Dr. Bruce McManus, Director
As Director of the PROOF Centre, Dr. Bruce McManus brings broad skills and leadership qualities to the Centre’s mission. Dr. McManus is Professor in the Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine at the University of British Columbia. He serves as Director of the UBC James Hogg iCAPTURE Centre for Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Research located at St. Paul’s Hospital. He served as the inaugural Director of the Providence Heart + Lung Institute at St. Paul’s Hospital from 2007 to 2010, and since then is serving as Co-Director of the community-wide Institute for Heart + Lung Health.
From 2000 until 2006, Dr. McManus served as inaugural Scientific Director of the Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health, Canadian Institutes of Health Research. He joined the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia in July 1993 as the Department Head of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, bringing 11 years of experience as a clinician-scientist at the University of Nebraska Medical Centre, including sabbatical time as John F. Fogarty Senior International Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany. Dr. McManus received an MD degree from the University of Saskatchewan, completed his residency in medicine and pathology at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Harvard University, Boston, the PhD at the University of Toledo, and post‐doctoral fellowships at the University of California – Santa Barbara and the National Heart, Lung & Blood Institute, NIH.
Dr. McManus’ basic and clinical investigative program is focused on mechanisms, consequences, detection and prevention of injury and aberrant repair involved in inflammatory diseases of the heart and blood vessels, with particular emphasis on enteroviral infections of the heart and transplant vascular disease. He works in a cross-disciplinary setting on translational research questions for which answers are critically enabled by computational sciences including biomarker discovery and validation, information acquisition, annotation, and use, and registry development to support heart and lung research. Dr. McManus has co-authored 350 peer-reviewed publications, as well as many chapters. He has edited four books. He is co-holder of several patents. He has served as Councilor for the International Society for Heart Research and for the American Society for Investigative Pathology. He is past-president of the Society for Cardiovascular Pathology. He currently serves on editorial boards of several professional and scientific journals, and on many advisory committees and boards. Dr. McManus has long been committed to training and mentoring scientist trainees across a range of disciplines. He has convened many public and private sector partnerships in research.
Dr. McManus has been recognized for his scientific contributions by numerous institutions and organizations through visiting professorships and lectureships. He was co-recipient of the prestigious Max Planck Research Award in 1991. He was elected to the Royal Society of Canada as a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences in 2002. He received a UBC Killam Research Prize – Senior Scientist Category in 2003. In 2005, he was elected as an inaugural Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and was honoured with the Research Achievement Award of the Canadian Cardiovascular Society. In 2006 Dr. McManus received the BC Innovation Council’s Lieutenant Governor’s Technology Innovation Award. He has been honored with the 2007 UBC Distinguished Medical Lecturer Award and 2008 David F. Hardwick Lifetime Achievement Award. He was awarded the 2009 CSATVB Scientific Excellence Award, Canadian Society for Atherosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology. Dr. McManus has been recognized by the Society for Cardiovascular Pathology with the 2010 Distinguished Achievement Award and by Providence Health Care with the 2010 Research & Mission Award. Recently, he received the 2011 Sarrazin Award Lecture from the Canadian Physiological Society.
Dr. Alice Mui, Scientific Liaison
Dr. Alice Mui is a talented investigator who was recruited back to the University of British Columbia (UBC) as an Assistant Professor, Co-Director of Centre for Surgical Research, Department of Surgery. Prior to returning Alice had spent seven years as a staff scientist at Schering-Plough’s research institute (DNAX) in California where she ran a research group devoted to understanding cytokine regulation of immune cell function in order to identify targets for the development of therapeutic strategies. Studies in Dr. Mui’s laboratory currently focus on elucidating the signaling pathways by which the anti-inflammatory cytokine interleukin-10 (IL-10) inhibits immune cell activation.
In collaboration with Dr. Krystal, Dr. Mui showed that SHIP is required for the anti-inflammatory action of IL-10 on macrophages. Because of the central role of SHIP in this process, her laboratory developed a novel in vitro, high throughput assay to screen Dr. Andersen’s marine invertebrate library for small molecule activators or inhibitors of SHIP. Several “hits” were identified, one of which led to Aquinox’s lead product AQX-MN100. Dr. Mui’s work in cytokine biology has been recognized by the International Cytokine Society and she has received a scholarship award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
Ms. Marjorie Co, Chief Development Officer
Ms. Marjorie Co is The PROOF Centre’s Chief Development Officer and is responsible for the Centre’s business development activities. With fourteen years of business and legal experience, Marjorie previously held business development roles at Twinstrand Therapeutics, Inc. and Forbes Medi-Tech, Inc., two Vancouver-based biotechnology companies developing therapies to treat cancer and cardiovascular diseases respectively. Additionally, during her years in private practice, Marjorie provided legal advice to Canadian biotechnology companies. A member of the Law Society of British Columbia, Marjorie was called to the British Columbia Bar in 1996 and obtained her MBA and LLB degrees from the University of British Columbia in 2003 and 1995, respectively, and a BSc (Honours) degree from Simon Fraser University in 1990.
