Volume 4, Number 1, Summer 2009

RESEARCH, DISCOVERY AND INNOVATION AT MCGILL UNIVERSITY

From Eureka Worldto your Good ideas may start in a university, but great ideas don’t stay there. From healthier babies to heartier crops (and even swimming robots), discover 33 ways that McGill research changes lives.

PLUS: à Epigenetic breakthrough à A memory pioneer speaks à China’s cultural history Volume 4, Number 1 headway E McGill University and the Office of Public Affairs and International Relations) by the Vice-Principal (Research is published twice ayear Headway www.mcgill.ca/headway/ Headway canbefound online at 40031154 Publication Agreement Number http://francais.mcgill.ca/headway/ nous àl’adresse ci-dessus ouconsulter veuillez communiquer avec de cettepublication enfrançais, Pour recevoir unexemplaire Fax: 514-398-2700 Telephone: 514-398-7404 headway.magazine H3A 3L8 Montreal, Quebec Suite 900 1555 Peel Street Headway C Jennifer Towell Tara Shaughnessy Daniel McCabe Jackel Jane Laurie Devine Brennan Jake S Carmen Jensen G Jacquie Rourke Susan Murley C James Martin Summer 2009 at McGillUniversity Research, andinnovation discovery EILTAK TO THANKS PECIAL DITOR ORRESPONDENCE ONSULTING RAPHIC D (ISSN 1911-8112) ESIGNER E DITORS @ mcgill.ca Street Journal work hasappeared inthe Montreal illustrator Matt Forsythe’s O at the 2009Doug Wright Awards. best experimental ornon-narrative work won the Pigskin Peters Award for ojingogo McGill News THE N C , published byDrawn &Quarterly, OVER . Hisgraphic novel , chickaDEE and the Wall 10 29 28 26 23 7 3 2 1 From Eureka toYour World COVER STORY ofChildAbuse The Legacy IN FOCUS NEWS WORKSPACE MESSAGE FROMTHEVICE-PRINCIPAL MAKING HEADWAY Memory Pioneer FIRST PERSON Over theGreat Wall The Kingof(Understanding)Pain IN DEPTH beginning of creating life-changing innovations. In the worldof McGill research, creating new knowledge isn’tanend—it’s the grow uptobecome men who commitsuicide. dramatic changes toyoung male victims’ brains—increasing the odds thatthey’ll A startling new study suggests thatphysical and emotional childabusemakes discoveries, awards and innovations. Meet McGill’s three new KillamPrizelaureates and read aboutthe latest Go inside apaleontologist’s cabinet of curiosities. contentsMcGill Observatory. Literally. When Canadians wanted toknow the time, they listened tothe state of Canadian science. Neuropsychologist Brenda Milner reflects onher illustrious career—and the current history—and technology, and archaeology, and poetry—tothe West. For over40years, historian RobinYates hasbeenbringing earlyChinese cultural history—and future—of alleviating chronic pain. New Canadian Medical Hall of Fame inductee Ronald Melzack talksaboutthe Research

Message from the Vice-Principal (Research and International Relations)

“Canada is a solid, middle-of-the-road performer.” That’s the conclusion of Canada’s Science, Technology and Innovation Council in its 2008 State of the Nation report, which benchmarks Canada’s performance on a wide range of science, technology and innovation indicators on an international scale. The STIC says that improving Canada’s performance “will require a concerted, coordinated effort by Canadian business, higher education, government and non-profit institutions.” Indeed. Solid isn’t a point of pride. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development ranks Canada near the very bottom in terms of private sector–university collaboration—far behind leaders Finland, Sweden and Belgium, and even Iceland, Portugal and the Slovak Republic. The problem is a lack of dialogue: In the STIC report, innovative Canadian firms say their most important sources of information are clients, suppliers and trade shows—not universities, despite the fact that higher education institutions account for 34 per cent of R&D in Canada, equivalent to $10 billion. This disconnect must be addressed if Canada is to parlay its investments and strengths into improved competitiveness. McGill University has a strong track record of industry collabora- tion—in fact, the cover story of this issue of Headway looks at some of the outstanding research that has led to many successful, life- improving ventures—but we know there’s much more work to be done. We are currently transforming our research portfolio to respond to the dynamic nature of our research partnerships. This restructuring will streamline our services to our researchers so that we can better capitalize on opportunities, whether they concern partnerships with government, industry, or academe. And we are taking proactive steps—like the recent Crossroad for BioTransfer event (see page 22 for coverage), which allows our world-class investigators to showcase their discoveries to private sector investors and partners. There’s no question we have the talent. Consider our three new Killam Prize winners, Philippe Gros, Wagdi Habashi and François Ricard. Or our new Killam Fellowship winner, Robert Brandenberger. Or cognitive neuroscience pioneer Brenda Milner, who, as this magazine was about to go to press, added Grand Officer in the Order of Quebec to her already lengthy list of honours. Or our two new Steacie Fellowship recipients, Andrew Hendry and Karim Nader. I could go on. The challenge now is to work across sectors so that we can strategically focus that talent, allowing it to truly fulfill its vast potential. Because the middle of the road is not where we’re destined to be. DiscoveryDenis Thérien Vice-Principal (Research and International Relations)

InnovationMcGill University 1 WORKSPACE Hans Larsson From the tender age of five, all Hans Larsson ever wanted to be found evidence of the oldest carnivorous amphibians in Niger. In was a vertebrate paleontologist. He devoured dinosaur books the lab, Larsson recently made headlines for his current work to and pestered his parents into summer camping trips in the fossil- reverse-engineer a chicken embryo that will grow dinosaur-like rich Alberta badlands—which is how a 14-year-old Larsson ended teeth, tail and claws—a project funded by paleontologist Jack up meeting paleontology legend Philip Currie. Currie was impressed Horner, the inspiration for the film Jurassic Park. Larsson’s office by this enthusiastic kid and gave him two pieces of advice: keep on the third floor of the Redpath Museum is a veritable curiosity pursuing scientific study, and go to McGill. Larsson did both. Now closet of wonders from Earth’s ancient past—and a testament to the Canada Research Chair in Vertebrate Paleontology and curator his bottomless passion for discovery.■ of vertebrate paleontology at McGill’s Redpath Museum, Larsson divides his time between the field and the lab. He’s discovered Hans Larsson, photographed in his Redpath Museum office on April 8, physical proof that dinosaurs once lived in Canada’s Arctic and 2009, by Rachel Granofsky.

Larsson did fieldwork near Monte Alto, The four books that most fueled Larssonʼs scientific Jar of African Polypterid Brazil, in the late nineties. A local curiosity and sense of adventure: fishes, which can use their museum was so proud of its titanosaur Ends of the Earth by Roy Chapman Andrews (1929) fins to walk on land. collection̶“just a leg bone and three The Logic of Scientific Discovery by Karl Popper (1934) Larssonʼs lab is starting to or four tail vertebrae”̶that they sold Osteology of the Reptiles by Alfred Romer (1956) explore the biomechanical solid metal souvenir models of the entire Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution state of the fish before it beast. “Of course I had to get one.” by Robert Carroll (1987) made the transition to land.

Plastic skeleton for teaching animal diversity and vertebrate evolution. Cast of a Tyrannosaurus rex jaw. Last summer, during his “Bringing anatomy back to human form is more intuitive for students̶ annual fossil expedition to Saskatchewan, Larssonʼs team we all use our anatomy,” says Larsson. “For human evolution, I also bring discovered the back end of a baby T‑rex skull̶possibly in a very old gorilla skeleton that we have in the museumʼs basement so the smallest such specimen ever found. This summer, heʼs students can get to see some biology, not just PowerPoint slides.” going back to dig it out.

2 Headway Summer 2009 NEWS Owen Egan

On May 11, McGill Principal Heather Munroe‑Blum (left) Killam Prize hat trick and Vice‑Principal (Research and International Relations) Denis Thérien (right) joined George Cooper, Managing and fellowship Trustee of the Killam Trusts (second from right) in the Life Sciences Complex to honour new The Canada Council awards the annual Killam Prizes to distinguished Killam Prize laureates (left to right) Philippe Gros, Canadian scholars in the fields of health sciences, natural sciences, François Ricard and Wagdi G. Habashi. engineering, social sciences and humanities. Five $100,000 prizes are awarded each year—one in each field—and on May 11, McGill a generous and excellence-driven program because it supports and researchers took home three of them. Philippe Gros (health sciences) honours the research leaders in our institutions. It’s a reminder that is James McGill Professor in Biochemistry in the Rosalind and Morris a university’s main business is the production of deep knowledge, as Goodman Cancer Centre; his groundbreaking genetics research has led well as the education of highly skilled, highly trained students.” to the identification of the gene that causes spina bifida, the A jury of 14 eminent Canadian scholars selects the recipients of the isolation of the cancer resistant “mdr” family of genes, and the Killam Prizes and Fellowships. The program is funded through lifetime identification of new genes that give rise to susceptibility to malaria. and testamentary gifts from Dorothy J. Killam, in memory of her Wagdi G. Habashi (engineering) is a professor in the Department of husband, Izaak Walton Killam. ■ Mechanical Engineering and an international leader in the field of computational fluid dynamics, which is crucial to dealing with the potentially dangerous problem of in-flight icing of aircraft. François Ricard (humanities) is a professor in the Department of French Two New Research Centres Language and Literature and James McGill Chair in Quebec Literature and Modern Fiction; he is one of the top historians of contemporary to Launch Quebec society, and has won acclaim for his work on Canadian writer McGill is thrilled about its double success in the Fonds québécois Gabrielle Roy. “We are immensely proud of these distinguished de la recherche sur la nature et les technologies’ October 2008 scholars, all of whom have received numerous honours throughout Strategic Cluster competition. The Strategic Cluster program their remarkable careers,” says McGill University Principal and Vice- aims to foster the emergence or enhancement of centres of Chancellor Heather Munroe-Blum. “The University joins me in offering excellence in research that has potentially significant scientific, them our most sincere congratulations on this prestigious recognition technological, social and economic benefits for Quebec. Thanks of their accomplishments.” Nineteen McGill researchers have now to this new funding, two new research centres are set to launch. received a Killam Prize since its inception in 1981. The Centre de la Science de la Biodiversité, led by McGill biology In other Killam news, McGill physicist Robert Brandenberger associate professor and Canada Research Chair in Biodiversity received one of the Canada Council for the Arts’ nine 2009 Killam Andrew Gonzalez, will harness Quebec’s critical mass of Research Fellowships. Brandenberger studies models of the very early biodiversity researchers to uncover the basic scientific principles universe that connect the theory of fundamental forces of nature with required for the discovery, study and sustainable use of Quebec’s cosmological observations. The fellowship provides $70,000 a year for biodiversity. The Strategic Cluster program will fund the CSB for two years and will give Brandenberger the chance, he explains, “to three years, at $300,000 per year. The Centre en chimie verte et focus more intensively on the challenging research goal of trying to catalyse will focus on developing new chemical and biological connect superstring theory as the theory that unifies all forces of reactions that are more efficient—and more environmentally nature with cosmological observations.” friendly—than traditional chemistry. The CCVC cluster will be led “Whether you’re talking about the Killam Prizes or the Killam by the Université de Montréal, under the co-direction of McGill Fellowships, one thing is certain: You are talking about a program that chemistry professor Chao-Jun (C.J.) Li, the Canada Research unambiguously caters to excellence as the exclusive criterion,” says Chair in Green Chemistry. The CCVC will receive $450,000 per Denis Thérien, McGill’s Vice-Principal (Research and International year, for three years, from the Strategic Cluster program. ■ Relations). “We in Canada are most fortunate to have access to such

