Ontario's Roster Of 'Superstar Scientists'

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By Tonya Costoff and Desiree Garland

Ontario has long been heralded as a leader in the life sciences field, with such groundbreaking discoveries as insulin and stem cells.Ontario has long been heralded as a leader in the life sciences field, with such groundbreaking discoveries as insulin and stem cells. Just recently all eyes were on Ontario as Dr. Andras Nagy announced he was able to safely turn skin cells into stem cells.

“Our leading researchers are attracting attention and acclaim,” said John Wilkinson, Minister of Research and Innovation at a recent Bio 2009 – Industry Liaison Committee Meeting. “Ontario’s innovators are, in short, second to none.”

In order to maintain its leadership, the province has committed nearly $500 million to support health and life sciences innovation since 2003.

“We believe in science and the power of research to transform lives and transform our economy,” said Minister Wilkinson.
Although the province has a pool of talented scientists, four in particular have stood out and will attend BIO 2009. Here’s a look at some of the best and brightest Ontario has to offer.

Dr. Tom Hudson
President and Scientific Director
Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Toronto

From his eighth floor offices in the South Tower of the MaRS complex, Dr. Tom Hudson has a panoramic view of the many research facilities that comprise Toronto’s downtown Discovery District. Within easy view, Hudson can survey world-class biomedical research facilities at the University of Toronto, The Hosptial for Sick Children, Mount Sinai, Princess Margaret and Toronto General hospitals.

That view is a strong reminder of just why he chose to relocate to Ontario three years ago as President and Scientific Director of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, and it’s one of the best selling points he uses to achieve his vision of attracting 50 top cancer researchers to Ontario. Under Hudson’s leadership, the Institute has gained an international reputation for innovative and ground-breaking research.

It’s been three years since Hudson came onboard and already the Institute has chalked up some pretty impressive achievements: OICR-funded research projects have resulted in 26 patent applications, 14 patents granted, 14 invention disclosures, seven patents pending and four spin-off companies.

Downtown Toronto is a long way from the tiny northern Quebec town of Arvida where Hudson was raised. When the time came to leave Arvida, he headed for the big city where he attended the University of Montreal medical school.

In 1991 Hudson relocated to Boston’s Whitehead Institute/Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Genomic Research where he completed his postdoctoral studies and began working on the Human Genome Project as leader of the physical mapping team. Eventually he became the center’s assistant director where he helped generate the first dense physical and gene maps of human and mouse genomes.

Five years later he returned to Canada to found the Montreal Genome Centre at the McGill University Health Centre Research Institute. In 2003, the Centre expanded to become the McGill University and Genome Quebec Innovation Centre. In 2003, Hudson co-founded the International Haplotype Map Consortium to map the genomes of people from around the globe. Researchers use this genome bank to isolate disease-related genes.

It was an impressive career for a man who was then only in his early 40s.

“I had come to a point where I felt that I had proven myself, but I hadn’t proven to myself that I was making enough of a difference. When the HapMap came out, I started to listen to offers. The OICR offer was an opportunity to go into something new and usually those offers don’t come up very often.”

Tom and his wife Catherine did their homework before the OICR position was accepted. They looked both at the potential in the position and the quality of life in Toronto.

“I made certain there was a real funding commitment here because you don’t change your career and start a new program unless you know the financial commitment is there for more than a year or two.” He got that assurance with a commitment from the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation of $357 million over the first five years. Hudson was also attracted by the opportunity the OICR offered to bring together leading researchers from across the province in a coordinated effort to fight cancer.

In 2007, Hudson unveiled OICR’s strategic plan with a strong focus on prevention, early detection, exploring the genomes of various cancers and discovering new therapies. And that included the ambitious goal of attracting 50 top cancer researchers to Ontario – he’s about halfway through.

The next steps are embodied in the Institute’s One Millimetre Cancer Challenge, which is bringing advanced imaging and screening techniques to the Ontario health care system to detect cancer tumours when they are millimetre-sized. OICR’s commercialization arm is nimbly moving new detection devices from the lab to the clinic.