Dr. Raymond Ng, Chief Informatics Officer
Dr. Raymond Ng is a professor in computer science at UBC. He is internationally renowned for his data mining studies. He has published over 100 journal and conference papers covering a broad range of topics in informatics, data mining and databases. He has won Best Paper awards from the ACM SIGKDD conference on data mining and the ACM SIGMOD conference on database management. For the past few years, Dr Ng has been one of the editors of two top database journals worldwide – the VLDB Journal and the IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering. He was the general chair of ACM SIGMOD 2008 and the program chair of IEEE ICDE 2009.
Dr. Scott Tebbutt, Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Scott Tebbutt is Chief Scientific Officer for the Prevention of Organ Failure (PROOF) Centre of Excellence, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Respiratory Medicine, University of British Columbia. He is also a Principal Investigator at the Institute for Heart and Lung Health, Vancouver, Canada. Since 2006, he has served as Co-Director of the Molecular Phenotyping and Genotyping Core of the UBC James Hogg Research Centre, and he is currently Director of the UBC James Hogg Research Centre’s Technology Development Core. Dr. Tebbutt earned his B.A. degree in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford (Oriel College), England in 1989 and his Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from the University of East Anglia (Cambridge Laboratory, John Innes Centre, England) in 1993. He pursued post-doctoral fellowships in the laboratories of Professor Ann Harris (University of Oxford, Institute of Molecular Medicine) and Professor Diana Hill (University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand), where he studied the molecular genetics of cystic fibrosis. He was appointed Research Fellow at the University of Otago (1995-2001), leading a research team investigating the genomics of the sheep cystic fibrosis locus. He was seconded to a start-up biotechnology company (Global Technologies (NZ) Ltd.) as Director of Genomics (1999-2001). He moved to Canada in 2001, and was Senior Researcher in the Centre for Biomedical Research (University of Victoria, 2001-2002), prior to being recruited to the UBC James Hogg Research Centre at St. Paul’s Hospital, Vancouver (2002).
Dr. Tebbutt’s research program is focused on the genomics of complex respiratory disease, including the early and late reactions in allergic asthma. He also leads a multidisciplinary collaboration to investigate interactions between fungal spores and human airway cells. His research combines hypothesis-driven study of biological mechanisms with the development of advanced tools and technology (including bioinformatics and microfluidics-based systems) to better facilitate basic and translational research. Dr. Tebbutt has published original research contributions in journals such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (U.S.A.), Journal of Medical Genetics, Genomics, BioTechniques, Bioinformatics, BMC Bioinformatics and BMC Medical Genomics. He has published numerous technical reviews as well as book chapters on the role of genetic variation in respiratory disease. He has served as reviewer on several grant panels, including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research, and he is Associate Editor for the journal BMC Genetics.
Dr. Tebbutt has received several fellowships and awards, including an Edward Penley Abraham Research Trust Fellowship (U.K.), a Journal of Cell Science Traveling Fellowship Award, and a Research Fellowship from the Cystic Fibrosis Association of New Zealand. He has been awarded competitive research funding from organizations such as the National Sanitarium Association (Canada), the British Columbia Lung Association, AllerGen NCE Inc. (Allergy, Genes and Environment Network), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the Wellcome Trust (U.K.).
Ms. Janet Wilson-McManus, Chief Operating Officer
Ms. Janet Wilson-McManus has served as Chief Operating Officer for the Centre of Excellence for the Prevention of Organ Failure (PROOF Centre) since March, 2009. Janet brings more than 25 years of hands-on research and program management experience from the clinical laboratory and basic and translational health research environments. Over the last decade, Janet has been instrumental in bringing in large-scale funding of more than $75 million of infrastructure and operating funds to the UBC community. These initiatives range from laboratory renovations and equipment installation to operational infrastructure for research centres and institutions. Janet was foundational in successful funding for translational research awards for large scale genomics initiatives.
All programs involved partner engagement and funding from academia, health care, industry, and private foundations. Janet is a co-author on more than 80 full length publications and chapters and is contributor to one patent to date. Janet obtained her Bachelor of Science degree in Biology and Chemistry from the University of Southern Colorado and a Bachelor of Science in Medical Technology as well as post-graduate courses in Statistics at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Janet also has training as a facilitator and in the Legacy Leadership model. Janet is a member of the Society of Cardiovascular Pathology, the Society for Research Administrators, and the Project Management Institute.