McGill University 3 NEWS

New Attack on Latent TB The Proof is in the Principles They show no symptoms. They’re not contagious. But one-third of the The Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Proof of Principle world’s population (according to World Health Organization estimates) program is designed to advance discoveries toward commercializable carries the latent form of tuberculosis—meaning they can develop the technologies, with a view to attracting new investment and creating active form at any time. These walking TB reservoirs are the main new science-based businesses. In the latest round of funding, obstacle to eradicating the disease. McGill researchers were successful in all of their applications, The current treatment for latent tuberculosis lasts nine months and receiving five of the 12 “Phase 1” grants: causes many unwanted side effects. But a team of researchers from the ■ David Burns (Department of Chemistry): $150,000 for exploring Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre has received how ultrasound can be used for point-of-care analysis of con- the largest grant ever awarded by the Canadian Institutes of Health centration of substances in biological fluids. Research for a clinical trial of latent TB therapy. Principal investigator ■ Robert F. Hess (McGill Vision Research Unit): $126,802 for Dr. Dick Menzies, director of Respiratory Medicine at the MUHC, developing new, non-invasive assessments and treatments of together with Dr. Kevin Schwartzman, Dr. Andrea Benedetti and amblyopia (“lazy eye”) for adults and children. Dr. Madhukar Pai from the Montreal Chest Institute of the MUHC, will ■ Nahum Sonenberg (Rosalind and Morris Goodman Cancer Centre) use the $4.9 million for an international clinical trial to study the and Masad Damha (Department of Chemistry): $150,000 for effectiveness of a drug called rifampin, currently prescribed for the developing chemically modified molecules that will eliminate 4E- active form of TB. In order to obtain statistically significant results that BP protein function, thus boosting immunity against influenza can be generalized to a very broad population, the project will involve virus and HIV. almost 6,000 patients for 28 months. The study will be directed and ■ Dr. Janusz Rak (Research Institute of the McGill University coordinated from Montreal, but will also be conducted in centres Health Centre): $150,000 for using the presence of specific cancer- across Canada, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Korea, Australia, Benin and Guinea. causing molecules in the blood to determine the severity of A rifampin regimen lasts only four months, and the researchers have malignant tumour progression. already shown that it causes a lot fewer side effects; if rifampin also ■ Momar Ndao (RI-MUHC) and Brian Ward (Institute of Parasitol- proves as effective as the current latent TB treatment, it will be a much ogy): $150,000 for bridging the gap between mass spectrometric more patient-friendly option for vulnerable and poor populations—and profiling of Chagas disease and practical diagnostic tests. ■ a better tool for fighting this tenacious disease. ■

The Big Six On April 23, 2009, Raymond Bachand, Quebec’s Minister of Finance and Minister of Economic Development, Innovation and Foreign Trade, announced $3,458,000 to fund 17 international research projects. McGill University researchers are leading six of the projects: ■ Paul Allison (Faculty of Dentistry), with adjunct professor Belinda Nicolau (Institut Armand-Frappier): $250,000 for the HeNCe (Head and Neck Cancer) Life Study, a large international hospital-based case-con- trol study of 3,000 cases of cancer of the mouth, throat and larynx. ■ Paul Lasko (Department of Biology): $150,000 for studying the mech- Photomédia anisms that regulate the ligand Gurken, which is implicated in cancer. Officer Trio: On June 17, 2009, three members of the McGill ■ Jerry Pelletier (Rosalind and Morris Goodman Cancer Centre): research community were appointed to the Order of Quebec, the $150,000 for studying eukaryotic protein synthesis in order to create highest distinction awarded by the Quebec government. Brenda new cancer drug therapies. Milner (above, with Premier Jean Charest), a legendary professor ■ Moshe Szyf (Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics): of neuroscience and neurosurgery at the Montreal Neurological $150,000 for studying how epigenetic factors promote type 2 diabetes. Institute, was made a Grand Officer of the Order. (See interview on ■ Theo van de Ven (Department of Chemistry), with Marcelo Wanderley page 28.) McGill’s principal, Heather Munroe-Blum,and Dr. (Department of Music Research): $100,000 for creating paper-based Mostafa M. Elhilali were named Officers of the Order. Munroe- pressure sensors for musical and technological applications. Blum is an epidemiologist and the current president of the ■ Axel van den Berg (Department of Sociology): $126,500 for an Conférence des recteurs et des principaux des universités du international comparative study of evolving employment, social and Québec; she regularly advises governments on the role university environmental policies and industrial relations systems in the face of research plays in nurturing economic development and inter- new economic uncertainties. national competitiveness. A renowned urologist, Elhilali chairs “This program is an excellent opportunity for Quebec researchers to McGill’s Department of Surgery and is the president of the Société showcase their know-how to the world,” says Bachand, “and to build Internationale d’Urologie. ■ prestigious international partnerships.” ■

4 Headway Summer 2009 Connecting the Colloidal Dots After 15 years of wildly mixed results from colloidal quantum dot light-amplification experiments, many researchers were con- vinced that some unknown law of physics was stymieing their efforts to drive forward tele- communications technology. Now Patanjali Kambhampati begs to differ. Kambhampati and his colleagues in the Department of Chemistry have successfully amplified light using this once inconsistent technology. In telecommunications, data is encoded into beams of high-powered coher- ent light and transmitted through fibre- optic cables—but, because these laser signals diminish over distance, they must be NSERC amplified to maintain data integrity. The Jolly Good Fellowships: At a March 16, 2009, ceremony in Ottawa’s Fairmont Château best available amplification technology is Laurier, McGill researchers received two of the six 2009 E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowships the quantum well, a thin sheet of semi- from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. Andrew Hendry conductor material that confines electrons to (above left, with Prime Minister Stephen Harper) is an associate professor in the Depart- a one-dimensional plane. But, for over 10 ment of Biology and the Redpath Museum; his research focuses on how ecological and years, researchers hoped that colloidal quan- evolutionary processes influence biodiversity. Karim Nader (above right, with NSERC tum dots, a three-dimensional box for president Suzanne Fortier) is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology who electrons that is a billionth of a meter studies animal models of memory reconsolidation and motor maps in the brain. The across, would yield superior results, and at a Steacie Fellowships—$90,000 a year for two years—are awarded to promising researchers cheaper cost. In some cases the dots worked, who are earning a strong international reputation for original work. ■ and in many cases they didn’t, and nobody knew why. Until now. Kambhampati and his team discovered there was nothing wrong with the dots them- Dr. Janusz Rak (holding plaque) selves—it was the light being shared the Québec Science sent into the dots. The McGill honour with his research team researchers discovered that the (from left): Delphine Garnier, postdoctoral fellow; Alexander dots absorb different colours of Dombrovsky, graduate light in crucially distinct ways. student; Maryam Hashemi, “If you’re not careful in colour undergraduate student; choice, you could get no ampli- Brian Meehan, research assistant; fication or huge amplification,” Nathalie Magnus, graduate explains Kambhampati. “We student; and Khalid Al‑Nedawi, figured out which colours are postdoctoral fellow. useful and which aren’t.” Now that the basic science has been ironed out— Quebec Discovery of the Year and the results published in the March 2009 Each year, a jury of researchers and science journalists selects Québec Science magazine’s top issue of Physical Review Letters—the team is 10 discoveries of the year. Then readers vote on their single favourite—and the 2008 top collaborating with Zetian Mi in the Depart- honour goes to Dr. Janusz Rak and his team for their discovery of a new way that tumour cells ment of Electrical and Computer Engineering communicate. The researchers found that the cells release bubble-like structures called onco- to invent a new amplification device. somes that contain cancer-causing proteins, which affect neighbouring cells, a radical depar- ■ This research received funding from the ture from the traditional view that a single “mutated” cell will simply multiply uncontrollably Canada Foundation for Innovation, the to the point of forming a tumour. Rak is a professor in pediatric oncology at McGill’s Faculty Natural Sciences and Engineering Research of Medicine and a researcher at the Research Institute of the Montreal Children’s Hospital of Council of Canada and the Fonds québécois de the MUHC; his Québec Science win was recognized with an afternoon party in the hospital’s la recherche sur la nature et les technologies. lobby on April 30, 2009. ■ Dr. Rakʼs research receives funding from the Canadian Cancer Society, the Cole Foundation, the Cancer Research Society, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec.

