Two win Prix du Québec

DANIEL McCABE | The Quebec government might be reluctant about giving McGill the funding we claim we need in order to function properly, but it certainly isn't shy about praising our faculty. The Prix du Québec -- the province's highest honour for achievement in the arts and sciences -- were handed out on Sunday and, once again, McGill professors took centre stage in the televised black tie ceremony. Dr. Samuel Freedman from the Department of Medicine and Dr. Theodore Sourkes from the Departments of Psychiatry, Biochemistry, and Pharmacology and Therapeutics, were among the honourees this year, joining a long list of recent McGill winners including Bruce Trigger (1991), Charles Leblond and Charles Taylor (1992), Brenda Milner (1993), Albert Aguayo and Ronald Melzack (1994), Charles Scriver and John Jonas (1995), Henry Mintzberg (1996) and Margaret Lock and Kresimir Krnjevic (1997). Freedman won the Prix Armand-Frappier, an award which honours the recipient for playing a leading role in developing and promoting science and technology. Sourkes earned the Prix Wilder Penfield, an award that recognizes outstanding accomplishments in the biomedical sciences. Freedman has been a key player in shepherding high quality research programs at McGill for more than 20 years -- first as the University's dean of medicine, then as McGill's vice-principal (academic) and now as the research director of the Jewish General Hospital's Lady Davis Institute. It's not a role every scientist would take on; there are plenty who shy away from administrative responsibility, fearful of the toll it would take on their own research programs. "I enjoy playing a mentoring role," says Freedman. "Getting people to work together, watching them realize their potential -- I derive a great deal of satisfaction in seeing that take place." At the Lady Davis Institute, Freedman led a reorganization of the centre's research programs. The institute now focuses its research efforts around seven themes such as AIDS, aging and molecular oncology. Within each of these areas, a multi-disciplinary approach is fostered, rather than a strict division of expertise along departmental lines. The results so far are good -- a recent site visit by an evaluation team from the Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec (FRSQ) resulted in ratings that were among the highest ever recorded for a Quebec research centre. In terms of his own research, Freedman's work is known internationally. An asthma and allergies specialist, Freedman is credited with influencing other researchers by focusing on these conditions from an immunological perspective. He established a clinical immunology unit at the Montreal General Hospital that became one of the most respected in North America and published a popular textbook, Clinical Immunology. Freedman is perhaps best known for work he did with Dr. Phil Gold from the Department of Medicine. Back then, Gold was a graduate student who worked in Freedman's lab. The pair published a series of papers establishing the existence of a tumour component, called carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), in colonic cancer tissues that could not be found in surrounding normal tissue. The finding was startling because it pointed to the possibility of cancer markers that could detect the presence of cancers in the body -- scientists were dubious that such markers even existed. These results also led to the development of the CEA test, which is used to predict the best type of treatment for colonic and other cancers. The test, used worldwide, can also help monitor the success of surgical removals of tumours. Freedman says the nature of research has changed quite a bit from when he was a young medical professor. "We tended to work in isolation. It was the period of the physician/scientist and I think those days are over. I don't believe we'll continue to see clinicians who also manage to be first-class scientists, because the way we do research has changed so much. "Medical technology has become so sophisticated. Somebody spending half the time doing clinical work can't really master the technologies you need to use to do ground-breaking work -- in molecular biology, for instance. "We need to have MDs and PhDs working together. We need to have people who can work with these technologies and people who know how to apply [the resulting research] to patients' needs. These people should be collaborating closely." That's another characteristic of the research programs he's helped organize at the Jewish General. "We're very interested in translational research -- getting new therapies and approaches from the laboratories to the patients as quickly as possible. That's also Quebec government policy -- there is a lot of encouragement to do the research in hospitals rather than in university departments because [the government] wants to see that research be applied." For his part, Theodore Sourkes says he enjoyed the Prix du Québec ceremonies immensely. Before each recipient was awarded the prize, a long tribute listing the winners' accomplishments was presented. "By the time they were finished, I believed I deserved it," laughs Sourkes. Very few biochemists can lay claim to the kind of career that Sourkes has enjoyed. His research has resulted in a far better understanding of Parkinson's Disease as well as the development of the first effective treatment for Parkinson's patients. A McGill graduate (BSc'39, MSc'46), Sourkes did his PhD at Cornell under Nobel Laureate J. B. Sumner. He worked for a period in the U.S., producing promising research that dealt with the biochemistry of the adrenal gland -- the research eventually led to the discovery of alpha-methyldopa, which became a widely used drug for the treatment of hypertension -- before returning to McGill in 1953. Sourkes was hired by Dr. Robert Cleghorn, from the Allan Memorial Institute, a psychiatric centre affiliated with the Royal Victoria Hospital, to be the Allan's resident research biochemist. "When I was offered the job, I told [Cleghorn], 'I don't really know anything about the brain.' He replied, 'Don't worry. None of us know anything about the brain. You've been doing interesting work. Just keep it up.'" Cleghorn must have known what he was doing, because it wasn't long before Sourkes started producing eye-catching results at the Allan. Since he found himself in a psychiatric research centre, Sourkes decided to start by looking into the literature surrounding biochemistry and mental diseases. He ended up producing a widely used book on the subject. When Sourkes heard of studies that linked a biochemical compound called dopamine to the brain functions that regulated movement, he turned his attention to what he sensed was promising terrain. His earlier work on adrenal glands covered similar biochemical territory -- adrenaline, noradrenaline and dopamine were all metabolic products of a natural compound called L-dopa. Researchers hadn't really thought much about dopamine previously, believing that its role, if any, was in being something of a waystation for the production of adrenaline from L-dopa. Sourkes led a research effort that examined patients with various types of diseases affecting the basal ganglia, the part of the brain that regulates the voluntary control of muscles. Patients with Parkinson's, Huntington's Chorea, Wilson's Disease and Syndenham's Chorea were all looked at. Subnormal amounts of dopamine were noted in the Parkinson's patients. Along with other research teams, Sourkes also established that L-dopa could overcome or control many of the symptoms associated with Parkinson's Disease. He then delved more deeply into Parkinson's, working as part of a research team that identified a new nervous pathway in the brain: the dopamine-containing nerve tract whose function is disturbed in patients with Parkinson's Disease. "We were able to tell all the researchers working with Parkinson's Disease that this was where they had to look in their studies. Previous to this, they were flopping around." Sourkes spent part of last summer in Israel as the honoured guest and subject matter of an international scientific conference that highlighted the widespread impact of his research. Officially retired as a scientist, Sourkes is still active at McGill, nurturing a second career as a medical historian. He's a frequent presence in McGill's libraries, thumbing through books about the history of medicine. He's published several articles on the subject. "I was always interested in history. I never did very well in school exams on it," he laughs, "but I was always interested."