Dr. Nada Jabado is a Professor of Paediatrics at McGill University and a paediatric neuro-oncologist at the Montreal Children’s Hospital. She is a CIHR Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Paediatric Oncology.

She completed her residency in paediatrics with a specialisation in haemato-oncology. She also obtained a PhD in Immunology in Paris, France, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in biochemistry at McGill.

She began her career as an independent investigator at McGill in 2003, pioneering a research programme in paediatric brain tumours. Her group uncovered that paediatric high-grade astrocytomas (HGA) are molecularly and genetically distinct from adult tumours. More importantly, they identified a new molecular mechanism driving paediatric HGA, namely recurrent somatic driver mutations in the tail of histone 3 variants (H3.3 and H3.1).

Dr. Jabado’s ground-breaking work has created a paradigm shift in cancer with the identification of histone mutations in human disease which has revolutionised this field, as the epigenome was a previously unsuspected hallmark of oncogenesis, thus linking development and what we now know are epigenetic-driven cancers.

She has been inducted as an Officer of the Order of Canada, a Fellow to the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, has served as a member of the CIHR Governing Council and has received numerous awards for her work, including the 2024 L’Oréal-UNESCO International Award For Women in Science.