McGill University 5 NEWS

Stephen Yue (left) is the inaugural Lorne Trottier CFI and Quebec Boost Chair in Aerospace Owen Egan Innovation Infrastructure Engineering. Postdoctoral fellow Ahmad Rezaeian Together, the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the (centre) and graduate Quebec government have pledged more than $62 million for student Wilson Wong are new state-of-the-art research infrastructure to support the working with Professor Yue on new ways to manu‑ work of five McGill researchers deemed key to keeping facture aerospace compo‑ Canada and Quebec competitive in the global marketplace: nents, like this jet engine ■ Vincent Giguère (Department of Biochemistry, working in combustion chamber. the Rosalind and Morris Goodman Cancer Centre) for a major collaborative project to probe the links between the progression of cancer, obesity and cachexia. Chair: Way ■ Paul Lasko (Department of Biology) for the MIRGED to Heavens research group on embryology and disease, a co-initiative of McGill and the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal. A new endowed chair aims to strengthen the already deep relationship between ■ Chao-Jun (C.J.) Li (Department of Chemistry) for a com - McGill researchers and the aerospace industry. Stephen Yue, a professor in the prehensive project to move the field of organic chemistry Department of Mining and Materials Engineering, is the inaugural Lorne toward using environmentally sound solvents. Trottier Chair in Aerospace Engineering, which is funded by Lorne Trottier, the ■ David Plant (Department of Electrical and Computer founder and CEO of Matrox Electronic Systems. The chair will support Yue’s Engineering) for the Laboratories for Broadband Optical and research on cold-spray manufacturing, a new process that creates aerospace Wireless Systems to adjust existing communications net - parts by building up layers of metal powder—a much less wasteful process than works in order to handle increased connectivity needs. traditional machining methods. The NSERC-funded research is a collaboration ■ David Y. Thomas (Department of Biochemistry) for the between researchers in the McGill Aerospace Materials and Alloy Development McGill University Life Sciences Complex’s Disease to Centre—including Richard Chromik, Mathieu Brochu and Jerzy Szpunar— Therapy Initiative, which aims to develop new medications Pratt & Whitney Canada and Jean-Gabriel Legoux’s thermal spray team at the for neglected infections and chronic diseases. Industrial Materials Institute in Boucherville. “I believe we will have the best On June 18, Tony Clement, Canada’s Minister of Industry, facility on the planet,” says Yue. “Because we are creating new materials and and Raymond Bachand, Quebec’s Minister of Finance and processes, we will be helping to establish a technical work force that will Minister of Economic Development, Innovation and Foreign attract more aerospace activity and new enterprises.” ■ Trade, announced the new funding. McGill is receiving $32.6 million of the more than $665 million CFI is investing in 133 research projects nationwide. The Quebec government, in turn, is contributing nearly $117 million to support the CFI An End to the Age When it comes to slowing aging, the much program at Quebec universities, with $30,346,908 going ballyhooed properties of antioxidants may toward the five McGill projects. of Antioxidants? have some surprise wrinkles. For more than “This new investment will substan tially increase Canada’s 40 years, prevailing wisdom has linked aging capacity to carry out important world-class scientific to cellular oxidative stress. This theory postulates that a build-up of reactive research and technology development that will benefit all oxygen species, or ROS, molecules overwhelms a cell’s ability to repair damage— Canadians,” said Dr. Eliot Phillipson, President and CEO of the causing the cell to age. The theory spawned an industry of alternative antioxidant CFI. Raymond Bachand described the funding as an excellent therapies (such as megadosing on Vitamin E) and gladdened fans of antioxidant- way to create jobs and economic activity, adding that it also rich tipples like red wine. It just might not be, well, true. “affirms our leadership role in key areas” of research and In a study published in the February 2009 issue of the journal PLoS Genetics, innovation. McGill professor Siegfried Hekimi, the Strathcona Chair of Zoology and Robert Vincent Giguère’s research is being funded by CFI’s New Archibald & Catherine Louise Campbell Chair in Developmental Biology, and Initiatives Fund, which aims to enhance Canada’s capacity in postdoctoral fellow Jeremy Van Raamsdonk show that oxidative stress may just promising new areas of research and technology devel- as easily be the result—not the cause—of aging. The researchers genetically opment. The four other McGill projects are being funded by modified Caenorhabditis elegans worms so they were progressively less able to the Leading Edge Fund, which enables institutions to build produce a group of proteins called superoxide dismutases (SOD), which detoxify on already successful and productive initiatives supported by one of the main ROS molecules. Previous studies seemed to show that decreased past CFI investments. SOD production shortened an organism’s lifespan, but the researchers found the The CFI is an independent corporation created by the opposite to be true: Even though oxidative stress was elevated, none of the Gov ern ment of Canada to strengthen the capacity of Canadian mutant worms showed decreased lifespan—and some even lived longer than their universities, colleges, research hospitals and non-profit unmodified kin. research institutions. Previous CFI funding has enabled ground- The researchers hasten to point out that they are not suggesting oxidative breaking advances in areas including spinal cord research, stress is good for you. “ROS undoubtedly cause damage to the body,” Hekimi says. green building technology, quantum computing and climate “However, they do not appear to be responsible for aging.” So maybe there’s change. ■ reason to break out the red wine after all. ■ This research is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

6 Headway Summer 2009 IN FOCUS

What is the link between child abuse and adult suicide risk? A startling new study suggests that physical and emotional child abuse makes dramatic and long-lasting changes to young male victims’ brains—increasing the odds that they’ll grow up to become The men who commit suicide. Legacy of Child Abuse

By Mark Reynolds

In the wake of a suicide, friends, family and loved ones are left reeling, grappling with the big question: Why? One part of the answer was recently found in research performed by scientists associated with the newly formed Sackler Program for Epigenetics and Psychobiology at McGill University. The researchers discovered a novel biological link to some male suicides. Earlier studies linked physical or emotional childhood abuse to suicide, but the Sackler team found that childhood abuse amongst suicide victims was associated with a distinct epigenetic mark on the DNA. The discovery represents a huge step forward for epigenetics—the study of how environmental factors change gene expression—and holds the promise of better understanding suicide and, perhaps, new treatments. iStock

McGill University 7 This discovery grew out of a grim, yet indispensable, re- with no known abuse in their childhoods, and one-third source. The Quebec Suicide Brain Bank is exactly what it from a control group. The researchers discovered that Owen Egan sounds like: dozens of brain tissue samples from suicide those suicides who had suffered abuse as children bore spe - victims, each preserved in Pyrex containers in a Douglas cific epigenetic methylation characteristics absent on Mental Health University Institute freezer. Every time the specific DNA sites that were in the other two groups. Quebec Coroner’s office determines a death to be a Significantly, those marks were shown to influence the suicide, it notifies psychiatry professor Dr. Gustavo hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) function. Turecki, director of the McGill Group for Suicide Studies at The HPA axis is a critical feature of the stress response. the Douglas. Researchers from the MGSS then contact the It is managed by a set of genes expressed in the hippo - next of kin to ask whether they campus, including one that was epigenetically marked by are willing to donate a brain the experience of childhood abuse. Abnormal HPA activity tissue sample. But the research- in response to stress is in turn strongly linked to suicidal Owen Egan ers are interested in more than action. Turecki explains that there was no distinction made just the brain; they want to in their cohorts between severity or nature of the child- know the person it came from. hood abuse: “Severity is a subjective thing—the impact Using standardized and vali - is much more important.” dated interviews with friends, The study was published in the February 22 issue of family and spouses, they build Nature Neuroscience. The McGill research team also a complete psychological and includes graduate students Ana C. D’Alessio and Benoît medical history of each victim. Labonté, research associate Aya Sasaki and research tech- Beginning in 2006, Patrick nician Sergiy Dymov. Suicide’s links to stress and child- McGowan, a postdoctoral fellow in medicine professor hood abuse were both known before, but this break- Michael Meaney’s lab, was given access to this wealth of through demonstrates, at least in part, exactly how it information—and, of course, the brains. McGowan had works on a biological level. Turecki is careful to avoid just returned to Montreal (he did his undergraduate speculation about future treatments, but he allows that studies at Concordia University) after completing his this is a significant step “toward understanding how early PhD at Duke University in North Carolina. He was life experiences have a major impact on mental health.” specifically attracted by Meaney’s collaborations with Epigenetics points to a way forward. McGowan believes Moshe Szyf, the James McGill Professor in the Department that epigenetic patterns could serve as a valuable diag - of Pharmacology and Therapeutics. In a now-famous 2004 nos tic tool, if markers can be detected in blood tests.

The Quebec Suicide paper published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, Better yet, it may be possible to manipulate the methy- Brain Bank, directed Meaney and Szyf showed that gene expression in rat lations themselves, thus reversing their unwanted effects. by Dr. Gustavo Turecki pups could be affected by maternal care in infancy. The The drug TSA and l-methionine infusions (directly into the (top), provided the more licking and grooming from the mother, the less brain) have already proved successful in changing methyl - opportunity to take anxious the offspring, behavioural changes that correlated a tion patterns established early in a rat’s life. “The the groundbreaking epigenetic animal with gene expression. The DNA sequence of the rats was l-methionine infusions are particularly interesting,” says research of professors unchanged, of course; what was different was the McGowan, “because l-methionine is an essential amino Michael Meaney methylation, a chemical coating on the DNA that acid and a popular nutritional supplement. The studies (middle) and Moshe Szyf determines how our genes work. showed effects in adult animals so it’s possible that, at (bottom) to the Meaney and Szyf worked exclusively with rat models, some point in the future, therapies might include drugs next level. and McGowan was excited by the prospect of taking epi- that change epigenetic patterns in the brain. The key genetics to the next level. Back at the Douglas, Turecki would be to discover how to target these drugs, which had been following Meaney and Szyf’s research, and saw have widespread effects, to the right genes. It would be how the Quebec Suicide Brain Bank could be useful. “It equally interesting to know whether social interventions became clear to me that we were in a good position to do have protective effects by changing the methylation of translation work,” he says. “This was a good opportunity certain key genes.” to test the theories from animal work and see if they were Moshe Szyf, who was recently appointed to the applicable to humans.” inaugural GlaxoSmithKline-CIHR Professorship in “I had never expected to have a chance to work with Pharmacology, says that this study is the first that he human samples,” McGowan says. “But the feeling was that knew of in which there is a clear link between human if we can do this in animals, why not in humans? We had social environments and their epigenetic code. “It is the brains, and we had the histories.” dynamic, and it acts through life,” he says. “And it’s not McGowan’s team used a cohort of 36 male brain samples. just chemicals that affect these mechanisms, it’s the One-third were from suicide subjects who were known to social, and even political, environment.” This recent have been abused in childhood, one-third from suicides breakthrough raises many more questions about this

8 Headway Summer 2009 IN FOCUS

I see this as“ a step toward understanding how early life experiences have a major Claudio Calligaris impact on mental health.

”– DR. GUSTAVO TURECKI

mysterious relationship between environment and DNA. If a person’s genes can be affected by childhood abuse, then what about the effect on those who’ve grown up in countries that have endured decades of war and oppression? What effect does diet, or even music, have on our DNA? If the social environment has such an effect on who we are, there is almost no area of human endeavour without a potential impact on our epigenetic code. “To understand human health and disease, we must study humans in their true environmental context.” As for the age-old nature-versus-nurture debate? Well, epigenetics just might offer a third choice: both. Medical research has long known that, despite having identical DNA sequences, the health and personality of identical twins often diverge. Environmental influences are often used to explain such inconsistencies in genes and traits— now this new study shows that the environment can actually directly alter the activity of the genome. “Nature and nurture has always been a false dicho - tomy,” says McGowan, before quoting famed McGill neuro - scientist Donald Hebb: “It’s like asking which is more important to a rectangle’s area—length or width?” ■ This research was funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Development.

After graduating from Duke University, Patrick McGowan jumped at the opportunity to be a postdoctoral fellow in Michael Meaneyʼs McGill lab̶and to expand Moshe Szyf and Meaneyʼs epigenetic research to human subjects.

McGill University 9 EurekaFrom

Illustrations by Matt Forsythe

10 Headway Summer 2009 COVER STORY a toYour

World33 Ways* That McGill Research Saves Lives, Kills Weeds, Nabs Thieves… and More

By Jake Brennan, Danielle Buch, Thierry Harris and Andrew Mullins In the world of McGill research, creating new knowledge isn’t an end—it’s the means for developing the innovations that change our world. Lives are improved, and even saved, by ideas that make the long journey from lab to marketplace. And, yes, the commercialization of research stimulates our economy at the local, provincial, national and international levels. The following pages collect just some of the ways McGill research has improved and is improving quality of life, from time-tested “greatest hits” to up-and-comers tipped to revolutionize tomorrow’s world—each a concrete manifestation of the University’s mission of “…providing service to society in those ways for which we are well suited by virtue of our academic strengths.”

