About

Nehme El-Hachem

Assistant Professor of Biology and Bioinformatics

Dr. Nehme El-Hachem is a computational biologist and bioinformatician specializing in precision oncology and systems pharmacology. He served as a translational bioinformatics scientist, where he led human sequencing and functional genomics initiatives within hospitals and research centers. Dr. El-Hachem earned his PhD from the Institut de Recherches Cliniques de Montréal (IRCM) and the Université de Montréal, complemented by extensive research collaborations at the University of Toronto, McGill University, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Research Interests

His current research interests are in:

  • Computational Precision Oncology
  • Systems Pharmacology & Pharmacogenomics
  • Computational Immuno-Oncology
  • AI in Healthcare & Genomics

SDGs Research Mapping

Dr. Nehma El-Hachem conducts research relevant to the following SDGs:

Selected Publications

  1. Savoie C, Wu Z, Saab F, et al. (2025). The GF-NEO discovery platform unveils a [KQE][DG] sequence motif within fusion neoantigens in pediatric cancer. iScience
  2. Bikorimana JP, El-Hachem N, et al. (2025). A Spike-Accum bioconjugate protein vaccine confers potent SARS-CoV-2-specific immunity. iScience
  3. Safa-Tahar-Henni S, et al. (2025). Comparative small molecule screening of primary human acute leukemias, engineered human leukemia and leukemia cell lines. Leukemia
  4. Bikorimana JP, El-Hachem N, et al. (2024). Local delivery of accutox® synergises with immune-checkpoint inhibitors at disrupting tumor growth. Journal of Translational Medicine
  5. Parisien M, Lima LV, Dagostino C, El-Hachem N, et al. (2022). Acute inflammatory response via neutrophil activation protects against the development of chronic pain. Science Translational Medicine
  6. Abusarah J, Khodayarian F, El-Hachem N, et al. (2021). Engineering immunoproteasome-expressing mesenchymal stromal cells: A potent cellular vaccine for lymphoma and melanoma in mice. Cell Reports Medicine
  7. El-Hachem N, Eid E, Nemer G, Dbaibo G, Abbas O, Rubeiz N, Zeineldine S, Matar GM, Bikorimana JP, Shammaa R, Haibe-Kains B, Kurban M, Rafei M. Integrative Transcriptome Analyses Empower the Anti-COVID-19 Drug Arsenal. iScience
  8. Goyette MA, Cusseddu R, Elkholi I, Abu-Thuraia A, El-Hachem N, et al. (2019). AXL knockdown gene signature reveals a drug repurposing opportunity for a class of antipsychotics to reduce growth and metastasis of triple-negative breast cancer. Oncotarget
  9. Smirnov P, Kofia V, Maru A, Freeman M, Ho C, El-Hachem N, et al. (2018). PharmacoDB: an integrative database for mining in vitro anticancer drug screening studies. Nucleic Acids Research
  10. Grossmann P, Stringfield O, El-Hachem N, et al. (2017). Defining the biological basis of radiomic phenotypes in lung cancer. eLife
  11. El-Hachem N, Gendoo DMA, Ghoraie LS, et al. (2017). Integrative cancer pharmacogenomics to infer large-scale drug taxonomy. Cancer Research
  12. Safikhani Z, Smirnov P, Thu KL, Silvester J, El-Hachem N, et al. (2017). Gene isoforms as expression-based biomarkers predictive of drug response in vitro. Nature Communications
  13. Smirnov P, Safikhani Z, El-Hachem N, et al. (2016). PharmacoGx: an R package for analysis of large pharmacogenomic datasets. Bioinformatics
  14. De Jay N, Papillon-Cavanagh S, Olsen C, El-Hachem N, et al. (2013). mRMRe: an R package for parallelized mRMR ensemble feature selection. Bioinformatics
  15. Haibe-Kains B, El-Hachem N, et al. (2013). Inconsistency in large pharmacogenomic studies. Nature

Academic Degrees

  • Ph.D. Biomedical Sciences / Computational Biology Université de Montréal & IRCM, Canada