ICGC prostate cancer team, he found that a significant proportion of prostate cancers harbour copy number alterations and large-scale genomic rearrangements, that when combined with sub-regions of hypoxia, are co-drivers that lead to adverse prognosis.

Rob is twice a Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI) awardee. He was made a Canadian Cancer Society Research Scientist in 2004, an ESTRO Honorary Fellow in 2011 and a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences in 2019.

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