* (and counting)

McGill University 11 Developing new drugs “on developed software that can predict what songs the ground”—and using listeners will like, based on a listener’s past preferences local resources—is criti- and personal information. According to the International 1 cal to fighting parasitic Federation of the Phonographic Industry, some 1.4 billion diseases in African countries. Timothy songs were legally downloaded internationally in 2008; Geary, the Canada Research Chair in Parasite this new software, dubbed Shazam (not to be confused with Biotechnology, and Eliane Ubalijoro of McGill’s Institute the iPhone application of the same name), may help even for the Study of International Development are using a more music fans find the sounds they like—even ones $100,000 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates they haven’t yet heard. Amazon, Microsoft and Apple Foundation to establish anti-parasitic drug development offer similar recommendation software, but Shazam is dif- programs that draw upon existing resources in Botswana, ferent because it extracts intelligent informa tion, such as South Africa and other countries in Africa. By promoting tempo, genre and mood, directly from songs. The research- a simple technology for drug discovery, which uses ers created the software using a database of over 100,000 microbes genetically engineered to express parasite songs donated by Warner Bros. The technology was proteins, researchers can easily test for the presence of licensed to Double V3, a developer of Internet and digital anti-parasitic agents derived from indigenous botanical media applications, and is now owned by Nexio and Zanura. sources. This system can provide a sustainable way for African scientists to control the fate of locally obtained McGill psychology professor Mark Baldwin and compounds, rather than relying on imported Western his graduate students have tapped into the technologies (which, history has shown, are prohibitively ever-evolving video game market with a series difficult to maintain in working order) or agreements 4 of self-esteem boosting video games called that favour Western partners unnecessarily. The ultimate Mindhabits. The games, which are sold online and in goal is to empower African researchers to develop, market stores (they’re particularly popular in European markets), or out-license new, affordable cures for locally help people by working important parasitic infections, such as river blindness on the psycho- or lymphatic filariasis, which affect hundreds of millions logical principles of people, and malaria, which kills a million people of association, (mostly children) a year in tropical countries. inhibition and activation. In If diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary one game, play - disease—the fourth leading cause of death in ers search for Canada—often the only thing your doctor can do words related to 2to slow the fatal incurable disease is tell you to friendship (draw- stop smoking. Now, work produced in McGill’s Department ing on the wealth of Chemistry by Masad J. Damha might be able to reverse of research show- the effects of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. ing that even small By modifying the structure of nucleic acids through chem- reminders of cama- i cal alterations of the sugar unit of the oligonucleotide rad erie help people deal chain, Damha’s research makes it possible to “shut with stress better); in down” critical genes that cause inflammation in the another, they practice dis- lungs. Damha and collaborators founded Anagenis Inc. engaging from unhelpful thoughts of social threat by click- in 1999 to exploit the powerful properties of these ing on smiling faces and ignoring frowns. A study published oligonucleotides. Topigen Pharmaceuticals, a com pany in a journal of the American Psychological Association specializing in respiratory disorders, acquired Anagenis demonstrated that just five minutes of daily play reduced Inc. and the team’s gene silencing technology in 2004. players’ stress hormone levels by 17 per cent. Mindhabits Clinical development is projected in 2009. also permits players to measure and track their confidence and stress levels on a day-to-day basis. In 2007, the If you like Miles Davis, you’ll love... Kanye West? games won the $1.3-million first prize in Telefilm’s Great McGill psychology professor Daniel Levitin, Canadian Video Game competition; the prize money is with Yoshua Bengio and Douglas Eck from the being used to develop the game for play on several dif- 3Université de Montréal and Robert Gérin-Lajoie ferent game platforms. Mindhabits is expected to be avail - of the CIRANO interuniversity research centre, have able on Nintendo DS and mobile platforms later this year.

12 Headway Summer 2009 COVER STORY

structures, then models their performance in would-be large-scale systems, thus simulating computer transistor (as well as sensor- and photo-cell) performance. The use 5 of such software is expected to help reduce the cost of Build a more eco nomical anti-theft tag, and the world— manufacturing prototypes. McGill IP related to this or at least its stores and libraries—will beat a path to software has been licensed to a Quebec start-up for your door. Security tags or labels all have two commercial development. components: an active element (that’s the part that triggers alarms) and an element that turns off the active element. By combining electroplating technology with a specially formatted stainless-steel wire, McGill emeritus physics professor John Ström-Olsen and his company MXT have been able for the first time to integrate the active and deactivating components into a single element—making tags cheaper, and easier, to manufacture. The SSDW anti-theft tag, a happy accident stemming from an earlier product development that didn’t quite pan out, can be produced for about 60 per cent of the cost of other tags. SSDW came onto the market in 2005, and has already achieved significant, and growing, market penetration in Europe, North America and Asia. The interactive web-based literacy tool Abracadabra has the potential to dramatically For marine researchers, wetlands, coral reefs, improve literacy across Canada. For children swamps and shallow coastlines can be difficult 8 and parents, Abracadabra offers fun and to access—especially when you don’t want to engaging games and exercises in reading, spelling, 6upset the wildlife. The Aqua project, a vocabulary and comprehension. For educators, it offers collaboration between engineerting professor Greg Dudek resources such as manuals and literacy skills assessments and researchers at McGill’s Centre for Intelligent Machines, to help target learning appropriately. Unlike other online McGill biology professor Donald Kramer and his grad literacy tools, Abracadabra is publicly available and free. student Katrine Turgeon, and Michael Jenkin of York McGill education professor and literacy expert Robert University, aims to change this by Savage designed the research behind Abracadabra. The inventing three models of amphibi - project was directed by Philip Abrami from the Centre for ous, video-data-gathering robots. the Study of Learning and Performance at Concordia The fully autonomous robots University, and included researchers from Wilfrid Laurier use six independently con- University and the University of Lethbridge. Abracadabra trolled flippers and acous tic is in use all over the world, and the team is now building sensor technology to a similar tool for developing writing skills. gently navigate through waters deep or shallow. In his 30-plus years in the The robots are commer - Faculty of Agricultural cially available from and Environmental Independent Robotics 9 Sciences at McGill’s Inc. Macdonald campus, plant science professor Alan K. As electronic components in computers get Watson has searched for green smaller, smarter and greener, so grows hardware alter natives to pesticides. manufacturers’ need to assess potential uses of His biopesticide research has 7different nano-materials. The research group of taken him to farms all over McGill physics professor Hong Guo has developed a Quebec, sub-Saharan Africa and software program that they think will help. Using density Southeast Asia, where he’s scoured functional theory and quantum transport theory, the scoured the soil for organisms that prey on software simulates the electrical properties of nano- the weeds

McGill University 13 COVER STORY

that cause millions of dollars in annual crop loss. From 1988 to Are patents an 1998, Watson collabo- rated with the Uni- ver sity of Guelph, the Nova Scotia Agri- way culture College, the effective Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, NSERC and in- dus try partners on a federally funded dan- to your delion control project. That work led to the discovery of share Sclerotinia minor, a fungal pathogen, originally isolated from lettuce, which kills broad-leafed weeds (such as dandelions) but leaves earthworms, bees, birds, animals inventions and humans unharmed. Watson patented Sclerotinia minor ? under exclusive licence to the University. In 2004, he founded the spin-off company Sarritor Inc. with his son “Most of the world believes in patents,” says John DiMaio, manager of Jeff and a consortium of lawn-control operators, whose the Life Sciences Group in McGill’s Office of Technology Transfer (OTT). interest had been sparked by municipal and provincial “Last year an unprecedented 500,000 patent applications were filed at restrictions on chemical lawn pesticides such as 2,4-D. the United States Patent and Trademark Office.” He cautions, however, Sclerotinia minor is grown on ground-up barley seeds; the that North American universities account for only two per cent of grains are then spread on crops dur ing moist con ditions in granted patents. “Combined, North American universities were awarded spring and fall. Look for Sclerotinia minor—under the approx imately the same number of patents as just one American name Sarritor—com mer cially in Canada this spring, and in corporation, such as IBM,” he says. “The distinction however resides in the U.S. in coming years. the breadth and depth of innovation emerging from academic centers— and that translates into incentive for the private sector to adopt or invest Imagine a hand-held machine like the in new forward-looking opportunities and new products.” tricorder in Star Trek that will measure Researchers aspire to serve the greater good. Ironically, the instinct to fluid around the lung in a patient with publish and disclose, while well-intentioned, may be counter productive. 10 pulmonary edema, just by pointing at the “The most successful drugs—the ones originating from pioneering outside skin—or a fibre optic probe to monitor fetal and academic research that have found their way in clinical development maternal health, or a device that measures tissue fitness pipelines or medical practice—achieved that status because of sound and in real time. Such non-invasive diagnostic tools are the responsible patent strategies,” says DiMaio. “The same applies for goals of McGill chemistry professor David Burns and his human diagnostics, processes and other innovations that benefit society biospectroscopy and biosensor research. During a on the whole.” ■ sabbatical in 2000, he found he could predict the health of cows by using spectroscopic measurement technology to look at certain bio-markers in their milk. In later work in collaboration with Kristine Koski, director of McGill’s School of Dietetics and Human Nutrition, Burns applied this discovery to the analysis of hu- Yes. man amniotic fluid, for monitoring fetal devel- op ment and assessing post-natal birth weight.

14 Headway Summer 2009 Are patents Another col laboration, this one with McGill neurologist Hyman Schipper, used detection of oxidative mod- ifications to blood comp onents to correlate with the onset of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and the way Parkinson’s. In 2005, McGill licensed the broad patent only portfolio to the start-up company Molecular Biometrics, co-founded by Burns, Koski and Schipper. Today, the com- pany is using the technology in another Burns invention, to this time with applications in the field of assisted share your reproductive technology. inventions?

The International Expert Group on Biotechnology, Innovation and Intellectual Property, led by McGill law professor Richard Gold, argues that a new intellectual property era may be nigh. Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the group recently completed a seven-year project to develop a novel, data-intensive model of the role of IP in life sciences innovation. The study drew upon the expertise and experiences of an international network of contributors representing industry, universities, governments and NGOs. They found that the way that universities, start-ups and many companies use IP may actually impede innovation. “The current system, ‘Old IP,’ rests on the belief that if some IP is good, more must be better,” says Gold. “While this may have been true 30 years Medical pioneers such as the Montreal Neuro- ago, the world has evolved and our way of dealing with IP must change ogical Institute’s Wilder Penfield have as well. If not, we face the prospect of the world’s medicine cabinet become household names. But they wouldn’t emptying out.” The group suggests that the world is moving toward a 11 have succeeded without the talented engi- New IP era, in which partnership takes precedent over hoarding. neers who built the necessary new instruments. Take Leon “We know that today, no one entity has the knowledge necessary to Katz. Katz spent two years working with Penfield at the advance high technology by itself,” Gold adds. “We must find new ways MNI before moving to the Jewish General Hospital to of using our IP rights so that we can exchange ideas quickly and create Canada’s first medical radio-isotope lab. Katz helped efficiently.” As an example of a promising New IP initiative, he cites the pioneer the use of radioactive iodine to map the Structural Genomics Consortium, which brings together university and thyroid, a diagnostic technique still in wide use. An industry researchers to create probes for proteins useful in epigenetics— Officer of the Order of Canada, Katz also designed and importantly, the probes are not IP protected and are available to operated the heart-lung bypass machine used during whoever wants to use them. Gold adds that New IP doesn’t necessarily the first successful open-heart surgery in Canada in mean “no IP,” pointing to attempts to better deliver HIV and AIDS drugs 1957. After inventing a wide range of medical devices to African communities by licensing patents to “an independent authority himself, Katz joined Health and Welfare Canada, where he that would, in turn, license generic producers in developing countries.” helped establish safety regulations for medical equipment. “If you are a university researcher wanting to change the world,” he says, “then you may need to start thinking about creative ways to share More than merely annoying, mosquito your knowledge, whether using IP or not.” ■ bites mean death for up to three million people a year. The current manual malaria 12 detection process is laborious, slow and requires on-site special ists—all disadvantages for a disease whose early detection dramatically reduces com- Not necessarily.