Hudson has received many awards during his stellar career, including the Clinician-Scientist Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the 2001 Young Investigator Award from the Genetics Society of Canada, the 2000 Scientist of the Year Award from Radio-Canada and being named one of the Top 40 Under 40. But the one that surprised him the most was being named Maclean’s magazine’s Achievement of the Year in Healthcare in 2005.

Dr Hertzel Gerstein
Director of Endocrinology and Metabolism
McMaster University, Hamilton

When McMaster University scientist Dr. Hertzel Gerstein began researching diabetes in the early 1990s, there was no word for the abnormal glucose levels that are prevalent among diabetic and pre-diabetic patients. So he invented a word to describe it – dysglycemia – and today it’s in use by medical professionals around the world.

In fact, Gerstein has been at the centre of most of the world’s largest diabetes-related clinical trials in recent years.

“Early in my career I spent time researching in a lab. I quickly realized that it just wasn’t for me. I discovered I loved and missed interacting with patients and I knew that I wanted to conduct research that was relevant to people with diseases, not just to doctors or other researchers,” he says.

When Gerstein first embarked on his diabetes research career following graduation from the University of Toronto medical school in 1981, less than 3% of adult Canadians suffered from diabetes; today that number has increased to more than 10% and it continues to grow. Care and treatment now eats up nearly one billion dollars in health care costs in Ontario and as much as $200 billion in the U.S.

“Type 2 diabetes also accounts for a large portion of all heart attacks, strokes, deaths and other health problems in Canada,” says Gerstein.

Gerstein believes one of the main reasons for the spike in diabetes is that we have created a ‘diabetes-prone society.’ “We live in environments (cities and suburbs) that don’t encourage physical activity and we have a food economy that promotes high-calorie/low cost food. We’ve created a dangerous environment, a perfect storm where diabetes can flourish,” he said.

And while there are several promising drug therapies on the horizon that could help alleviate or, in some instances, prevent diabetes, a healthy lifestyle is a key prerequisite.

Gerstein, working in partnership with top international scientists, has spent the past 20 years researching the root causes of diabetes, testing new drugs and new treatments, and most important, finding ways to prevent diabetes, cure it or drive it into remission.

As Canadian lead investigator of the DREAM study (Diabetes Reduction Approaches with Medications), Gerstein was at the forefront of a global clinical trial, sponsored by Glaxo Smith Kline, involving more than 5,000 patients worldwide testing ways to prevent Type 2 diabetes. The DREAM study demonstrated that the drug rosiglitazone could reduce the chances of developing the disease by as much as 60% when taken by those most at risk.

As Deputy Director of the Population Health Research Institute and the Population Health Institute Chair in Diabetes Research, Gerstein is currently leading or involved in 13 international clinical trials. Created in 1999, the Population Health Research Institute works with large international clinical trials to understand the causes of chronic diseases and how they can be prevented or treated.

The 12,000-patient ORIGIN (Outcome Reduction with an Initial Glargine Intervention) is examining if a new insulin preparation and/or omega 3 fatty acids reduces cardiovascular events in people with diabetes or those who are likely to develop it.

Gerstein has received a great deal of recognition for his ground-breaking research. He is also the recipient of the 1999 Canadian Diabetes Association’s Frederick G. Banting Award, their 2007 Best Award and their 1999 Young Scientist Award.

Gerstein is confident there will be even more advances in diabetes research in the not-too-distant future.

“We have now set the stage for a cure. We know we can prevent diabetes in 60 to 70% of cases with intensive lifestyle and drug therapies. The question now is ‘Can we reverse diabetes, or even cause it to go away?’ That’s the next step,” he said.

Dr. Michael Salter
Chair of the program in Neurosciences and Mental Health
Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto

Dr. Michael Salter received an MD degree from the University of Western Ontario in 1982 and obtained a Ph.D in Physiology from McGill in 1987. After finishing post-doctoral training at Toronto Western and Mt. Sinai hospitals, he went on to join the Research Institute of the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in 1990.

He leads the program in Neurosciences and Mental Health and holds a Canada Research Chair in Neuroplasticity and Pain at SickKids. Salter is one of the leading pain researchers, exploring the very origin of pain at the molecular level.

Salter is also a Professor of Physiology at the University of Toronto. He has received a number of awards including the Early Career Investigator Award and the Distinguished Career Investigator Award of the Canadian Pain Society, the youngest person to receive the Distinguished Career Award and the only to have received both.

