Dr. John Bell awarded lifetime achievement prize by Canadian Cancer Society

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One of Ottawa’s most distinguished scientists, Dr. John Bell, has received a lifetime achievement award from the Canadian Cancer Society.

Bell, 71, will receive the society’s Lifetime Contribution Prize, which recognizes an individual who, “through vision and leadership, has enhanced the Canadian cancer research landscape to benefit people with cancer.”

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A leading international expert on the use of viruses to infect and kill cancer cells, Bell has published more than 400 research papers while leading a host of capacity-building initiatives to bolster Canada’s ability to offer cutting-edge immunotherapies.

He has helped launch The Ottawa Hospital’s Biotherapeutics Manufacturing Centre, BioCanRx, a network of immunotherapy researchers, the Canadian Oncolytic Virus Consortium and the Canadian Pandemic Preparedness Hub.

Bell has also sought to leverage the power of private sector investment to develop cancer-killing viruses through his work with biotech firms such as Turnstone Biologics, Jennerex Biotherapuetics and Transgene.

He is a senior scientist at The Ottawa Hospital and professor at the University of Ottawa.

“Dr. Bell is not only a brilliant and creative researcher, but he is passionately dedicated to ensuring that promising therapies find their way to the Canadian patients who need them,” said Dr. Rebecca Auer, executive vice-president of research and innovation at The Ottawa Hospital.

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Born and raised in Hamilton, Bell attended Westmount Secondary School, where he played football — “I wanted a career as a professional football player but I was too small and too slow,” he says — before studying science at McMaster University. In the fourth year of his undergraduate degree, he joined a lab as part of his thesis work.

Ever since, the lab has been part of Bell’s life.

“I found that doing research was really stimulating for me, really interesting, so I continued to pursue that,” he explained in an interview.

As a PhD student, his thesis examined the biology of the vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV). He would return to virology again and again during his career.

“Viruses need the cell in order to replicate, so I always felt, if you could understand viruses, it would help us gain inroads into helping us understand how cells work,” Bell says. “Viruses were really a tool at that time to understand how they use cellular machinery to replicate. Almost everything we know about cells is from studying viruses and host cell interactions.”

After McMaster, Bell spent three years as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Ottawa, where he worked on a research team led by Prof. Mike McBurney, a cell biologist who was comparing the behaviour of cancer cells to normal cells. The lab was the first in the city to use stem cells for that purpose.

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After more post-doctoral work at the Medical Research Council in London, England, Bell began his independent research career in 1986 at McGill University as a biochemistry professor. He studied the molecular biology of cancer cells.

As part of that work, he cloned protein-tyrosine kinases, and discovered that one of the enzymes mutated in cancer cells to better defend the organism against viruses.

It led him to believe that cancer cells could be susceptible to viral infection — an insight that launched the defining pursuit of his career.

In 1989, he moved to uOttawa’s Department of Medicine where a new program in developmental biology promised an emphasis on translational research — science that moves from the lab bench to patient clinics.

“I wanted to be able to take my discoveries and translate them to the clinic as best I could, as quickly as I could,” he says.

Bell discovered that as cancer cells evolve, they develop genetic defects that make them more susceptible to viruses, which have the added benefit of activating the body’s immune system in the fight against cancer.

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Seeking to capitalize on his findings, Bell developed a number of targeted, genetically engineered viruses to kill cancer cells without harming healthy ones.

Bell was part of a research team that proved in a clinical trial that administering cancer-killing viruses in the blood of people with cancer was safe and effective. Later, they showed that these oncolytic virotherapies are most successful in cancer’s early stages. Additional studies have demonstrated the potential of combining viruses with other cancer drugs and biotherapeutics.

Unusually collaborative, Bell has brought a team-minded approach to science. He points to those collaborations — and his many mentorships — as his proudest achievements.

“It’s really exciting to come to work every day with all of these bright young people that I work with,” he says, adding: “That’s pretty inspirational so I don’t really see a reason to retire.”

Andrew Duffy is a National Newspaper Award-winning reporter and long-form feature writer based in Ottawa. To support his work, including exclusive content for subscribers only, sign up here: ottawacitizen.com/subscribe

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