Dr. John Bell

Dr. John Bell is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Ottawa and a Senior Scientist of Cancer Care Ontario. Born in Hamilton, Ontario, he obtained his PhD in Biology from McMaster University. He then had post-doctoral positions at the University of Ottawa with Dr. Michael McBurney and at the National Institute for Medical Research in London England with Dr. Gordon Foulkes supported by a fellowship from the National Cancer Institute of Canada. In 1986, he established his first independent laboratory program at McGill University in the Department of Biochemistry and in 1989 moved to the Cancer Research Group at the University of Ottawa first as a Scholar of the Medical Research Council of Canada and subsequently as a Senior Scientist of the National Cancer Institute. For the last eight years he has been a member of the Centre for Experimental Cancer Research at the Ottawa Regional Cancer Centre.

Dr. Bell’s research program is currently directed towards the development of viruses that preferentially grow in and kill tumour cells. His basic research into the defects that occur in cancer cells has identified a weakness that is found in approximately 80% of human tumours. This particular defect makes cancer cells susceptible to infection and killing by viruses. On the other hand normal cells lack this defect and are able to resist virus infection. In mouse models of cancer, Dr. Bell has shown that it is possible to administer the virus intravenously and deliver it to tumours spread through-out the body. The majority of mice with tumours can be effectively cured by multiple doses of virus. Dr. Bell is currently working with an Industrial Partner to develop Vesicular Stomatitis Virus as a cancer therapeutic and begin clinical trials with cancer patients. He is also interested in developing other viruses for this purpose and has some novel strategies for regulating the growth of therapeutic viruses in diseased cells. In particular he is working with the funding from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research to develop novel viruses for the treatment of AIDS and Hepatitis C infections. Other research programs ongoing in Dr. Bell’s lab focus on understanding how protein synthesis is regulated in normal and diseased cells and what are the molecular mechanisms controlling gene splicing.

Dr. Bell’s basic research programs have been funded continuously over the last eighteen years by grants from the Medical Research Council of Canada, the National Cancer Institute of Canada, the Leukemia Research Fund of Canada and most recently by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. His salary support has come from the Medical Research Council of Canada, the National Cancer Institute of Canada and for the last eight years from Cancer Care Ontario. Dr. Bell is currently organizing Canadian scientists and trying to attract funding, to form an Oncolytic Virus Consortium. The objective of this group is to bring together clinicians and scientists with an interest in cancer killing viruses, to form a cohesive research team that would work to accelerate their findings into the clinic. Dr. Bell is asked frequently to present the results of his work at International and National venues and as an example was an invited speaker this year at the Harvard Medical School, the American Society of Gene Therapy in Washington DC, Wake Forest University North Carolina, Robarts Research Institute in London, de l’Association de therapie genique du Quebec in Montreal, BioNorth Conference in Ottawa and organized and ran the Second International Meeting on Oncolytic Viruses as Cancer Therapeutics in Banff Alberta.

For further information, please contact Dr. John Bell using the Email contact form or by phone at 613 737-7700 ext 6893