The Department

In Memoriam:

Ralph Steinman was the first Canadian to win the Nobel Prize, in the category of Physiology or Medicine, since Banting and McLeod in 1923. Long-expected by colleagues, friends and family, Ralph, himself, wanted to live to hear if that announcement would ever come. Ironically, however, he would never know that he had received this honor, since he died, far too young, at the age of 68 on September 30, 2011, three days before the announcement was made.  In an unprecedented move, the Nobel Committee decided to stand by the decision, and made the award posthumously, since it had been given in good faith, and without the Committee’s knowledge of Ralph’s death.

Ralph Steinman was born in Montreal, but his family moved to Sherbrooke while he was still quite young, and Sherbrooke is where he grew up.  He returned to Montreal and McGill University where he received his BSc degree from the McGill Biochemistry Department, and then went on to Harvard Medical School for his MD. He completed his internship and residency training at the Massachusetts General Hospital and then went to Zanvil (Zan) Cohn’s Laboratory at Rockefeller University for post-doctoral training, and would remain there for the rest of his professional life.

Zan Cohn was the founder of modern day macrophage physiology, virtually rediscovering the function of Elie Metchnikoff’s phagocytic cell. Ralph began work on the macrophage in 1970, but some three years later, first saw the splenic cell that would occupy the remainder of his career. This was, of course, the dendritic cell (DC), the study of which would revolutionize the field of Immunology. 

Until the discovery of the DC, the field of Immunology was conceptualized as two separate entities. There was the inflammatory, Innate Immune Response on the one hand, and that of the Adaptive Immune Response, on the other.  This dichotomy left both entities floating about in rather incomplete fashions, and with a great many questions that remained to be answered as to if and how these two ‘immunities’ interacted. It was Ralph Steinman, leading his group of students, colleagues, and collaborators who defined the function of the DC as the cell that joined the Innate and Adaptive Immune Responses, thereby redefining the field of Immunology. 

Over some three and half decades, Ralph Steinman was able, first, to successfully isolate populations of DCs; a most difficult undertaking. He learned how to enrich these cells in vivo and in vitro, and how to grow them in culture, thus making studies of the DC a rational undertaking on an international scale. He defined the critical role of the DC as the professional antigen presenting cell by showing the series of steps that allowed the DC to digest organisms that had undergone phagocytosis. Then came the studies on how the various, digested foreign peptides were linked to molecules of the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) that were synthesized by the DC to form MHC-peptide complexes, which were then transported to the DC cell surface. This was the final step of the Innate Immune response. Subsequently, the DC’s presentation of the MHC-peptide complex to the T helper cell initiated the Adaptive Immune response. And so the field of Immunology was, at last, united. The role of the DC in antigen-specific tolerance, amongst yet other physiologic functions, would follow in later studies.

Ralph Steinman was the consummate Clinician-Scientist. An outstanding experimentalist he demanded excellence of himself, and of those who worked with him. But teaching and the demand for excellence were always accompanied by kindness, and a broad smile that seemed never to leave his face. He was a mentor to a huge cadre of Immunologists, many of whom would go on to outstanding careers in their own right, and in whom he always took great pride. In conversations with him, there seemed no doubt that his three priorities in life were family, education and research, in that order. And he was remarkably successful in all three areas. 

Always the clinician, Ralph saw the value of DCs in the field of vaccine therapy, both in infectious diseases and in cancer. Indeed, he and his colleagues learned how to expose DCs in culture to the cancer cells of patients, so that a dendritic cell vaccine could be created which would specifically attack the autologous cancer cells of the patient.  In yet another irony, Ralph’s final Clinical Trial was some four years of receiving a dendritic cell vaccine directed against his own pancreatic cancer. There is little doubt that his prolonged survival was largely due to the vaccine employed. 

Ralph Steinman was, in many ways, virtually all things to all people. Family man, physician, scientist, colleague, mentor, and friend. In all these roles, he will be greatly missed. 2012 Mar. 11.

Phil Gold CC, OQ, MD, PhD
Douglas G. Cameron Professor of Medicine,
Professor of Physiology and Oncology,
McGill University
Executive Director Clinical Research Centre
McGill University Heath Centre

We regret to announce the death last week of Dr. John H. Spencer, formerly a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry McGill University, from 1961-1978 and then he moved to  Queen's University as Professor and then Chair in the Department of Biochemistry until 1990.

