Dr. Tom Hudson
President and Scientific Director
Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Toronto

From his eighth floor offices in the South Tower of the MaRS complex, Dr. Tom Hudson has a panoramic view of the many research facilities that comprise Toronto’s downtown Discovery District. Within easy view, Hudson can survey world-class biomedical research facilities at the University of Toronto, The Hosptial for Sick Children, and Mount Sinai, Princess Margaret and Toronto General hospitals.

That view is a strong reminder of just why he chose to relocate to Ontario three years ago as president and scientific director of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, and it’s one of the best selling points he uses to achieve his vision of attracting 50 top cancer researchers to Ontario. Under Hudson’s leadership, the Institute has gained an international reputation for innovative and ground-breaking research.

It’s been three years since Hudson came onboard and already the Institute has chalked up some pretty impressive achievements: OICR-funded research projects have resulted in 26 patent applications, 14 patents granted, 14 invention disclosures, seven patents pending and four spin-off companies.

Downtown Toronto is a long way from the tiny northern Quebec town of Arvida, the company town for aluminium giant Alcan, where Hudson was raised, the only boy in a large family of seven siblings, a twin, one of two sets of twins. Hudson says he was “born into a research family. My father was a chemist for Alcan, my mother was a nurse. There was a large aluminium research centre in our town, and as a child we hosted many research families from around the world.”

Arvida was a good place to grow up, he says, in a home where children were expected to do well, and they did. “Our parents didn’t push us into any one career. They provided the atmosphere for us to achieve. I didn’t know if it would be in medical research or rocket science, but I always had a feeling my destiny would be in research.”

When the time came to leave Arvida, he headed for the big city. Both Tom and his twin sister (at her urging) attended the University of Montreal medical school: “My sister and I went from the womb all the way through medical school together,” he jokes. She specialized in Public Health. His youngest twin sisters today are both rheumatologists, and “All of my sisters are superstars in their chosen fields,” he adds, with obvious pride.

In 1991 Hudson relocated to Boston’s Whitehead Institute/Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Genomic Research where he completed his postdoctoral studies and began working on the Human Genome Project as leader of the physical mapping team. Eventually he became the Centre’s assistant director where he helped generate the first dense physical and gene maps of human and mouse genomes.

Five years later he returned to Canada to found the Montreal Genome Centre at the McGill University Health Centre Research Institute. In 2003, the Centre expanded to become the McGill University and Genome Quebec Innovation Centre. In 2003, Hudson co-founded the International Haplotype Map Consortium to map the genomes of people from around the globe. Researchers use this genome bank to isolate disease-related genes.

It was an impressive career for a man who was then only in his early 40s. “I had come to a point where I felt that I had proven myself, but I hadn’t proven to myself that I was making enough of a difference. I can’t say that my career ideas were very well developed, but I did know that I wanted to do more than just finding genes. When the HapMap came out, I started to listen to offers. But most were to reproduce a genome centre in another city and that wasn’t much of a challenge. The OICR offer was an opportunity to go into something new and usually those offers don’t come up very often.”

Tom and his wife Catherine did their homework before the OICR position was accepted. They looked both at the potential in the position and the quality of life in Toronto. Tom’s career change would also be a big change for his wife and five children, then aged three to seventeen. His wife Catherine, with degrees in law, business administration and public health from McGill and Harvard adapted to family needs and Tom’s career by establishing a home office, with consulting and editing work. A high-speed connection in Toronto was all it took to resume projects where they had been left off.  Although tears were hard to hold back when leaving Montreal, the family adapted well to the move, made new friends and kept up with their interests in music and marathons.

“I made certain there was a real funding commitment here because you don’t change your career and start a new program unless you know the financial commitment is there for more than a year or two.” He got that assurance with a commitment from the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation of $347 million over the first five years.

“The first thing I thought was ‘I am not a cancer scientist’, but there is the genome side of cancer research and I could see that this was a good opportunity to get into the cancer genome sphere.” Hudson, too, was attracted by the opportunity the OICR offered to bring together leading researchers from across the province in a coordinated effort to fight cancer.

In 2007, Hudson unveiled OICR’s strategic plan with a strong focus on prevention, early detection, exploring the genomes of various cancers and discovering new therapies. And that included the ambitious goal of attracting 50 top cancer researchers to Ontario – he’s about half way through.

So what does innovation mean to Dr. Tom Hudson?

“It’s more than just innovation. I see innovative people and hear innovative ideas every day. But the application of innovation is much more difficult, where people don’t follow through or don’t know how to follow through.  There are a lot of good people and better ideas in Ontario, but we don’t always take those good ideas and make them happen.

“That’s what we’re doing at OICR, putting good ideas into practice. We discover something that will cure, that will help protect, and we take the next step. Innovation is about taking that next step.”

That next step is embodied in the Institute’s One Millimetre Cancer Challenge, which is bringing advanced imaging and screening techniques to the Ontario health care system to detect cancer tumours when they are millimetre-sized. OICR’s commercialization arm is nimbly moving new detection devices from the lab to the clinic.

“That challenge speaks loudly to the public. Cancer is picked up too late. It’s like the fire is already in the house. You’re calling the fire department, but already a lot of damage has been done. We use the challenge as a way to promote identifying tumours earlier, when there are many fewer cancer cells, a few hundred thousand as opposed to millions. Clinically it may seem impossible, but in the best labs we can identify a single cancer cell, so we know we should be able to find a millimetre-sized tumour.”

Hudson has received many awards during his stellar career, including the Clinician-Scientist Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the 2001 Young Investigator Award form the Genetics Society of Canada,  the 2000 Scientist of the Year Award from Radio-Canada and being named one of the Top 40 Under 40.

But the one that surprised him the most was being named Maclean’s magazine’s Achievement of the Year in Healthcare in 2005. He didn’t expect to win: “I voted for someone else,” he says. “I found out later that my daughter and all of her high school friends had voted for me.”

At a Glance

The researcher: Dr. Tom Hudson is president and scientific director of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR). Established in December 2005, the OICR is a centre of excellence in cancer research with a focus on prevention, early detection, diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Funded by the Government of Ontario through the Ministry of Research and Innovation, the Institute is translating cancer research findings into programs, technologies and therapies. The Institute will support more than 50 internationally recognized principal investigators at the downtown Toronto’s MaRS Centre and around the province. The Institute is leveraging current research excellence at Ontario universities, research hospitals and health research institutes, leading to a greater integration of cancer research.

The Breakthrough:  In 2007, Hudson unveiled OICR’s strategic plan with a strong focus on prevention, early detection, exploring the genomes of various cancers and discovering new therapies. And that includes the ambitious goal of attracting 50 top cancer researchers to Ontario – he’s about half way through.

Worth Repeating:  “There are a lot of good people and better ideas in Ontario, but we don’t always take those good ideas and make them happen. That’s what we’re doing at OICR, putting good ideas into practice. We discover something that will cure, that will help protect, and we take the next step. Innovation is about taking that next step.” Dr. Tom Hudson, president and scientific director of the Ontario Institute of Cancer Research.

Connect With the Researcher:  http://www.oicr.on.ca/