Canada's top scientific duo finally
got the international laurels and attention they were
due. Dr Ernest McCulloch and Dr James Till were honoured
with this year's Lasker Award — considered by many
to be the US's answer to the Nobel Prize — for
their discovery of the first stem cell in the 60s. The
longtime collaborators, both senior scientists at the
Ontario Cancer Institute and Professors Emeritus at
the University of Toronto, are often hailed as the 'fathers
of stem cell research.' Ironically, their work went
mostly unnoticed by people outside the field of genomics
until recent controversies over embryonic stem cells.
UNLIKELY
DUO
The two met in the late 50s when they were both starting
out at the Ontario Cancer Institute. Dr McCulloch, now
79, comes from a well-to-do Toronto family. Educated
at Ontario's posh Upper Canada College, he moved on
to the UK's Lister Institute after getting his MD from
the University of Toronto. By contrast Dr Till, now
74, is the son of Saskatchewan farmers and attended
public high school. He completed his bachelor's and
master's degrees at the University of Saskatchewan and
then received a PhD in biophysics from Yale in 1957.
In the early 60s the pair began
a series of experiments that involved injecting bone
marrow cells into mice. During one of these experiments,
they discovered lumps of cells scattered over the animals'
spleens. The number of lumps exactly matched the number
of marrow cells they had injected, leading them to speculate
that each lump had grown from one of the bone marrow
cells. The young scientists quickly recognized the regenerative
potential of these "stem cells." They eventually figured
out how to isolate the cells and detect certain proteins
that help them develop and mature.
These findings demystified the
underlying principles of bone marrow transplants and
led to subsequent breakthroughs in treating leukemia
and other blood cancers. "Our initial interest was primarily
in applications to cancer and cancer treatment and to
knowledge about the origins of cancer," says Dr Till.
Current stem cell research looks
to develop possible treatments or even a cure for common
diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes, heart
disease, stroke and arthritis. These advances, along
with the use of embryonic stem cells in research, have
brought the moral and ethical debates to the forefront.
"There's a great deal of interest
in [this kind of] research because of the possibility
that embryonic stem cells have greater potential, particularly
in regenerative medicine, than adult stem cells do,"
says Dr Till. "This is a very controversial area, from
a scientific and an ethical perspective."
EMBRYO
ETHICS
As stem cell research has taken off around the globe,
the ethical debate finds itself confronting a variety
of cultures. "One can expect that where values differ,
the kinds of research that is supported will differ,"
says Dr Till. "I regard that variety and diversity of
approaches as constructive and desirable. The main thing
is to do it well from a scientific perspective —
that it be high quality research — and do it appropriately
from an ethical perspective so that it is in line with
the values of our society."
Politicians, the media and the
public are often outspoken concerning their opinions
on the ethics of this kind of research. But Dr McCulloch
is less comfortable weighing in. "I am a scientist,
not a moralist," he says. "Ethics are something that
are personal."
Dr Till, for his part, believes
this kind of debate is a healthy and creative aspect
of living in an open society. "If we all agreed on everything,
what a boring place the world would be," he says.
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