McGill University 15 plications and death, but which is prevalent Newmerical Technologies International, is the only one in poor, remote regions. McGill physics and that creates 3-D predictions of: airflow over a complete chemistry professor Paul Wiseman hopes plane, location of droplet impingement on its surfaces, to brighten the situation—by adding colour. shape of the resulting ice, the degraded behaviour of the Wiseman and his colleagues are combining airplane—and, crucially, the ideal amount of heating lasers and existing cell-sorting technology to needed to anti-ice. The software allows engineers to mod- create a prototype malaria detection device ify their designs-in-progress, whether turboprops, that will identify infected cells by the colour of light helicopters or jets, resulting in safer aircraft. Companies emitted from the malaria pigment hemozoin—all without use FENSAP-ICE across North America, Europe, China, manual intervention. Faster, cheaper and more portable, Japan, India and Korea, and include giants such as the prototype should be ready this fall, eagerly awaited by Bombardier, Airbus, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed the half-billion people who contract malaria annually. Martin, GE Aircraft Engines, Snecma Moteurs, Mitsubishi, AVIC, Bell Helicopter and Eurocopter As an airplane climbs or descends through clouds, supercooled droplets hit the wings, Probiotics are micro-organisms that help fuselage, cockpit windows, external instru- keep the gastrointestinal tract healthy. 13 ments and engines. These droplets either Satya Prakash, director of the Biomedical freeze immediately, or run along the surface before14 Technology and Cell Therapy Research freezing toward the rear of the craft. These seemingly Laboratory at McGill’s Department of Biomedical Engineer- benign droplets can seriously compromise aerodynamics ing, is developing specialized artificial probiotic cells and handling, often with deadly results—that’s why each that will target specific ills, including high cholesterol, new airplane design must undergo long and elaborate fatty liver disease and colon cancer. Prakash and McGill experimental and flight-testing campaigns in order to be alumni Dr. Mitchell Jones and Ryan Elliot Jones created a spin-off a company called Micropharma Limited to commer- cialize these cells for use in human health. Some of these cells are now in various phases of human clinical trials.

Nuclear physicist Robert Bell was appointed McGill’s Ernest Rutherford Professor of Physics in 1960 and he 15 lived up to the title, making important new contributions to the field that Rutherford essen - tially created. Chief among Bell’s accomplishments were the discovery of proton radioactivity (which led to new spectrom etry techniques) and the invention of a tim ing meth od for measuring nuclear process es down to a fraction of a billionth of a second.

During the early 1990s, certified against in-flight icing. But how can you test the new information started effect of in-flight icing without endangering lives and, to emerge about pro - more importantly, before you even have an airplane to fly? 16 grammed cell death (or With mathematics. Mechanical engineering professor apoptosis, a naturally occurring cause of Wagdi George Habashi, director of the Computational cell death), and McGill biochemistry prof- Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Lab at McGill, and his team devel- essor Gordon C. Shore took an oped the FENSAP-ICE software simulation system, which interest in how PCD could be used allows aerospace engineers to model how ice would affect as a cancer treatment. This inves - aircraft in different weather conditions and at various tiga tion led Shore and bio chem- speeds and altitudes. The system, which is marketed by istry professor Phil Branton to

16 Headway Summer 2009 COVER STORY

start Gemin X Pharmaceuticals in 1998. Their lead all without dirtying a test tube, and for a fraction of the product, a regulator of the PCD path way called Obatoclax, cost (and time) of traditional development. The FITTED has already proven helpful to patients with advanced (Flexibility Induced Through Targeted Evolutionary chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and is now in a major Description) docking program is now on version 2.6 and phase two randomized trial with patients suffering from is being used by pharmaceutical companies ViroChem small cell lung cancer. The drug is given intra venously, in Pharma and MethylGene, and a new version is being combina tion with chemo, with the goal of substantially developed for use by companies. A larger molecular improving treatment effectiveness and patient survival. discovery platform called Forecaster, which integrates FITTED and a number of other programs developed by the When Harold Randall Griffith was the Moitessier group, will be available sometime this year. chief of anesthesia at the Montreal Homeopathic Hospital in the early forties, Before Hans Selye came along, stress 17 surgery patients were still calmed using referred to pressure exerted on an object, ether and other gases— not a person. In 1934, while searching for resulting in an excruciating,19 a new female hormone, the young McGill often fatal, recovery process. endocrinologist noticed similarities in how rats responded Then Griffith heard that to injections, despite being dosed with different chemical small amounts of a certain compounds. Selye never poisonous plant extraction found that new hormone, but successfully counteracted he discovered something convulsions. Thus inspired, else: There is a biological in 1942 he became the first response to stress. In 1936, person to use curare as a he published ground-breaking surgical anesthetic. Griffith research positing that the proved that a carefully ad- human body reacts to stress ministered dosage of curare in stages. At first it responds relaxed the body enough in alarm and attempts to that other anesthetics could fight off the source of the be dramatically—and safely— reduced. Curare paved the stress. Then it tries to adapt way for the creation of dozens of similar drugs still widely to the stress. Finally, the used in operating rooms today. stress produces an aging effect that leaves the body damaged. Selye’s impact wasn’t restrict ed to medical circles. Two of his books, The 18 Stress of Life and Stress Synthesizing and Without Distress, became testing compounds international bestsellers. in the lab in the hopes of finding a potential In 1965, McGill professor Samuel new drug isn’t just “not Freedman and doctoral candidate Phil green,” it’s prohibitively Gold discovered a protein they called expensive. That’s why Nicolas Moitessier, asso ciate 20 carcinoembryonic antigen. The body professor in chemistry at McGill, and his team have produces CEA in response to certain cancers (particularly designed computer software that investigates drug those in the gastrointestinal tract, colon and rectum), behav ior “in silico.” This makes it possible to select making the protein’s presence a useful tumour marker. mole cules, from a library of over two million, that will The CEA blood test remains one of the most widely used bind to a specific protein target site—then virtually as- methods for gauging the spread of cancer and detecting sess their syn thet ic feasibility and test for activity, post-surgery recurrence.

McGill University 17 How does an invention or discovery move from the lab to the marketplace? The daring and gifted surgeon Wilder Penfield was the driving force behind Communicating market dynamics to researchers is just one function of the creation of the Montreal university commercialization units. Its main function is translating a 21 Neurological Institute in 1934. discovery into a marketable product or service. And that’s not always easy. Penfield developed the Montreal Procedure, a revo - Take, for example, a pharmaceutical discovery. Initial drug candidates lutionary style of brain surgery in which epilepsy can take 10 years, or more, to make it from the laboratory through patients remained fully conscious (though anesthetized) multiple expensive stages of development to the prescription pad, but in order to pinpoint the source of seizures—and his patents have a limited life of 20 years. For a pharmaceutical company, pioneering efforts set the stage for ongoing innovation at that’s a big investment proposition for a short exclusivity window. The the MNI. In 2007, the Canadian government named the risk is highest at the early stages of development; that’s why companies MNI as one of seven Centres of Excellence in are less and less likely to license a patented discovery for development Commercialization and Research in recognition of soon after the “eureka!” moment. The pharmaceutical industry in innovative and outstanding work. The government has particular finds itself at an important juncture. In 2008, pharmaceutical since funded 37 projects that emphasize cutting edge companies spent an all-time $60 billion on research and development, basic research, translational advances and com- yet delivered an anemic number of new medicines to the marketplace. mercialization. This research includes creating technology The private sector is becoming increasingly risk averse and turning its for the automatic detection of drug-resistant epilepsy sights on other sources of innovation to fill product pipelines. The lesions, a pre-surgical fMRI brain-mapping unit and dilemma is that venture capital, which historically has been the lifeblood a computerized device to measure simple and of “biotech,” is running dry. Universities on the other hand provide a complex hand and arm movements. These projects renewable resource of innovation. “It would appear that universities and have already started to yield significant benefits, the private sector have divergent mandates, however it should also be accelerating new research in the biological basis of recognized that they share common interests,” explains John DiMaio, of neurological disease, neuroengineering McGill’s OTT. “Among them is a desire to exploit core strengths to and translational and applied deliver tangible goods and services. Universities will continue to deliver neuroscience. knowledge. However the bar has been raised with respect to patentable inventions. There are external pressures to mitigate risk by enhancing the market readiness of inventions. This is definitely unchartered territory for universities, but there are those that have accepted the challenge in ingenious ways. It is a win-win because the licensor can command more 22 favourable terms and the licensee assumes reduced risk.” When Maude Abbott While turning a profit on its research is far removed from a public first joined McGill’s university’s mission, its primary mandate could be facilitated with an Department of Path- additional $100 million per year—which is how much a select number of ology as the assistant U.S. universities now earn from their licensing—to reinvest in scholarly curator of its medical pursuits or infrastructure. But getting there is a matter of crossing what museum, little was known commercialization specialists call the “Valley of Death”—the journey about how to surgically repair from “Eureka!” to proof of concept. “So many great innovations come out damaged hearts. Through her work at the museum, Abbott of universities,” says DiMaio, “but there aren’t the financial resources to collected and studied the hearts of people who had died shepherd then along the commercialization path.” ■ of cardiac problems. She also scoured historical records for accounts of heart disease, meticulously cataloguing and

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identifying cardiac anomalies identified during autopsies. The result was the 1936 Atlas of Congenital Cardiac Disease, which laid the foundation for modern heart surgery by giving physicians a detailed understanding of is McGill the anatomy of heart disease. How In 1911, German scientist Otto Röhm bridging the invented a resilient, flexible and transparent substance. Trouble was, it 23 was hard to find one key ingredi- ent: methyl methacrylate. Enter William Chalmers, a “Valley of Death” McGill graduate student working in chemistry professor George Whitby’s lab. Chalmers devised a new method for producing methyl methacrylate using acetone and funding gap? hydrogen cyanide, both readily available. Knowing that Imperial Chemical Industries in Britain was doing similar work, Chalmers sold them his patent. One of the first When a technology is too far along to receive funding from “research” commercial uses for ICI’s Perspex—now known as sources (such as government funding agencies), yet not developed enough to attract investors or partnership/licensing arrangements with large companies, it’s said to be languishing in the limbo known as the “Valley of Death.” As a 2008 study by the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies states, “the private sector may not be ready for the handoff from publicly-financed research, which then appears to cut off the innovation process.” As a result, universities are becoming creative about filling those funding gaps. One such initiative is the recently created Montreal Excellerator, a non- profit partnership between McGill University and the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI MUHC). Excellerator will be dedicated to expediting the translation of high impact medical solutions into clinical diagnostics and experimental therapies, thereby enhance the market-readiness of groundbreaking discoveries and enhance the value Plexiglas—was to make see-through machine gun turrets of the underlying intellectual property. By providing regulatory expert - for B-19 bombers. Today, Plexiglas is used in hockey rinks ise and managing contact with contract research organizations that can (the transparent barriers protecting onlookers from take lab discoveries through trials to the proof-of-concept stage, where misdirected pucks), aquariums, contact lenses and they become more commercially attractive, Excellerator will assist motorcycle helmets. innovators by assuming project management, proof of concept studies and business development. Excellerator is identifying “low hanging fruit” An estimated 25 per cent of Canadian it can advance through the most difficult part of the path from bench to hospitals use the Harmonie electro- business to bedside (B2B2B). encephalography machine, designed Elsewhere, comparable initiatives and models continue to emerge such 24 by Montreal Neurological Institute as the Centre for Drug Research & Development (CDRD) in British professor Jean Gotman, to help Columbia, the Harvard Technology Accelerator Fund, the UCSD von in the diagnosis of epilepsy. Liebig Center in San Diego, and the MIT Deshpande Center, Imperial (And there are many more Innovations and Hadasit Bio-Holdings Ltd. Harmonies in use outside Happily, policymakers are responding to these new steps universities Canada than in.) The are taking to commercialize discoveries. In Canada, fed eral and Quebec Harmonie EEG machine government funding agencies are increasingly prioritizing the need to was brought to market bridge the valley through such initiatives as Centres of Excellence for in 1986 by Stellate Commercialization and Research, the CIHR Proof of Principle Program, Systems, the very first the CIHR Rx&D Research Program, NSERC I2I and the Ministère du McGill spin-off company; développement économique, de l’Innovation et de l’Exportation’s it is now marketed by Programme de soutien à la valorisation et au transfert. ■ Alpine Biomed. Gotman

