Professor, University of Toronto
Senior Scientist, Sunnybrook Health Services Center
Dr. Robert Kerbel received his PhD in immunology in 1972 from the Dept. of Immunology & Microbiology, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, after which he undertook postdoctoral training in London at the Institute for Cancer Research in tumor immunology. He started his independent research program in 1975 studying tumor immunology and metastasis at Queen’s, and was appointed Director of the Cancer Biology Program in the Dept. of Pathology in 1981. In 1985 he was recruited as Director of Cancer Biology Research at Mt. Sinai Hospital, Toronto. He then moved to Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre to assume the same position from 1991 until 2001.
Dr. Kerbel held a Canada Research Chair in Tumor Biology, Angiogenesis & Antiangiogenic Therapy (2001-2015), and is a professor in the Dept. of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto, and Senior Scientist at the Sunnybrook Research Institute. His overall main research interest has been devising new cancer treatment strategies having improved efficacy and reduced toxicity for the treatment of metastatic disease. This culminated in his translational studies of combinatorial low-dose ‘metronomic’ chemotherapy with antiangiogenic drugs. Other major contributions include development of improved preclinical investigational therapeutic models in mice involving early stage or advanced metastatic disease, linking the fields of angiogenesis and oncogenes, uncovering mechanisms by which antiangiogenic drugs increase chemotherapy efficacy, and elucidating mechanisms of intrinsic or acquired antiangiogenic drug resistance. His current major research interests include assessment of ‘vessel co-option’ in tumors in response to antiangiogenic drugs, and combination therapy utilizing immune checkpoint inhibitors with VEGF (or ang2) targeting antiangiogenic drugs, using new mouse models for immune therapy his lab is developing.
Dr. Kerbel has published 417 papers, given 862 invited lectures around the world. He is and has been an editorial board member of numerous international scientific journals. Currently these include Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, EMBO Molecular Medicine, and the International Journal of Cancer. Among the awards he has received include the 2004 Canadian Cancer Society Robert Noble Award for Excellence in Cancer Research, the Breast Cancer Research Award from the European Institute of Oncology in 2008, a Man of Distinction Honor by the Israel Cancer Research Fund in 2011, and the Colin Thomson Memorial Medal for achievements in cancer research from Worldwide Cancer Research (formerly known as the Association for International Cancer Research) in 2013. His research studies have been supported by numerous agencies including the National Institutes of Health, USA, the Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, and Worldwide Cancer Research. He also collaborated extensively with industry and has consulted for over 20 pharmaceutical and biotech companies during the last 25 years.