Dr. Robert Balshaw, Statistical Lead
Dr. Robert Balshaw is the Director of Information Sciences at Syreon Corporation, and has 20 years of research and industry experience in informatics, biomedical statistics and healthcare outcomes analysis within the healthcare and medical sectors. Dr. Balshaw received his Doctorate in Statistics from Simon Fraser University in Canada and a prestigious Post Doctoral Fellowship from the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
He is currently a member of faculty in the Department of Statistical and Actuarial Sciences at Simon Fraser University and at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Balshaw’s research encompasses multivariate analytical methods for the analysis of health data, decision analytic modeling for multi-state chronic diseases, economic analysis and modeling, and innovative methods for the analysis of high dimensional microarray genomic and proteomic data. Dr. Balshaw is the senior statistician for many international research initiatives, and a key advisor to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry on many aspects of advanced methodology and statistical analysis.
Dr. Carlo Marra, Health Economist
Dr. Carlo Marra is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at UBC and the Director for the Collaboration for Outcomes Research and Evaluation. He is also a Research Scientist at the Centre for Health Evaluation and Outcome Sciences at the Providence Health Care Research Institute. He is a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Pharmaceutical Outcomes and he holds a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar Award in Health Services Research. Carlo’s main research interests have been in health economics, quality of life research, and pharmacoepidemiology. Carlo has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and more than 100 other publications (research abstracts, book chapters, and non-peer reviewed articles). Carlo has received more than 2 dozen awards for scholarship, research, and service.
Dr. Wan Tan, Medical Officer – Lung
Dr. Wan-Cheng Tan is Honorary Professor in the Department of Medicine, University of British Columbia, since January 2004. Prior to coming to UBC, she was Professor of Medicine at the National University of Singapore and Consultant Physician and Pulmonologist at the National University Hospital in Singapore. She earned her medical degree from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland in 1973, and completed her specialty training in Pulmonary Medicine at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
Dr Tan is a Past President of the Asian Pacific Society of Respirology (APSR). Currently, she serves as a member of the advisory group to the World Lung Health committee and the International Relations Committee of the American Thoracic Society. In addition, Dr Tan is chairperson of the Dissemination Committee and member of the Executive Committee of the Global Initiative on Asthma (GINA) and an advisory member of the Global Initiative for Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD).
An author of over 140 publications in peer-reviewed journals, Dr Tan also serves as Editorial Board Member and Reviewer for various journals, including Respirology, Respiratory Medicine, Journal of COPD, Journal of the IUATLD, and CHEST. She has major research interests in the prevalence, mortality and risk factors of hospitalization in COPD, and in the implementation of asthma guidelines. Since joining UBC, she maintains an active role in epidemiological research and is the lead investigator for the multicentre BOLD [Burden of Obstructive Lung Disease] study and a Co-Principal Investigator of the longitudinal Canadian Cohort of Obstructive Lung Disease [CanCOLD] study in Canada.
Dr. Malcolm Arnold, Medical Officer – Heart
Dr. J. Malcolm O. Arnold, BSc, MB, BCh, BAO, MD, FRCP, FRCP Edin, FRCPC, FACP, FACC FESC graduated first in his class from Queen’s University, Belfast and has received many undergraduate and postgraduate awards. He was a clinical and research fellow in the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston and is presently staff cardiologist at University Hospital, London Health Sciences Centre and Professor of Medicine, Physiology and Pharmacology in the of University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada. He is Director of Research Affairs for the Division of Cardiology, is Chair of the Canadian Heart Failure Network, Chair of the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress Committee, is a member of the Executive Councils of the Heart Failure Society of America and the Canadian Cardiovascular Society and served on the Steering Committee of the Board of Governors of the American College of Cardiology. He is a member of the Scientific Program Committees of the Heart Failure Society of America and the Canadian Cardiovascular Society and is on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Cardiac Failure and the Canadian Journal of Cardiology. He is a frequent invited reviewer for many other journals.
He was the first Chair of the Canadian Cardiovascular Society Heart Failure Guidelines Program and is also a member of the Canadian Hypertension Society and the Canadian Diabetes Association national Guideline Committees. He has also served as Chair of the University of Western Ontario Department of Medicine Research Committee and has received the Faculty of Medicine Dean’s Awards for both Excellence in Research and Excellence in Teaching. His research has been funded by the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and the Canadian Institute for Circulatory and Respiratory Health and he has been an Investigator in many NHLBI studies. He serves on many national and international research committees and clinical trial steering committees and has published over two hundred and fifty scientific manuscripts, theses, book chapters, editorials and reviews, over two hundred abstracts, and over one hundred and thirty teaching programs and CME publications. He has supervised many undergraduate and post-graduate students including MSc, PhD and post doctoral students. With a graduate student and colleague in his laboratory, they discovered the effect of grapefruit juice on drug metabolism and described the mechanism. His current interests focus on heart failure, its mechanisms and treatment as well as delivery of optimal care.
