Lifetime Achievement - Dr. Robert A. Phillips
Phillips addresses a scientific symposium held in his honour. He is retiring as OICR's Deputy Director this fall.
(CPimages/S. Lake)
When Calvin Stiller, a senior figure in Ontario’s medical and business communities asked Lou Siminovitch, one of Canada’s most prominent medical researchers, for his opinion on what Ontario should do to build a new, world-class cancer research institute, Siminovitch was unequivocal: you need to get Bob Phillips involved.
At the time, Stiller says, he and others were proposing the Government of Ontario “spend $500 million to cure cancer.” Stiller knew of Phillips and was familiar with his work, but it was only after he approached him that it became clear Phillips was familiar with – and respected by – all of the investigators and organizations that would need to come together to make such an ambitious project a success.
The Government of Ontario came back to Stiller’s group with a much more modest proposal: they requested a strategic plan to spend $50 million, not $500 million, on cancer research. “Bob didn’t bat an eye,” Stiller says. “He wrote the document as though $50 million was our original goal.”
With that $50 million, Phillips founded the Ontario Cancer Research Network (OCRN), a province-wide initiative to accelerate the development of new cancer therapies. As OCRN’s director, Phillips created funding programs that allowed clinical trials sites to recruit new staff and oversaw the creation of a training program for clinical trials professionals, a website to help patients locate clinical trials and a research ethics board that reduces workload at the institutional level. All of these programs have flourished, and 13 per cent of Ontario cancer patients now enroll in clinical trials – up from just 5 per cent before OCRN was established.
OCRN also funded research directly with its Cancer Research Fund. Most research funding in Canada is directed toward basic research, but Phillips and other OCRN founders understood this leaves a significant gap between academic laboratories, which do basic research, and pharmaceutical companies, which use this research to develop drugs. Too often, there is no one to invest in work that must be done to bring discoveries to a stage where they will attract the interest of pharmaceutical companies. As a result, the translation of some discoveries into treatments is delayed for years or simply does not occur.
In 2003, the Cancer Research Fund (CRF) was established to support Ontario cancer researchers conducting translational cancer research, from validation of new drug targets and development of new treatments to their application in clinical settings. Since then, the Fund has awarded $71 million to support 139 projects at 22 institutions throughout the province.
Impressed with OCRN’s progress, the provincial government announced in 2005 that it would provide a more substantial funding contribution to allow the Network to grow into a full-scale research institute. The new Ontario Institute for Cancer Research would receive $350 million over five years, with an understanding that this commitment would be extended if the Institute were successful. The Institute’s investigators would also be eligible for federal funding, and a commercialization group would help Ontario researchers find private-sector partners to invest in their work. Stiller’s dream of a half-billion dollar research institute was becoming a reality.
“I watched Bob herd the scientists and institutions in Ontario with grace and respect, and with tremendous insights with regard to what steps to take now – and anticipating the next step that would have to be taken,” said Stiller at a symposium on September 10. The day-long scientific symposium was held in honour of Phillips, who is retiring from OICR later this fall.
“You were artful, you were brilliant,” Stiller continued, turning to Phillips, then back to the audience. “We owe a great debt to this man.”
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Bob Phillips was born in St. Louis, Missouri and raised in Iowa. He earned a BA from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota and a PhD in Molecular Biology from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. While working on his PhD, he had to present a paper at a journal club and came across Drs. Jim Till and Ernest McCulloch’s discovery of stem cells, which had been published in Radiation Research.
Intrigued, Phillips contacted Till to inquire about postdoctoral fellowships at the Ontario Cancer Institute (OCI) in Toronto. “He was an exceptional graduate student,” Till said at the symposium. “The professor who referred him told me that even though he’d just completed his PhD, Bob was already capable of running his own laboratory.”
Phillips had never been to Toronto, and didn’t quite know what to expect. Till had sent him the classified page of the local newspaper so he could look at apartment listings. “Some of the listings said ‘hydro included’ and some said it wasn’t included. I thought it was a bit strange that there were houses in Toronto without running water, but I came anyway,” Phillips said. “It wasn’t until I got here that I realized the landlords were talking about hydro electricity, and that ‘included’ just meant it was included in the rent.”
In Toronto, Phillips quickly fit in to the innovative culture at OCI. “Joining OCI was the luckiest decision I ever made,” Phillips says. At the time, the Institute was home to a handful of researchers who were becoming legends in the Canadian research community, including Till, McCulloch and Siminovitch. Their success proliferated; in the 1970s, more than half of all citations in all fields in Canada came from scientists at OCI.
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The symposium in September brought together people from every stage of Phillips’ career. It was presented in three sections covering three fields to which Phillips made major contributions: stem cells, retinoblastoma/cancer genetics, and translational research.
In the first session Phillips’ postdoctoral supervisor, Till, made remarks before turning the podium over to Dr. Rick Miller, who published extensively with Phillips in the 1970s and 1980s. Miller was followed by Drs. Gordon Keller and Ken Dorshkind, a small sample of the many investigators who trained in Phillips’ laboratory at OCI and have gone on to successful research careers.
The stem cell session was concluded by Dr. John Dick, an OCI researcher who, building on the work of earlier decades, showed that some cancer cells have properties similar to stem cells. “Bob taught me that scientific advice can be given freely and without any strings attached,” Dick said.
The second session highlighted Phillips’ contributions to understanding retinoblastoma and its broader application to cancer genetics. Several speakers, including Drs. Eldad Zacksenhaus and Rod Bremner, explained that work by Phillips and his colleagues on retinoblastoma, a childhood eye cancer, could have broad applications for understanding many types of cancer. Zacksenhaus and Bremner are co-chairing the first International RB Meeting, to be held in Toronto in November, to celebrate the progress of the past 20 years and discuss future research strategies.
The other speakers in the second session, Drs. Brenda Gallie and Jeremy Squire, focused on Phillips’ leadership as Director of Research for Hematology/Oncology and later as Director of the Division of Immunology and Cancer Research at The Hospital for Sick Children. Gallie is now one of the world’s leading retinoblastoma researchers and surgeons and has developed a genetic test for the disease. Squire is now a professor at Queen’s University and director of the NCIC-Clinical Trials Group’s translational research laboratory in Kingston.
The final session focused both on Phillips’ advocacy for translational research and his role in building an environment where the next generation of Ontario researchers can thrive. The speakers, Drs. Elizabeth Eisenhauer and David Spaner, thanked Phillips for drawing scientists’ and policy-makers attention to the issue of research translation, and for the mentorship he has provided in their own careers as translational researchers.
This session was followed by remarks by Bob Delaney, Member of Provincial Parliament and Parliamentary Assistant to Ontario’s Minister of Research and Innovation John Milloy, who thanked Phillips on behalf of Premier Dalton McGuinty, Minister Milloy, John Wilkinson, former Minister of Research and Innovation, and the people of Ontario.
“We don’t know the names, but we know that there are a lot of people in Ontario and the world who are alive today because of the work Bob has done,” he said. “Ontario says thank you, Bob Phillips.”
Dr. Robert A. Phillips
PhD, Washington University, 1965
Professor Emeritus, Department of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, 2005-present
Previously a professor in the departments of Medical Biophysics, Molecular and Medical Genetics, Pediatrics, Immunology,
Executive Director, National Cancer Institute of Canada, 1996-2001
President and CEO, Ontario Cancer Research Network, 2002-2006
Deputy Director, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, 2006-2009
Recipient of the Golden Jubilee Medal awarded by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 2003
R.M. Taylor Medal, Canadian Cancer Society and National Cancer Institute of Canada, 2003