McGill University 19 continues to research epilepsy, combin ing magnetic terminally ill, he was shocked to discover it was almost resonance imaging (MRI) with EEG to examine images non-existent. Inspired by the work of British hospice of the brain at the exact time of onset of seizure activity, pioneer Dame Cicely Saunders, Mount created North in the hope of better understanding the brain structures America’s first palliative care unit at the Royal Victoria involved and delineating the foci prior to surgery. Hospital and popularized palliative care as a medical specialty—he is even credited with coining the phrase. The RVH Manual on Palliative/Hospice Care, published in 1982, has served as a guidebook for similar programs around the world.

Cells don’t nap. When McGill cell bio- logist Charles Philippe Leblond made this declaration in the forties, 27 most of his colleagues were convinced that cells were only occasionally active. Leblond believed cells were always on the go (he was right). Thankfully, he had evidence to back him up, courtesy of a technology he helped perfect: autoradiography, a process that involved injecting radioactive material into organisms and using these “tracers” to study where and how cellular processes took place. While autoradio graphy was first created in 1924, it was initially an erratic technique. By using thinner emulsion coats on the glass slides being analyzed and better radio - active isotopes to highlight the activity being examined, Leblond and his collaborators improved In a 1901 lecture, McGill physics pro- the ability of scientists to fessor Ernest Rutherford presented monitor cellular activity by a a startling theory —namely, that hundredfold. Autoradiography 25 radioactivity was the product of continues to be used today by fracturing atoms—and was duly heckled by a young molecular biologists studying the researcher from the Department of Chemistry. It wasn’t a localization of genes and DNA promising start, but within months that skeptic, sequences. Frederick Soddy, became Rutherford’s chief collaborator in a research effort that led to both men winning the When it rains, it pours…or sleets, or Nobel Prize (Rutherford in 1908, Soddy in 1921). Flying in hails, or… How much and what kind the face of the widespread belief that atoms were of precipitation falls makes a big indivisible and unchangeable, the duo demonstrated that 28 difference to both people and the atoms could spontaneously decay, forming new kinds of aquatic critters left to deal with the runoff that sewage matter as a consequence. Though many scientific systems can’t handle. Enter Isztar Zawadzki, former contemporaries initially scorned the notion as alchemy, director of McGill’s J.S. Rutherford’s theories quickly gained wide acceptance and Marshall Weather Radar he is universally recognized today as the father of nuclear Observatory. His ARMOR physics and, by extension, nuclear energy. (Adjustment of Rain from Models with Radar) We’re quick to laud medical innovations software, licensed to the that heal, but think less about the art U.S. company Weather and science of preserving dignity and Decision Technologies, 26 alleviating suffering at the end of life. combines new radar tech- When McGill surgical oncologist Balfour Mount looked niques with forecasting- into the medical literature surrounding care for the error analyses from the

20 Headway Summer 2009 COVER STORY

previous 24 hours to predict the form and volume of precipitation in the next 10-12 hours more accurately than ever thought possible. Cities around the world are using the software, thus mitigating water pollution, infra structure damage and flooding fatalities. Because when it pours, it doesn’t have to flood.

If it can be said that the road of mod- ern biology and medicine is paved with DNA, then Kelvin Ogilvie is this journal Science—helped spawn the 29 era’s Henry Ford. His “gene machine,” realm of biotech nology. Chang has been invented in 1980 while he was a chemistry professor at director of the Artificial Cells and Organs McGill, fast-tracked the DNA splicing process. What once Research Centre at McGill since the took days now took mere hours, opening up new 1960s. His breakthroughs in metabolic possibilities in endeavours ranging from genetically disorders, treatment of drug poisoning, drug modified crops to medical research. Ogilvie was also the carriers, nanomedicine and other areas have first to chemically synthesize RNA in 1986, a process then become widely used. used to develop Ganciclovir, a drug now used to treat a form of herpes that attacks AIDS and cancer patients and Bernard Belleau saved millions of other people with weakened immune systems. lives and never knew it. Launched in March 1987, AZT (Zidovudine) was So long, dumb glass. Hello, smart plas- 32 the only option for suppressing HIV, tic. Research by electrical and com- but the drug had a dark side: Patients not only suffered puter engineering professor Ishiang debili tating side effects, they quickly grew resistant to its 30 Shih and materials chemistry profes - anti-HIV properties. So the McGill chemistry professor was sor Mark Andrews has paved the way for thin, flexible already hunting for an alternative. Belleau led the charge films with embedded optical, electrical and mechanical to synthesize 3TC (Lamivudine), a compound that Mark intelligence. Ultrathin displays made from their smart Wainberg, now director of the McGill University AIDS plastics promise to be lighter, stronger and more cost- Centre, showed could stunt HIV’s tenacious rate of efficient than the LCD screens found in today’s personal replication—without the drawbacks of AZT. computers and laptops—and might even lead to a Belleau died in 1989, six years before the computer screen you can roll up like a yoga mat.The last stage of 3TC clinical trials ended. The award-winning “digital plastic” is being developed by a anti-viral drug, which was marketed by McGill spin-off called Plastic Knowledge, co-founded by BioChem Pharma Inc. (co-founded by the two professors. Financed by Montreal’s Inovia Belleau), proved a turning point in Capital, the company re cently developing the HIV-fighting “cocktail” signed a memorandum known as HAART (Highly Active Anti- of under standing Retroviral Therapy) that has helped curb the with an interna- AIDS mortality rate. tional plastic film manufac turer to advance They don’t call it labour for nothing. product development. Although childbirth is never going to be a cakewalk, a software package is In 1956, Thomas Chang, a McGill phys- 33 easing the strain by helping delivery iology undergraduate, went about con- teams make better, faster decisions. Developed by structing the world’s first artificial blood obstetrics professor Dr. Emily Hamilton, CALM 31 cells—in his residence room. With a (Computer Aided Labour Monitoring) collects and cheap perfume atomizer and the permission of his tolerant analyzes mom and fetus vital signs in real time. Used by roommates, Chang managed to construct tiny plastic well over 100 hospitals in Canada and the U.S., CALM membranes that could contain hemoglobin, the compound allows clinicians, whether on-site or via a Web interface, in red blood cells that transports oxygen and whisks to determine more accurately the need for interventions away carbon dioxide. His success—he was the rare stud- such as caesarean section—and set the stage for ent to publish a paper as the sole author in the prestigious healthier, happier birth days. ■

McGill University 21 COVER STORY

The annual Crossroad for BioTransfer event wants to turn “aha!” into life-saving innovation TheBusiness of and biotech executives, venture capitalists and industry consultants applied for 200 available spots, and the oppor- tunity to hear some of Montreal’s best and brightest researchers show off high-impact technologies with high commercial potential. More than a dozen prominent scientists from McGill and the MUHC were there. “Events like this provide an excellent opportunity for McGill and other Montreal research labs to present their discoveries to a panel of biotech companies and inves- Bio- tors,” said Dr. Nicholas Bertos, a cancer researcher from the lab of Dr. Morag Park at McGill’s Rosalind and Morris Goodman Cancer Centre. “It’s important to familiarize one technology with the other, to get across an idea of the spectrum of research that’s available and to forge collaborations. And the Crossroad event focuses on the Montreal area, allow- By Mark Shainblum ing the opportunity to create strong local collaborations.” History teaches us that major medical breakthroughs can Bertos came to Crossroad to talk about an exciting new languish for generations or even disappear completely if prognostic test for breast cancer developed in Park’s lab, they don’t bridge the gap between research and commer- which promises greatly enhanced prediction of clinical cial application. outcomes for patients; Québec Science recognized the The cavity-fighting properties of fluoride, for example, research as one of its Top Ten Discoveries of the Year. were first noted by researchers as early as the mid-19th Gairdner Prize laureate Nahum Sonenberg, a senior century, but the element didn’t find its way into tooth- researcher at the Goodman Cancer Centre, talked about his paste for another century. Before the modern era, uncon- co-development with Massad J. Damha of an entirely new trolled tooth decay was a killer, a harbinger of deadly method of inhibiting viral infections, from influenza to infections, cardiac disease and shortened lifespans. If HIV to Ebola and herpes. Moshe Szyf, of the Department fluoride’s importance had been understood and com- of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, appointed to the new mercialized earlier, millions who died young might have GlaxoSmithKline-CIHR Professorship in Pharmacology on lived longer, healthier and happier lives. May 13, spoke about his lab’s discovery of a novel enzyme Even if today’s discoveries are on an entirely different sequence that can inhibit the growth of cancer cells. technological plane, the principle remains the same. Aca- Dr. Janusz Rak of the Department of Pediatrics and the demic researchers and the businesspeople who turn their Montreal Children’s Hospital Research Institute promoted discoveries into commercial products need a forum where his discovery of an entirely new, highly accurate and they can meet, interact and bridge the gap between non-invasive cancer screening process using oncosomes: their very different cultures. small, bubble-like projections on the walls of many cells. The need for such a forum is clear, said independent This research also garnered Dr. Rak the top spot on the technology management consultant Kevin Ens. “I don’t Québec Science Top Ten Discoveries of the Year (see story mean to paint everybody with the same brush, but often on page 5). academia doesn’t understand the needs of the business “Academics normally deliver their eureka moments to side, and the business side doesn’t always understand the the scientific community,” said John DiMaio, manager of needs of academia.” the Life Sciences Group in McGill’s Office of Technology Enter the Crossroad for BioTransfer, an event organized Transfer. “It’s a rare event when they need to take a quan - by the National Research Council of Canada, Gestion tum leap and put it in a market context. The Crossroad for Univalor and McGill’s Montreal Excellerator. This year’s BioTransfer is such an event that fosters reflection: Here’s event, held on May 5, 2009, at the NRC’s sprawling Bio- our discovery, here is the competition, here is why our technology Research Institute near Montreal’s Hippodrome discovery is better and of more benefit to the patient. And racetrack, was oversubscribed. Nearly 300 pharmaceutical here is how we translate it into a functional product. ” ■

22 Headway Summer 2009 IN DEPTH Rachel Granofsky

The King of (Understanding)

By Mark Shainblum Pain Ronald Melzack is an emeritus professor of psy- chology at McGill who revolutionized the study and treatment of pain. His historic partnership with Patrick Wall of MIT led to the 1965 publica-

tion of the Gate Control Theory of Pain, which iStock overturned the then accepted view of pain as a primitive and static danger warning system. Instead, Melzack and Wall argued that psy- chological factors and environment play a large role, and that pain is subjective and ultimately at the mercy of the brain. Melzack has been honoured with a Killam Prize and is an Officer of both the Order of Canada and the Order of Quebec. On April 29, 2009, he was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame, in recog- nition of his “outstanding contributions to medical science and the improved health and well-being of people everywhere.” From his office in the Stewart Biology Building, Melzack reflected on his career—and the future of pain relief.