Dr. Paul Keown, Medical Officer – Kidney
Dr. Paul A. Keown is Professor of Medicine and Director of Immunology at the University of British Columbia, with appointments in Medicine, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Dr. Keown graduated in Medicine from the University of Manchester, and pursued postgraduate training in England, France, and Canada. He holds research Doctorates in both Medicine and in Science from the University of Manchester, and an MBA from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. Dr. Keown’s research focuses particularly on the immune response in transplantation and autoimmune disease, and ranges from molecular genetics to healthcare economics.
He has served as Executive Director of the British Columbia Transplant Program, Head of the UBC Division of Nephrology, president of the Canadian Transplant Society, Vice President and member of the Executive Committee of the Transplantation Society, and in numerous other national and international scientific societies and professional organizations. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada, the Royal College of Physicians of London, the Royal College of Pathologists, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Society of Biology, the American College of Physicians, and the American Society of Nephrology. Dr. Keown is the founder and C.E.O. of Syreon Corporation, a global research corporation specializing in the use of advanced information technologies for health sciences research.
Dr. Dan Holmes, Medical Officer – Clinical Laboratory
Dr. Dan Holmes holds an undergraduate degree in Chemical Physics from the University of Toronto, and a medical degree from the University of British Columbia (UBC). He did his residency training in Medical Biochemistry at UBC also, graduating in 2006. He is head of the Division of Clinical Chemistry in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver.
He is active in undergraduate basic science, undergraduate medical and post graduate medical education at UBC. Research areas include assay development, interpretation of laboratory tests, and laboratory medicine statistics. His role in the PROOF Centre will be as a liaison to assist in the development and implementation of clinically robust multiplexed immunoassays for biomarkers.
Dr. Rob McMaster, Scientific Liaison
Dr. Robert McMaster is the Director of the Immunity and Infection Research Centre at Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute. He is also a Professor and the Head of the Department of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia, Director of Transplant Immunology for the British Columbia Transplant Research Institute, and a member of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Microbiology and Infection Committee. Dr. McMaster received an MSc in Immunology from the University of British Columbia and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford. Dr. McMaster’s research involves molecular immunology, transplant immunology, and immunogenetics.
His research is studying the intracellular pathogen, Leishmania, to gain an understanding of cell-surface protein interactions with the host immune system. His group also studies the modulation of host macrophage gene expression by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a major pathogen worldwide.
Ms. Leah Lockhart, Communications Manager
As Communications Manager, Leah Lockhart provides strategic communications and public affairs support for the PROOF Centre. Leah brings over five years experience as a communicator in the health care and research fields. She has also spent time in the private sector at a creative agency, working with a variety of clients, including government, real estate developers, small businesses, health promotion experts and not-for-profit organizations.
Leah holds a BA (Honours) in Communications from Simon Fraser University and a Certificate in International Development from the University of British Columbia. When not in the office, Leah can most often be found on a mountain or by the ocean.
Ms. Jo Lynn Mervyn, Finance Manager
Ms. Jo-Lynn Mervyn is currently the Finance Manager for the Centre of Excellence for the Prevention of Organ Failure (PROOF Centre). Ms. Mervyn also holds the position of Finance Manager for the Providence Health Care Research Institute. She is responsible for managing a high volume of accounts for multiple different projects from various funding agencies. Ms. Mervyn has worked in the finance sector of the research setting for 9 years and currently leads a team of 5 finance personnel. Her role as Finance Manager includes many functions but most notably she is responsible for budgeting, reporting, policy development and auditing for the multiple different projects.
For her role with PROOF she will be working very closely with the Audit and Finance Committee. Jo-Lynn completed her Bachelors in Business Administration and is studying to write her accounting designation exam.
Dr. Rhonda Wideman, Biomarker Development Manager
Dr. Wideman holds an undergraduate degree in science from the University of Waterloo. She completed a PhD in 2007 at the University of British Columbia, where her research focus was developing novel approaches for the treatment of diabetes using cellular and gene therapy. Before joining the PROOF Centre, she completed two years of postdoctoral training in the Diabetes Research Group at UBC. Dr. Wideman has co-authored peer-reviewed publications in journals including Cell Metabolism, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Gastroenterology, and Diabetes, and completed a MBA in Management of Biotechnology at SFU’s Segal Graduate School of Business in 2010. Dr. Wideman received the CIHR’s Science to Business Scholarship and NSERC’s Canada Graduate Scholarship, and was an invited participant at Novartis’ International Biotechnology Leadership Camp in 2009. In her role with the PROOF Centre, Dr. Wideman manages biomarker discovery and development activities, including project management, technical assessment and due diligence, intellectual property management, and technology development and commercialization functions. She is supported by BC Innovation Council’s Ripples of Hope Award in Biotechnolgy and Entrepreneurship.
