Dr. Alexander W. Wyatt, Ph.D 

Dr. Wyatt is an associate professor in Urologic Sciences at the University of British Columbia, and holds senior scientist roles at both the Vancouver Prostate Centre and BC Cancer. Dr. Wyatt earned his DPhil in genetics from the University of Oxford.

Dr. Wyatt's research focuses on linking (epi-)genomic alterations to patient outcomes in advanced prostate and bladder cancer, aiming to develop clinical biomarkers from these discoveries. His team has pioneered laboratory and computational techniques for analyzing genomic and epigenomic features in plasma circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA). Through applying these methods in clinical trial cohorts, they've shown that ctDNA accurately reflects metastatic lesions, predicts resistance to targeted treatments, and highlights the evolving nature of prostate and bladder cancers through systemic therapies. Additionally, Dr. Wyatt chairs the correlative sciences and tumor biobanking for the Canadian Cancer Trial Group (CCTG), playing a pivotal role in designing and implementing phase I-III clinical trial protocols nationwide. He also leads the ctDNA screening strategy and molecular tumor board for the pioneering multi-center phase 2 umbrella trial in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (NCT03385655, NCT02905318).

Explore more of Dr. Wyatt's research at https://blogs.ubc.ca/wyattlab/ 

Recent Publications

  1. Prediction of Plasma ctDNA Fraction and Prognostic Implications of Liquid Biopsy in Advanced Prostate Cancer (N. Foncesa, C. Maurice-Dror, C. Herberts et al., 2024, Nature Communications)
  2. Multiregion Sampling of De Novo Metastatic Prostate Cancer Reveals Complex Polyclonality and Augments Clinical Genotyping (E.W. Warner, K. Van der Eecken, A.J. Murtha et al., 2024, Nature Cancer)
  3. Deep Whole-Genome ctDNA Chronology of Treatment-Resistant Prostate Cancer (C. Herberts et al., 2022, Nature) 
  4. Plasma ctDNA is a Tumor Tissue Surrogate and Enables Clinical-Genomic Stratification of Metastatic Bladder Cancer (G. Vandekerkhove et al., 2021, Nature Communications)
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