On top of all of that, he also holds a Canada Research Chair in Neuroplasticity and Pain at SickKids.

As stated, Salter’s work is primary research and clinical interest in pain mechanisms and management. One of his main areas of research is on synaptic physiology and has done groundbreaking work that has led to new paradigms about neuroplasticity and about how synaptic transmission in the central nervous system is regulated by biochemical processes within neurons and by glial-neuronal interactions.

Salter’s research is shining the light on the genetic, molecular and cellular questions about why pain becomes chronic and how chronic pain information is stored and processed in the brain. The goal of his research is a new generation of drugs that are able to successfully target and treat chronic pain, and in some cases, even repair damaged nerves.

In 2005, Salter and researchers at Université Laval discovered a protein that plays a major role in chronic pain. Then in 2008, working with colleagues at U of T, Salter helped develop a novel peptide for treating two types of chronic pain by blocking a protein interaction inside the cell of the central nervous system. This research and other ongoing studies promise to alter the way chronic pain is diagnosed and treated.

Salter’s most recent findings were in February of this year, when he and SickKids collaborator Dr. Roderick McInnes reported on findings that could change the way we treat people with learning and memory defects. Salter and McInnes found a protein called Neto 1 that they determined was critical for how nerve cells communicate with each other and how that affects learning and memory in mice. Neto 1 deficient mice were given a drug that is currently being clinically tested in patients with Alzheimer’s disease, and learning and memory were restored to normal.

Salter now divides his time between a number of endeavours, including being involved in start-up biotech companies to help them take their products to the market. His work has attracted public attention around the world and has been featured on TV Ontario’s Studio 2 to CBC Radio’s Quirks and Quarks and internationally on BBC News and Scientific American. Salter’s work has been featured in such scientific and medical journals as Nature, The Lancet, The New England Journal of Medicine and The Medical Post.

Dr. Andras Nagy
Senior Investigator,
Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute Mount Sinai Hospital,
Toronto

Dr. Andras Nagy is a name many are familiar with in the life sciences field.

Nagy is best known for driving the technology for ES cell/gene knockout work as a tool for genetic embryology. His knowledge in this field continues to astonish the world as many of his ES cell lines and genetically marked mouse strains are considered as ‘gold-standard tools’ in mouse developmental biology, according to the University of Queensland, Australia.

The Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, Nagy’s laboratory at Mount Sinai Hospital, in Toronto, is where he contributes his expertise in sophisticated and innovative approaches to mouse Embryonic Stem (ES) cell-mediated genetic alterations, including gene targeting and conditional mutagenesis. He is also an Investigator at the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine, and holds a Canada Research Chair in Stem Cells and Regeneration.

As well, the Nagy Laboratory established the first two Canadian human ES (hES) cell lines; CA1 and CA2. Spurred by this success, it is now aiming at the establishment of new hES cell lines that are fully suitable for clinical trials.

This approach will include exceptionally high quality standards. An example of this includes the avoidance of contact with any animal products from the time of establishment all the way to clinical applications.

In a study published on March 1 by Nature online, Nagy discussed his discovery of a new method of creating stem cells that could lead to possible cures for devastating diseases including spinal cord injury, macular degeneration, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease. The research was funded by the Canadian Stem Cell Network and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (U.S.).

Nagy first came to Toronto from Hungary in 1988 on a three-month visiting scientist invitation from Dr. Janet Rossant, a stem cell researcher in the Developmental & Stem Cell Biology research program at SickKids Hospital. Nagy ended up returning the following year, stayed for a second and then knew he was in Ontario for good.

Nagy joined Mount Sinai Hospital in 1994 as a Principal Investigator. In 2005, he created Canada’s first embryonic stem cell lines from donated embryos no longer required for reproduction by couples undergoing fertility treatment. It is this research that played such an important role in Nagy’s most current discovery.

He has a published career of over 100 refereed papers in such journals as Nature Genetics, PNAS, Nature and Development.

Nowadays this very busy and sought after man spends his time conducting media interviews for articles that have appeared around the globe, attending international conferences to share his findings and spending plenty of time at Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute.