Dr Nicolette Fonseca
Assistant Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology, University of Victoria
Scientist, BC Cancer Research Institute
CRC2 Systems Approaches to Cancer Biology
PhD (Microbiology and Immunology), University of British Columbia
Dr. Nicolette Fonseca is an Assistant Professor at the University of Victoria, Canada. She is a Scientist at the BC Cancer Research Institute (Deeley Research Centre) and affiliated with the Vancouver Prostate Centre. Dr. Fonseca completed her PhD in Microbiology and Immunology at the University of British Columbia and trained in prostate cancer clinical genomics as postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Alexander Wyatt’s laboratory. During her fellowship, Dr. Fonseca worked closely with Dr. Kim N. Chi’s clinical and biobanking teams at BC Cancer to investigate the prognostic utility of liquid biopsy in advanced prostate cancer.
At the University of Victoria, Dr. Fonseca’s laboratory focuses on defining the immune microenvironment of prostate tumours with specific genetic dependencies. Dr. Fonseca’s goal is to understand why prostate cancer is unresponsive to immunotherapy. Her laboratory integrates genomics and spatial imaging to investigate how aggressive prostate tumours evade the immune system.
Dr. Fonseca is a Canada Research Chair Tier 2 in Systems Approaches to Cancer Biology. Her research has been supported by funding from the Canadian Cancer Society, Canada Foundation for Innovation, UBC Immunotherapeutics Cluster and Akoya Biosciences. She is a recipient of the Prostate Cancer Foundation Young Investigator Award.