It was a record week for University of Western Ontario Professor Emeritus Dr. Calvin Stiller — he was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame and named a recipient of the 2010 Canada Gairdner Wightman Award.
Dr. Calvin Stiller
“I’m enormously surprised. I simply don’t feel worthy of this kind of attention and so for it to happen twice is quite overwhelming,” he said in an interview from Calgary where he was receiving the Hall of Fame recognition.
Stiller has been a catalyst for changing the face of transplantation and diabetes treatment in Canada, as well as an entrepreneur and champion of institutes of research.
“I’m curious and I very much like to solve problems. That’s the thing that gives me the greatest pleasure.”
Stiller will receive the 2010 Canada Gairdner Wightman Award, one of the most prestigious medical prizes, in October. The Canadian Medical Hall of Fame induction ceremony was April 13.
He established the Multi-Organ Transplant Service in London and served as the unit’s chief until 1996. During this period, he was principal investigator of the Canadian multi-centre study that established the importance of Cyclosporine as an anti-rejection drug in transplantation and led to its worldwide use.
He was the first to demonstrate the effectiveness of Cyclosporine in newly diagnosed Type 1 diabetes, establishing the disease as an immune disorder. He has published more than 250 scientific papers.
“I went into medicine really motivated by a physician who was looking after my father. He was dying of kidney disease when I was about 10 or 12 years of age and he used to come to our house every week. I just thought he was incredible.
“I said to my mother at that time ‘I am going to be a doctor,’ not ‘I want to be a doctor.’ I never remember thinking anything else. There was nothing else in my life from then on.”
What was it about this doctor that inspired Stiller? It was the fact he was helping people.
“Whether it was helping people in a situation of illness, helping them to learn, helping them to achieve a business success, or helping to build a place for research to be done; those were all things that fit in my category of doing what I was supposed to do in life and that was to help.”
When he started more than 50 per cent of kidney transplant patients – the only transplant performed at the time – died, mostly as a result of the anti-rejection therapy.
Stiller and his colleagues discovered immunosuppressant agent Cyclosporine effectively reduced the death rate from more than 50 per cent to less than 10 per cent.
“It just changed the face of transplantation,” said Stiller. “That immediately opened the vision that if it were possible for kidneys, it could be possible for any organ.”
But Stiller didn’t stop there.
When most in the medical community believed diabetes was caused by a virus, Stiller went against the grain and was instrumental in proving Cyclosporine could halt the progression of Type I diabetes. This caused tremendous outcry and criticism over the use of an immunosuppressant to treat a viral disease.
But by taking risks, Stiller and his peers showed for the first time that an immunosuppressant given early after the diagnosis of Type I diabetes could reverse the disease in 60 per cent of patients.
“What it did was completely change the approach to looking for the cure for diabetes from one of something focused on a virus to something focused on the autoimmune response.”
He was instrumental in founding Robarts Research Institute in 1986, together with Dr. Henry Barnett, Dr. Charles Drake, J. Allyn Taylor, Richard Ivey, Walter J. Blackburn and Dr. Ramsay Gunton. He was also a Robarts scientist.
Stiller is the co-founder of two health-care funds, including the Canadian Medical Discoveries Fund Inc. He was a member of the council and executive committee of the Medical Research Council of Canada (1987-1993), founding chair of the Ontario Research and Development Challenge Fund, and is chair (and co-founder) of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research and of the Ontario Innovation Trust.
He serves on the board of several public endeavours and foundations, and is co-founder and director of MaRS (Medical and Related Sciences Discovery District). He is the recipient of numerous awards including the MEDEC Award (1992), the Order of Canada (1995) and the Order of Ontario (2000).
He has received honorary doctorates from McMaster University, University of Saskatchewan and The University of Western Ontario.