McGill University 23 IN DEPTH

Q& A How did you first get interested How did you end up at the University of Oregon withRonald in the question of pain? after finishing your PhD at McGill in 1954? It was an absolute fluke. [McGill I was there for three years, and it had a tremendous Melzack psychology professor] Donald Hebb was impact on me. It was all due to a scientist at McGill named doing research on dogs raised in relative Herbert Jasper, a brilliant neurophysiologist and one of isolation. He was particularly interested in their problem- the pioneers of EEG [electroencephalography, a neuro- solving ability. They were well fed and well looked after, logical diagnostic procedure]. I told him I wanted to do but they didn’t have the life experience a normal dog postdoctoral research and learn more about the brain. would have. So when these restricted dogs were let out of After thinking a bit, he told me about his friend, their cages, as they were running around, they would Dr. William K. Livingston, who had an excellent pain sometimes bash into a low-lying water pipe that happened laboratory at the University of Oregon Medical School. The to be in the room. They didn’t make a peep, and I thought, lab was small, half the size of this room, but some “These dogs don’t seem to be feeling pain normally.” Until outstanding people went through there and spent a year then, it never entered my mind that pain should be a field or two working with him. I should look into. It was Livingston who first introduced you Is that when you started to conclude that to patients suffering from chronic pain? the accepted view of pain might be wrong? Yes, he invited me to come with him to a clinic he and a That’s right. I began to realize that pain is subjective. You few other doctors ran every Tuesday afternoon. They saw may have an injury, but the injury is not the pain. That patients who were in terrible, chronic pain, and tried to do became my PhD thesis. I had puppies like Hebb’s specially whatever they could to help them. He warned me that raised for me, and studied their responses to things like there wasn’t a hell of a lot they could do, but they tried. showing them a flaming match. These dogs would stick That is when I realized that I had no idea what pain really their noses right into the flame, back off for a minute, and was. When we think of pain we thing of burning our finger then stick it right back in again. A normal puppy wouldn’t on a hot stove or breaking an ankle skiing. But you know let you near him with a flame, and if he did stick his nose that kind of pain goes away. These patients were suffering in it once, he’d never do it again! terrible chronic pain that basically never stopped.

What did this tell you? And that’s when you met the famous Mrs. Hull. I concluded, after this and a lot of other research on the Mrs. Hull had a great impact on me. She was a woman in problem, that our brain selects what comes in and keeps her late 70s with diabetes. She developed gangrene and other things out. That’s when the idea of a gate came to had to have both of her legs amputated. I liked her; we me. Let’s say your brain rapidly becomes aware of an inter- talked a lot, her and her marvellous husband Willy. I was esting stimulus. There are large fibres that move informa- a bachelor then, and I would take them for afternoon tion rapidly up to the brain to indicate that something is drives on Sundays, and we became quite friendly. She was going on, while other information moves more slowly. If a highly intelligent person with a good vocabulary, and that information is important, the brain will open the I began to collect her descriptive words about pain like gate to allow it in, and shuts the gate to the unimportant “burning,” “shooting,” “crushing,” “horrible” and stuff. That’s the gate control theory in a nutshell. “excruciating.”

What was the prevailing view of pain And this was the origin of the McGill when you were starting out? Pain Questionnaire, the pain rating scale Actually, it’s still the prevailing view, and one that I still in use today? have been fighting all my life, that there’s a “pain Yes, from Mrs. Hull and dozens of other patients I began system.” Common sense says that there are pain receptors to collect these pain words. I’ll read some of them to you: in your body, in your skin and viscera, and these receptors flickering, quivering, pulsing, throbbing, beating, pound- have a pain pathway, and you can actually stimulate ing, boring, drilling, stabbing, lancinating, hot, burning, skin and find the pathway that goes up to somewhere in scalding, searing. the cortex, which is supposed to be where we feel pain. Later at MIT, I met the superb statistician Warren Torgerson. He had the statistical techniques to really And this is wrong? make this solid. We had 102 words to start with, and we At one time it was a good idea, but now it is hindering ended up with something like 78. And then we asked research. It’s simple and easy to believe, there’s lots of people to rank the words: How much pain is implied by a technology, lots of research money, but that research is word like “stabbing” or “searing” or “smarting”? It had going nowhere in helping us understand chronic pain. And never been done before. chronic pain is the real problem. 1224 Headway Summer 2009 Pain Research 2.0 Tell me about your phantom limb patients. “It took 40 years to catch on,” says Ronald Mrs. Hull is the most vivid in my memory, but there were Melzack of the Gate Control Theory of Pain he many others. We had a woman who had her rectum developed with Patrick Wall, “and I still have strong removed surgically because of cancer, but she still felt it. opponents: There are still really important physi - She had a painful phantom rectum. There were men who ologists who believe they’ll get an answer to chronic lost their genitals and were amazed that they felt pain by examining spinal cord transmission.” When it phantom erections. One out of three women who’ve comes to pain research, Melzack is a passionate believer had mastectomies feel a phantom breast, though it’s that the brain, not the spinal cord, should be the focus. usually not painful. They feel the breast, they even He cites cases where people experiencing phantom limb feel that it fills the bra cup. There are phantom pain have had entire sections of their spinal cords everythings: eyes, ears, noses, teeth, you name it! removed—yet the pain persists. “That means pain has got to be in the brain!” he insists. “Happily, brain research is And that didn’t fit the prevailing theory strongly entrenched at McGill.” Here, Melzack reflects on some of pain? of the bright lights of the next generation of pain research: It certainly didn’t. But Livingston and I weren’t alone in this area. Dr. Harry Beecher Jeffrey Mogil is a behavioural neuroscientist and holds was a U.S. Army medic during World War II, the E.P. Taylor Chair in Pain Studies in McGill’s Department and he was treating soldiers at the Anzio of Psychology. Since coming to McGill at Melzack’s beachhead. Men with terrible burns and suggestion, he discovered that mice experience “emotional bullet wounds would be brought to him, contagion”—that is, they feel pain more strongly when they and he’d offer them morphine, and see another mouse in pain. “Jeff Mogil’s terrific work with mice they’d say, “Doc, I don’t feel any pain, is a gigantic step forward to understanding the human brain,” I don’t need it.” Harry and I were says Melzack. very good friends when I was at MIT, and we’d talk about this, but Catherine Bushnell is a researcher in the Alan Edwards Centre for Research he was still stuck with the idea of on Pain. She uses brain imaging technology to study the neural basis of pain the pain pipeline. And I’d tell processing in humans, literally seeing what parts of the brain are active when him it didn’t make sense. How a patient is in pain. “Her work is outstanding,” raves Melzack. “She’s shown can you say that the guy’s got how things like expectation and hypnosis change brain activity involved in pain without pain? He said it was pain processing. It’s incredible to actually see that effect.” pain sensation without pain emotion. My response was: But this Irv Binik is a professor in the Department of Psychology and man’s got no pain. And what about director of the Royal Victoria Sex and Couple Therapy Service. the people who feel pain but don’t have His groundbreaking study on pre-menopausal dyspareunia, a any physical problem that you can find? recurrent acute pain felt by some women during sexual We need a new theory. Harry was actually intercourse, helped redefine the condition as, in fact, a very pleased when the gate control theory group of distinct pains—each with its own options for came out. relief. “Now he’s showing that there seems to be parallel pain in men,” says Melzack. “We still don’t know what’s So what does the future hold causing that pain in women, so to discover it in men for pain research and pain control? adds another important dimension. It’s very, very The future is research on how the brain creates our good work.” world: the world we see, hear, touch and feel. Pain is the doorway into that. I mean, right now, I am just Michael Sullivan’s psychology research focuses on a little upside-down person on the back of your occupational injury, trauma, depression and stress- retinas. You don’t see me upside down, or jumping related disorders. Melzack is particularly excited by his around as your eye jerks around. Your brain creates me. work on catastrophizing. “That’s when a person Most people don’t want to hear such a thing. They want to thinks, ‘Oh jeez, I’ve got a pain and that means it’s think that what you see is what’s out there. cancer and that means I’m going to die’—and catastrophizing actually increases the amount of So it’s all subjective? pain a person feels. Sullivan is working on under - Everything is subjective. Everything. But people don’t standing how that comes about, and he’s want to hear that. ■ doing solid work in a challenging area.”■

McGill University 25 Technology. Archaelogy. Poetry. For over 40 years, Robin Yates has been bringing early Chinese cultural history to the West. Now the Association francophone pour le savoir has recognized his efforts with a major prize. theGreat Wall

“People are realizing how important getting a non‑Western perspective on the human experience is,” says McGill professor of history and east Asian studies Robin Yates.

