Genes / GENOME on DTNicholson's Wednesday-Night.com History

Tom Hudson has learned to go with the flow. "There are many paths in life, and I've been able to travel many roads because I wasn't so passionate about one thing."

It just happens that the young allergist and immunologist arrived at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to begin his post-graduate research on the very day in 1991 that work began on the Human Genome Project.

Hudson, a native of Arvida who studied at the Universite de Montreal and McGill, had gone to Boston to explore the genetic causes of asthma.

"But I realized very soon that the tools didn't exist. We could guess that genes were involved, that environment was involved. But how to dissect them? The tools didn't exist."

Instead, he joined the team that would make maps of mouse - then human - chromosomes and, eventually, identify the roughly 30,000 genes that make each of us what we are: 99.9 per cent the same as every one else and 0.1 per cent different.

"I'm not the kind of person who knows exactly where he wants to be two years from now. I have the fuzzy idea I'm going in the right direction and I make choices based on that. But I'm content with the way my career is evolving."

Fifteen years later, Hudson is back in Montreal, one of the world's leading authorities on DNA patterns - and how they can be used to identify and treat everything from asthma and arthritis to diabetes, C. difficile and leprosy.

The director of the McGill University and Genome Quebec Innovation Centre, Hudson was a key investigator, and the leading Canadian, in the International HapMap Project, a three-year, $185-million landmark effort that succeeded in sorting genes into blocks, called haplotypes. Scientists around the planet will now study those blocks to figure out which gene combinations make one person more likely than another to wheeze, get cancer or respond to treatment.

A very large part of that research is taking place right here, in the gleaming laboratories of the McGill genome centre, a facility that was a remote dream when Hudson began commuting between MIT and McGill a decade ago.

"There wasn't a lot of opportunity in Montreal to do large-scale science," Hudson says in a sun-splashed office overlooking McGill's snow-covered track field. A bright blue painting of a double-helix DNA strand by Quebec artist Jacques Deshaies snakes around a concrete pillar by his desk. "There were no granting mechanisms, no core facilities."

For seven years, Hudson split his week between running research labs in Boston and building a base in Montreal.

"A huge confidence happened in Canada somewhere in early 2000-01 that we could do large-scale science, that we could be competitive with the best U.S. centres." That national boost in self-esteem dovetailed with the fact that Canada suddenly had a little extra money in the bank once the deficit was reduced.

"When I would go and sell a vision of building a centre which would use the Human Genome Project to find genes which cause diseases like asthma and colon cancer, that over time we would get therapies and diagnostic tools and so on, I think it was just the right time to give the message, because the support came from all sides."

Today, Hudson is a rising, if refreshingly modest, star in the scientific galaxy. The genome centre he built is heavily solicited. Scientists come from around the globe to study its techniques. It generates $12 million a year in external contracts, and companies ask it to test drive high-performance equipment fresh from the design shop.

Meanwhile, the 44-year-old father of five children age 2 to 16 is the pin-up boy for the next generation of whiz kids, who can log on to popular genomics websites to find out his favourite food (chocolate), hobbies (swimming and cycling) and movies (Star Wars and Gandhi).

"I was one of those geeky kids that did the science fairs - Jonquiere, Chicoutimi, Dolbeau, whatever," says Hudson, with only the faintest hint of his French-speaking mother in his English inflections. His anglo father was a chemist at the Alcan plant.

Hudson's involvement with the HapMap project dates back to his days in Boston, where his team was asked to analyze a Toronto study of 200 families with a history of inflammatory bowel disease. The eureka moment was a long time coming.

"We had the data for a year and it didn't quite make sense," he says. "All of a sudden, someone - one of the mathematicians - said, 'Well, maybe there's a pattern in here, and maybe if we understand what the pattern is. ...' It didn't take long after that, with computers and so on, to come back with a nice picture. But then we had to convince a lot of people that we had to go study the rest of the genome - and that it would cost

$100 million to do it."

Last year alone, the razor-sharp computer at the genome centre on Dr. Penfield Ave. processed one billion tests looking for genetic markers in 6,000 colon cancer patients.

Knowing who is most susceptible - why it is, for instance, that half your uncles have colorectal cancer and half don't - will pave the way for more effective treatment, especially early screening.

"When you pick up a tumour early, when it's a polyp, the cure rate is almost 100 per cent. Most of the time, we pick them up too late, so the cure rate is below 50 per cent."

When he's not teaching, seeing patients or working in the lab, the soft-spoken Hudson is out on the

Genomics 101 circuit, trying to demystify complex systems and ethical issues for granting agencies, the general public, even fellow physicians.

As a reader of science fiction himself, he's not surprised when people come up with doomsday theories - that DNA will be used in cloning experiments or that medical files showing a genetic predisposition for epilepsy or multiple sclerosis could cost them their job or health insurance.

"Medicine has its checks and balances. We don't do CT scans of people in the street." Yet Hudson admits the potential for abuse is there and needs to be addressed. "It can't just be the scientists themselves deciding where the risks/benefits are. It can't just be the insurance companies. And it can't just be a university professor in the philosophy department."

So what's next on Hudson's wish list? He's hoping Canada will join an international consortium on the Cancer Genome Project. A $1-billion project that has received preliminary funding from the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. and Wellcome Trust in Britain, it would use the latest genomic breakthroughs to examine cancer cells.

"We think every tumour has many Achilles heels. One drug may not work, but if we understand the mutations, we may be able to come up with a combination of therapies which are very specific to that cancer," Hudson says. "This is not curing cancer. The idea is to turn cancer into a chronic rather than an acute disease."

Hudson is keeping an open mind that Stephen Harper's Conservative government will be as enthusiastic about big science as the Liberals were. "I'm an optimist that, when the right project proposal is submitted to any government that is interested in seeing Canada flourish in the scientific and medical field, that this project is going to go forward."

pcurran@thegazette.canwest.com

2008

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Cracking the genome puzzle

Director of montreal research project is a rising, if refreshingly modest, star in the scientific galaxy, and the leading Canadian in a three-year, landmark effort that succeeded in sorting genes into blocks

PEGGY CURRAN, The Gazette

2006

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Wednesday Nov 26, 2003 bbc

	New breast cancer gene discovered Scientists have discovered a gene which may trigger spontaneous cases of breast and ovarian cancer.




Thursday Jun 19, 2003

	Masculinity guardian revealed US scientists scrutinise the Y chromosome, the bundle of human DNA responsible for maleness.

	Science seeks clues to pygmy whale A little-known sub-species of blue whale is puzzling scientists, who think it is sometimes mistaken for its familiar, bigger relative.




Thursday Jun 19, 2003

	'Designer baby' born to UK couple A boy is born to a British couple whOWN to use his stem cells to treat an dangerously ill older brother.

	Mercury 'linked to autism' Children who develop autism may do so because they have problems processing the toxic metal mercury, researchers suggest.




HEALTH

	'Missing eye' gene found Mutations in a gene may cause a devastating condition that leads to babies being born without eyes.


	Saturday Mar 1, 2003 Dads to blame for late babies A father's genes appear to determine when a woman gives birth, researchers suggest.

	Gene link to inherited heart disease Scientists believe they may have discovered the cause of a form of heart disease that is passed on from generation to generation.

	Gene controls cancer spread Researchers identify a gene responsible for the spread of cancer in the body.



BBC Sci/Tech Tuesday May 7, 2002

	Mouse code laid bare Scientists produce a "draft" of the mouse genome - the "life code" of the most important animal model in biomedical research.

	Worldwide weather watchers wanted Your home computer could soon be helping work out how global climate will change over the next 50 years.