AHFMR News
Dr. Lorne Tyrrell wins top Manning Award
(September 21, 2005, Edmonton)... Dr. Lorne Tyrrell, renowned Hepatitis B researcher who has received Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (AHFMR) support for more than two decades, and former Dean of the University of Alberta's Faculty of Medicine, has won one of the richest prizes in Canada for his research contributions. The Manning Foundation announced today that Dr. Tyrrell won the $100,000 EnCana Principal Award.
Dr. Tyrrell, born and raised in Alberta, developed a new oral treatment for Hepatitis B called Lamivudine, which is licensed in 120 countries. Hepatitis B is a major global cause of illness and premature death, killing over 3,000 people daily around the world.
The Glaxo Heritage Research Centre where Dr. Tyrrell conducts his research was established in 1988 at the University of Alberta with funding from Glaxo Wellcome Inc., the University Hospital Foundation, and the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research.
Dr. Tyrrell has won numerous awards and honours including a twenty year continuous funding award from AHFMR, the Order of Canada, the Alberta Order of Excellence, the ASTech award for Innovation and Science, the J. Gordin Kaplan Award for Excellence in Research, and the Prix Galien medal for research.
For more information, please call Dwayne Brunner at (780) 423-5727
Backgrounder
Dr. Tyrrell was raised on a farm west of Edmonton. He obtained his BSc ('64) and his MD ('68) from the University of Alberta and a PhD ('72) from Queen's University. He completed a specialty training in Internal Medicine in 1975 and subspecialty training in Infectious Diseases in 1976. This was followed by a MRC Centennial Fellowship at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. In 1978 he returned to the University of Alberta. In 1986, he began working with Dr. Morris Robins on a system to identify potent antivirals against hepatitis B virus (HBV) which infects about 400 million people worldwide. Through their work they discovered several potent antivirals against HBV and this resulted in a major collaboration with Glaxo Canada (now GlaxoSmithKline).
The collaboration led to the discovery that lamivudine had potent antiviral activity for HBV and today lamivudine is licensed worldwide as the first oral antiviral for the treatment of HBV infections. Lamivudine has been shown to decrease the development of cirrhosis or liver cancer in chronic HBV carriers. This work also reopened the option for resuming liver transplantation in patients with end-stage liver disease from HBV. More recently Dr. Tyrrell collaborated with Drs. D. Mercer and N. Kneteman to develop the first small animal model to support HCV replication. Dr. Tyrrell recently completed 10 years as the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Alberta in 2004. He currently holds the CIHR/GSK Chair in Virology at the University of Alberta. Dr. Tyrrell is the Chair of the Board of the Alberta Health Quality Council; Chair of the Board of the Institute of Health Economics; is a member of the Medical Advisory Committee of the Gairdner Foundation and is a member of the Research Council of the Canadian Institute of Academic Research. Dr. Tyrrell has won numerous awards at the University of Alberta (Rutherford Undergraduate Teaching Award, J. Gordin Kaplan Research Awards, and the University Cup). He won the ASTech Award for Research in 1993 and the Gold Medal of the Canadian Liver Foundation in 2000.
Dr. Tyrrell was appointed to the Alberta Order of Excellence in 2000, an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2002, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2004. He was recently awarded the F.N.G. Starr Award from the Canadian Medical Association in 2004, and the Principal Award of the Manning Foundation in 2005 for his work on the development of oral antivirals for the treatment of HBV.
The Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (AHFMR) currently provides funding for over 600 researchers and researchers in training at the Province's three main universities. The foundation supports a community of researchers who generate knowledge that improves the health and quality of life of Albertans and people throughout the world. AHFMR's commitment is to fund health research based on international standards of excellence and carried out by new and established investigators and researchers in training. Total AHFMR funding over 25 years is in excess of $800 million. For more information, visit www.ahfmr.ab.ca
For more information on the Manning Awards Foundation, visit www.manningawards.ca