26 Headway Summer 2009 IN DEPTH

By Jake Brennan “May you live in interesting times” goes the well-known savoir (Acfas) awarded Yates the Prix André-Laurendeau in Chinese blessing or, depending on your outlook, curse. For October 2008, just one of the many honours marking his Robin Yates, the mid-sixties could scarcely have been bor- distinguished 16 years teaching and researching at McGill. ing as he embarked on a BA at Oxford in Chinese archaeo- “People are realizing how important getting a non- logy. “No one studies China,” his high school teachers had Western perspective on the human experience is,” says chided him, attempting to steer him back toward the Yates—especially with China’s economic rise, which, he Latin and Greek they knew. But “the more they told me I says, the Chinese view merely as regaining their rightful shouldn’t study it, the more I wanted to!” recalls Yates place as one of the world’s leaders. with his characteristic easy laugh. “They have tremendous pride in their culture and Only once he arrived at Oxford did he learn that over in history. For centuries, they were the Middle Kingdom. The China, the word “interesting” was being redefined. In world looked up to them. The world came to them.” This addition to the social and political upheavals that marked is, after all, the culture that made such invaluable inven- Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution (1966-76), all archae- tions as paper, the printing press, gunpowder and stirrups, ological work had been abandoned and artifacts from the among countless others, centuries ahead of the West. longest continuous civilization the planet has seen were Still, thanks in part to that efficient bulldozer of being destroyed. Two weeks after beginning his studies, history, the Cultural Revolution, you could steer a square- Yates switched to Chinese poetry. sailed junk through the lacunae in the field of Chinese Like the literati themselves—pre-modern Chinese all-in- studies. Yates and collaborator Anthony Barbieri-Low at one poets, painters, calligraphers, administrators and the University of California, Santa Barbara, are currently scientists—the Oxford-, Berkeley- and Harvard-educated trying to fill in some of those gaps with their translation Yates has always taken a catholic approach to Chinese and analysis of manuscripts of early Han Dynasty laws, history. Rather than master one field or dynasty, the discovered in the tomb of a local official buried some McGill professor of history and east Asian studies covers 2,200 years ago and published for the first time in 2001. the whole breadth of this rich culture. Legal documents, The manuscripts’ revelations—that men and women were social and military history, early philosophy and, of course, legally considered equals, that a slave could inherit his poetry are just a few of the disciplines he’s examined. master’s land and even his title, for example—shed Thus armed, the cultural historian serves as interpreter of important comparative light on the development of the Chinese tradition to the West. empires like the Roman and British. This summer, Yates “There are some things I can ask or say from my and Barbieri-Low have been invited to attend a workshop Western perspective that the Chinese don’t, or couldn’t,” to study newly recovered ancient Chinese documents and he explains. For example, Westerners cannot understand discuss them with Chinese scholars before the latter pub- the Chinese perspective on human rights without grasping lish their interpretations, an important opening for East- the Chinese viewpoint, born of their history and philoso- West scholarly exchange. The Chinese are enticed by phy, that “the security and health of the community Yates and Barbieri-Low’s database of early legal texts and overall is more important than that of a single individual. their digital imaging technology—which makes their We automatically think the individual is paramount.” enhanced photos of archaeologically retrieved manuscripts To insights like that, Westerners are only too happy to easier to read than the original—and by their expertise in listen. A featured expert in documentaries for National ancient technical Chinese language, an impressive feat for Geographic, Discovery Channel, History Channel, BBC two non-Chinese. and U.S. public television, among others, Yates has done Such archaeological treasure troves really only started all he can to bring Chinese culture to the general public. being discovered in the 20th century and especially since His output is enormous. He has published five books—two Chinese liberation in 1949; despite the losses of the

Rachel Granofsky in Chinese—and has three more in the pipeline, including Cultural Revolution, Yates dubs it the Golden Age of Women in China from Earliest Times to the Present: A Chinese archaeology. With so many discoveries still being Bibliography of Studies in Western Languages, due out this made, he clearly considers being born in these “interesting” spring. Add to that nearly countless articles and ency- times a blessing. clopedia entries, book chapters, edited journals, reviews, ■ Robin Yatesʼs current research funding is supported by conference papers and guest lectures, and his personal the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities. Yates is 14-page bibliography could be considered a project in the James McGill Professor in History and East Asian itself. For all this, the Association francophone pour le Studies.

McGill University 27 28 Headway Summer 2009 Memory Pioneer FIRST PERSON Interview with neuropsychologist Brenda Milner by Jacquie Rourke it’s something that’s reciprocal. And sos friendship is, butIthinkone’s idea of afriendship isthat ant. Idon’t know whatthe dictionary definition of has lostafriend. He wasalwayssocourteousand pleas- really thought aboutthisinany detail. One feels thatone Yes, thisisfrustrating. It’s onlysince HMdied thatI’ve who couldn’tremember you? so closely, for over 30 years, withsomeone reintroduce yourself. How diditfeeltowork Every timeyou metwithHM,you hadto that. It’s immensely gratifying. exciting field...no, Icouldnot havepossiblyforeseen off inthisamazing wayand become such ahuge and knowledge. Butthatinone’s lifetime itwasgoing totake to feelthatone wasadding some small thing tohuman Enormously. When Istartedout,my ambition wasalways Has your career exceeded your expectations? “I alwaystellmy students not tobeafraid tochange.” bad mathematics teacher somewhere inEngland!” she muses. hunch thather future layelsewhere. “Iwouldhavebeena out studying mathematics atCambridge, then followed a and Engineering in2009.Not badfor someone who started NSERC’s Gerhard Herzberg Canada GoldMedal for Science International Award in2005;and being named afinalist for London and Royal Society of Canada; the Gairdner American Academy of Artsand Sciences, RoyalSociety of Order of Canada, National Academy of Sciences (USA), research. Her many honours include: induction into the the MNIand McGill University, where she continues her Dorothy J.KillamProfessor of Cognitive Neuroscience at understanding of how the brain works. Today, Milner isthe human memory systems dramatically changed our knowledge. Milner’s resulting demonstration of multiple discovered he wasabletoretain certainkinds of new him from recognizing Milner from one day tothe next, she into long-term. Although HM’ssevere amnesia prevented “HM”—lost the abilitytoconvertshort-term memories his death inDecember2008,waspublicly identified as control hisepilepsy, 27-year-oldMolaison—who, until neurology and psychology. Following anoperation to the new field of cognitiveneuroscience, which merges collaboration thathelped establishMilner asapioneer in collaboration withapatient named Henry Molaison—a 1950, Brenda Milner beganafateful 30-yearresearch Shortly afterarriving atMcGill from her native England in looked blanklyatme. It’s verystrange. was afriend when Icame toseehim,eventhough he be helpful, do anything he canfor science. Ialwaysfelthe no question. He wasalwayssaying how much he wants to know us. Yet wefeel,and definitely Ifeel,he’s afriend, saying thisisn’tnecessarily the case, becauseHMdoesn’t

Owen Egan udde nly we’re research question? So, how doyou comeupwithagood a function of how good the question is. a more challenging environment. How good the workis, is good tohavetryfigure some of these things outin we couldhavelearnt from the patients. Isupposeitwas beginning, weprobably wouldnot havelearnt asmuch as course, ifwehadbeenabletodo thatfrom the somebody died, toseeit.It wasquiteintoxicating. Of have brain operations done or, before that,waituntil tasks todo, and seethe brain active. We didn’t need to unteers, and putthem inthese scanners and givethem able totake psychology students orother healthy vol- even tothinkthatone might beabletodo it,wasbeing The huge stepforward, and itwasreally quiteshocking changing neuroscience? What are your thoughtsonhow technologyis leaps inbrain imagingtoolssuchasMRIs. Over your career, you’ve seenalmostunthinkable ■ the thing Ifeelmost strongly about. being done now isfrom basic science of the past.Thisis knowledge. It’s ironic, butallthe translational work science, the science whose primary aimistoincrease value withno comparable growth insupportof basic translational research thathasanimmediate transferable porting basic science. There isareal emphasisnow on weeks ago, thatIreally believe thatwemust besup- I actually said thistothe Prime MinisterinOttawaafew what would you say? asked you whatresearchers needtoday, Well, ifthatministercame toyou and I’ve never hadpolitical ambitions! finished andyou’re already cringing! or economicdevelopment—wait, Ihaven’t If you were ministerof scienceandtechnology it? How couldIexplore it?” that. And then youstartsaying, “Well, how couldItest person does orananimal does, Iwonder why they did myself. Ifsomething intrigues me, some odd thing thata quite hard. My ideas havealwayscome from outside to research itthoroughly. You havetobewilling towork mind. Ifyouare interested insomething, youreally have The firstthing youhavetodo istoget awell-stocked Institutes of Health Research, the Metropolitan Life Metropolitan the Research, Health of Institutes Foundation and the Natural Sciences and Engineering and Sciences Natural the and Foundation Council of Canada. of Council Brenda Milnerʼs research is funded by the Canadian the by funded is research Milnerʼs Brenda Headway Making MCGILL RESEARCH FACTS ➦

C.H. McLeod (left, flanked by students circa 1880) dedicated himself to the quiet study of astronomical data. As the longstanding superintendent of the McGill Observatory (below), he used his vast volume of readings to reconfigure the longitudinal readings of Canada. McGill University Archives (PR010554) Archives University McGill

Turning Point 1884 McGill University Archives (PN010547) Archives University McGill ➦

rom our hyper-technological 21st-century superintendent of the Observatory until his death in viewpoint, it may be hard to believe it wasn’t 1917, and the time-telling practice continued until radio always easy to know the time of day—or even technology made it obsolete in 1926. F where, exactly, we stood on the planet. But The McGill Observatory was demolished in its centenary such an era wasn’t that long ago. year, 1963, to make way for the Leacock Building, needed Starting in the 1840s, Dr. Charles Smallwood diligently to accommodate the influx of baby boomers. The recorded weather and astronomical observations from Observatory’s legacy, however, lives on. For Barry Turner, his home near Montreal. In 1863, the physician, by then a McGill doctoral alumnus who is now Senior Meteorologist an honorary McGill professor of meteorology, moved his at the Montreal engineering firm GENIVAR, Smallwood and pioneering weather forecasting efforts to a new stone McLeod’s greatest achievement is building a body of tower beside McGill’s Arts Building. The aging Smallwood regular and dependable readings in a time when such data soon recruited his student C.H. McLeod to assist him with was often patchy. “It’s not flashy. It’s not glamorous,” his studies. In 1874, one year after Smallwood’s death, says Turner. “But it’s one of those quiet, crucial things.” à the McGill Observatory was raised to the status of the nation’s “chief station,” telegraphing weather reports every three hours to the new Canadian Meteorological McGill’s research funding sources Service in Toronto. 2007-08: $418.554 million* Following his mentor’s weather methodology, McLeod began combining telegraph communications with astro- nomical observations, made using a seven-foot telescope, to calculate McGill’s longitude relative to the continental reference point, Harvard College. Using an 1892 follow-up reading relative to the zero meridian at Greenwich, England, McLeod revised the longitude figure for Harvard— and, as a result, more accurately positioned every city, town, hamlet and farm in North America. But McLeod didn’t just tell Canadians where they were—he told them when, too. Following an interna- tional agreement at the 1884 Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C., to adopt a system of 24 global time zones, Canadians began setting their watches to McGill time. The McGill Observatory sent the official time signal by telegraph to railways and harbours nationwide and to such far-flung locales as Bermuda, Jamaica, the Azores and even some South Pacific islands. McLeod served as *McGill and affiliated hospitals

McGill University 29 Three Cheers For Three Killam Winners

The Canada Council for the Arts’ Killam Prize is one of the country’s most prestigious research awards, recognizing distinguished scholars in the fields of health sciences, natural sciences, engineering, social sciences and humanities. McGill University is enormously proud that our researchers received three of the five 2009 Killam Prizes: • Philippe Gros (Health Sciences) for his groundbreaking genetics research into many diseases, including spina bifida, cancer and malaria • Wagdi G. Habashi (Engineering) for leading the world in computational fluid dynamics research, crucial to preventing in-flight icing of aircraft • François Ricard (Humanities) for his insightful explorations of contemporary Quebec literature and society University research deepens our cultural understanding. It drives economic prosperity. And it’s building a healthier world. Congratulations to our new Killam laureates for this well-deserved recognition of their exceptional careers.

Researchers François Ricard, Philippe Gros and Wagdi G. Habashi with Heather Munroe-Blum, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of McGill University.