John Spencer was born in Stapleford, Nottinghamshire, England, on April 10, 1933. He received his B.Sc (Hons) from St. Andrews University (Scotland) in Biochemistry in 1956. In 1960 he received his PhD from the Biochemistry Department of McGill University in Montreal, and conducted post-doctoral studies there, and then at Columbia University with Erwin Chargaff, the DNA chemist, from 1959 to 1961.

Professor Spencer had a distinguished research career as a biochemist and pioneered approaches to DNA sequencing and the measurement of gene expression.  In recognition of his achievements he was the recipient of many awards and trained a generation of distinguished researchers.

Our sympathy to his wife Magdeline Kulin and their children. 2012 Feb. 22.

Congratulations...

Dr. Archibald Macallum was the first Chairman of the Department of Biochemistry from 1920-1928. New research on origins of life credits this long-dead Canadian. 2012 Feb. 21.

The Biochemical Society, U.K. introduced a new award in 2011, to celebrate its first 100 years, which will be awarded annually.  The first Centenary Award winner is our colleague, Dr. Nahum Sonenberg. 
Nahum will present the Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins Memorial Lecture, which will be published in Biochemical Society Transactions at the Biochemical Society Centenary celebration event on December 15, 2011. This is an award of high distinction!! 

Dr. Anne-Claude Gingras, Principal Investigator, Scientist, Mount Sinai Hospital and former graduate student from Dr. Sonenberg's lab, has been awarded Canada's Most Powerful Top 100 Women. One of only a handful of scientists to be included among the list of Canada's leading women in their fields. She is renowned for her studies of protein interactions that play a role in the development of cancer, drug resistance and immunity. Congratulations on her incredible success. 2011 Dec. 1.

The Canadian Cancer Research Alliance (CCRA) announced the recipients of its inaugural awards, which recognize contributions to cancer research in Canada. Dr. Philip E. Branton received the award for Exceptional Leadership in Cancer Research for his outstanding contributions to the development of the cancer research community and inter-agency research collaboration in Canada through the founding of the Canadian Cancer Research Alliance. Congratulations on this award, read more in Med-e News, 2011 Nov. 23

Congratulations to our Biochemistry Department colleague Professor Nahum Sonenberg, who has received the 41st Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Science, "for his transformative studies of the control of protein synthesis in mammalian cells". His research on the mechanism and control of protein synthesis has had and continues to have, a huge impact on our understanding of many fundamental biological  processes underlying diabetes, cancer, viral infection, immunology,  and memory, read more in McGill Newsroom, press release, 2011 Oct. 26.

The Symposium to celebrate the opening of the Cystic Fibrosis Translational Research Centre (CFTRc) on October 17, 2011, was very successful. The goal of the CFTRc is to find a cure for cystic fibrosis. The CFTRc provides a platform for basic CF research and the development of therapies targeting the basic defect that underlies Cystic Fibrosis and other protein trafficking diseases. It has been established with the support the successful CFI 6 application (The McGill University Life Sciences Complex (MULSC): “Disease to therapy initiative”, total value $26.5M, that paid for renovations and new equipment) and is located in the McIntyre Medical Sciences building. It is part of a larger McGill initiative on orphan and neglected diseases.
Operating support for CFTRc projects has been provided by the CIHR, Cystic Fibrosis Canada, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Therapeutics (USA), GenomeQuebec, and by contracts and collaborations with pharmaceutical companies.
Thanks to funding from the E. Mackenzie Harpur Paediatric Fund and the BREATHE (RESPIRE) program of Cystic Fibrosis Canada, we have established a network of clinical collaborators in Quebec and the infrastructure needed to study airway cells obtained during lung transplantation and other procedures in the search for an effective therapy.
We expect the centre to grow as resources become available. Current members include; John Hanrahan, (founding Director); Gergely Lukacs; David Thomas; Jason Young; Michael Hallett; Simon Rousseau; Larry Lands; Dao Nguyen; Yves Berthiaume (CHUM- Hotel Dieu); Andre Cantin (CHUS- Fleurimont); Raymond Andersen (Dept. Chemistry, UBC).