Dr. Alexander Wyatt is an Assistant Professor in Urologic Sciences at the University of British Columbia. He has a PhD in genetics (University of Oxford), and now specializes in human cancer genomics, particularly as it relates to cancer patient outcomes. The primary research goals of the Wyatt laboratory are to identify associations between molecular alterations in metastatic genitourinary cancers and clinical outcomes: thereby developing biomarkers for guiding therapy selection. The laboratory leverages a variety of next-generation sequencing and bioinformatics techniques to interrogate tissue and liquid biopsies from patients enrolled on a series of ongoing clinical trials and protocols. Recent work from Dr. Wyatt’s team, in close collaboration with Dr. Kim Chi and other senior medical oncologists and urologists, has demonstrated that plasma circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) is highly representative of metastatic lesions in prostate and bladder cancer, and that somatic alterations detected in ctDNA can help predict therapy resistance or response. Dr. Wyatt directs the ctDNA screening strategy and the molecular tumor board for IND.223/234, a Canadian multi-center phase 2 umbrella trial in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer patients (NCT03385655, NCT02905318).
Dr. Wyatt’s research is funded through peer-reviewed grants from the NIH/NCI, CIHR (project grant and early career investigator award), Prostate Cancer Foundation, Prostate Cancer Canada, Canadian Cancer Trials Group, Bladder Cancer Canada, and several contract research agreements with industry.
Dr. Wyatt’s laboratory team is physically housed at the Vancouver Prostate Centre located on the VCH campus. The Vancouver Prostate Centre is part of the Department of Urologic Sciences (FoM, UBC), and part of VCHRI. Dr. Wyatt’s current laboratory team consists of 6 graduate students, 4 technicians, and 2 postdoctoral fellows, as well as several undergraduate appointments.