Faculty of Medicine

Montagnier, a French virologist, and Dr. Francoise Barré-Sinoussi first made the HIV discovery in 1983 while working at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. “Winning a Nobel will encourage me to pursue my research projects and hopefully will allow me to get funding more easily. I am working on an AIDS vaccine which will be given to patients already infected with HIV, as a complement to antiviral therapy,” he says.

The Church lectureship series was established in 1992 by Church’s friends and colleagues to honour his contributions to the Faculty of Medicine.

The Gairdner Foundation was created in 1957 by James Arthur Gairdner to recognize and reward the achievements of medical researchers whose work contributes significantly to improving the quality of human life. Since the first awards were made in 1959, the Gairdners have become Canada’s foremost international awards. They hold up the pinnacle of achievement as a mirror to Canadians, and in so doing, play a role in helping Canada achieve its goals of excellence.

Welcoming Remarks

Dr. Tom Feasby

Dean, Faculty of Medicine

Introduction by Dr. Keith Sharkey

Professor, Departments of Physiology & Biophysics and Medicine

Featured Lecturer

Dr. Jeffrey Friedman, 2005 Gairdner Laureate

“Leptin and the homeostatic control of energy balance”

Dr. Friedman, born in Orlando, Florida, received his medical degree from Albany Medical College of Union University and residency training in Internal Medicine at Albany Medical Center Hospital. He received his Ph.D. degree in 1986 from the Rockefeller University and later joined the Faculty, where he is presently Professor and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Dr. Friedman is a leader in the biology of the mechanisms that control body weight. In 1994, he completed an investigative “tour de force” that spanned nearly a decade when he discovered the genetic defect in the murine “obese” (ob) mutant. Leptin was the first fat cell-derived hormone to be discovered. Building on the seminal early work of Douglas Coleman (2005 Gairdner Laureate), he employed positional cloning approaches to characterize the defective gene well before the advent of today’s repositories of gene sequence, sophisticated investigative genetic tools and informative DNA markers. The isolation of the gene rapidly led to his integrative studies which helped define the biological effects of leptin at the whole animal level and the elucidation of a genetic defect in the leptin receptor in the “diabetes” (db) mouse model of obesity. Taken together, his work provided the “spark” that has ignited an international frenzy of academic and industry-based research into the study of the causes and treatment options for obesity. The discovery of leptin and newer studies defining the link between leptin released from fat cells and modulation of brain function by leptin have fundamentally advanced our understanding of the control of total body fat content.

Dr. Friedman has received many accolades and awards including membership in the National Academy of Sciences (2001) and the Bristol-Meyers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Metabolic.

Introduction by Dr. Jeb Gaudet

Assistant Professor, Departments of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and Medical Genetics

Featured lecturer:

Dr. Victor Ambros, 2008 Gairdner Laureate

“Micro RNA pathways in animal development”

Dr. Ambros grew up in Vermont and graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1975. He did his graduate research (1976-1979) with David Baltimore at MIT, studying poliovirus genome structure and replication. He began to study the genetic pathways controlling developmental timing in the nematode C. elegans as a postdoctoral fellow in H. Robert Horvitz’s lab at MIT, and continued those studies while on the faculty of Harvard (1984-1992), Dartmouth (1992-2007), and the University of Massachusetts Medical School (2008-present). In 1993, members of the Ambros lab identified the first microRNA, the product of lin-4, a heterochronic gene of C. elegans. Since then, the role of microRNAs in development has been a major focus of his research.

Dr. Ambros is primarily a developmental biologist, interested in the genetic regulatory mechanisms that control animal development, and in particular the molecules that function during animal development to ensure the proper timing of developmental events. He has primarily employed the nematode C. elegans as a model system for studying the function of regulators of developmental timing, which in C. elegans are known as the “heterochronic genes”, in reference to the remarkable changes in relative timing of developmental events that are elicited by mutations in these genes. The heterochronic genes comprise a set of interrelated regulatory pathways that include proteins that regulate the transcription of other genes, and also a class of small RNA, known as microRNAs, that regulate the production of protein by the messenger RNAs of specific target genes. Much of his research in recent years has been aimed at understanding how microRNAs are integrated into broader regulatory networks related to animal development and human disease, and at uncovering the molecular mechanisms for how microRNAs exert their effects on gene expression.

Introduction by Dr. Naweed Syed

Head, Department of Cell Biology & Anatomy

Featured speaker:

Dr. Samuel Weiss, 2008 Gairdner Laureate

“Adult neural stem cells: From basic science to therapeutic applications”

Dr. Weiss received his B.Sc. in Biochemistry at McGill University in 1978, and in 1983, completed his Ph.D. in Chemistry (Specialization: Neurobiology) at the University of Calgary. Followed by post doctoral fellowships (1983-1988) at the Centre de Pharmacologie-Endocrinologie, Montpellier, France, and at the University of Vermont College of Medicine, Burlington, Vermont, funded by the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (AHFMR) and the Medical Research Council of Canada (MRC), Dr. Weiss was appointed Assistant Professor and MRC Scholar at the University of Calgary. He is presently Professor and AHFMR Scientist in the Departments of Cell Biology & Anatomy, and Pharmacology & Therapeutics at the University of Calgary Faculty of Medicine. Dr. Weiss is also the inaugural Director of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, a partnership between the Faculty of Medicine and the Calgary Health Region, whose mission is to translate innovative research and education into advances in neurological and mental health care.

Two major discoveries are the hallmarks of Dr. Weiss’ research career. In 1985, together with Dr. Fritz Sladeczek, Dr. Weiss discovered the metabotropic glutamate receptor - now a major target for pharmaceutical research and development for neurological disease therapies. In 1992, Dr. Weiss discovered neural stem cells in the brains of adult mammals. This research has lead to new approaches for brain cell replacement and repair.

Dr. Weiss’ current research focuses on the cellular, molecular and in vivo biology of neural precursors, and on the direct regulation of intrinsic adult neural stem cells and functional recovery in animal models of brain and spinal cord injury or disease. Two new research avenues are directed towards: (1) elucidating the role for new adult

neurons in the formation of social memories, and (2) understanding adult human brain tumour stem cell biology, in particular the mechanisms of autocrine growth factor signalling that lead to uncontrolled growth.

Dr. Weiss sits on numerous national and international science and peer review committees, has authored many publications, holds key patents in the neural stem cell field and has founded two biotechnology companies. In 2002, Dr. Weiss was awarded the Fondation IPSEN (France) Prize in Neuronal Plasticity and in 2004 received the Canadian Federation of Biological Societies Presidents’ Award in Life Sciences Research.

Closing Remarks

Ross Mitchell, PhD

Dr. Ross Mitchell, newly appointed iCORE/ Calgary Scientific Inc. Industry
Chair in Medical Imaging Informatics at the University of Calgary, explains
how his research is focused on developing new methods to use diagnostic
information from medical images. With new funding announced July 30, 2008,
Dr. Mitchell hopes to help doctors rapidly and reliably identify brain
regions at risk during acute stroke, find new methods to predict how a brain
tumor will respond to therapy, and better gauge the effectiveness of new
Multiple Sclerosis treatments.