OICR congratulates Dr. Thomas J. Hudson on being named to the Order of Canada

TORONTO, June 28, 2013 /CNW/ - Dr. Calvin R. Stiller, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR), today congratulated Dr. Thomas J. Hudson, OICR's President and Scientific Director, on behalf of the Board, on his appointment as an Officer of the Order of Canada.

"Tom Hudson has distinguished himself at every stage in his career and even more so since taking the leadership of OICR," said Dr. Stiller. "The international reputation of the science and the significant accomplishments that have resulted from his vision and execution are recognized in this honour and the Board of Directors is proud to have him as President of the Institute."

"Ontario has been able to attract and retain some of the brightest cancer researchers with Dr. Hudson's innovative leadership," said Reza Moridi, Ontario's Minister of Research and Innovation. "He has enhanced Ontario's position as a leading jurisdiction in cancer research and we applaud the honour bestowed on him today."

OICR was launched in 2005 to tackle the big issues in cancer. It focuses on translational research in prevention, detection, diagnosis and treatment. Dr. Hudson's appointment to the Order of Canada was made in recognition of his international leadership in genomics and human genome variation. He was the Founder and Director of the McGill University and Genome Quebec Innovation Centre and Assistant-Director of the Whitehead/MIT Center for Genome Research, where he led a team that generated physical and gene maps of the human and mouse genomes. Dr. Hudson was a founding member of the International Haplotype Map Consortium and the Public Population Project in Genomics (P3G).

In addition to being instrumental in the creation of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC), he now serves as Chair of both its Executive Committee and International Scientific Steering Committee. The ICGC was created to coordinate research projects whose goal is to unravel the genomic changes in cancer. The knowledge generated by the ICGC projects will lead to personalized cancer treatments. There are currently 55 project teams in 15 jurisdictions in Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America studying more than 25,000 tumour genes.

Dr. Hudson is a member of the Steering Committee of the Global Alliance to Enable the Responsible Sharing of Genomic and Clinical Data, which was launched in June 2013, and is a co-author of the White Paper produced by the Alliance which details the purpose and benefits of establishing an international framework to allow genetic and clinical data to be collected, managed and shared in an effective, responsible, interpretive manner.

In 2007, Dr. Hudson was appointed Professor in the Departments of Molecular Genetics and Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto and he is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Human Genetics and has co-authored more than 250 peer-reviewed scientific publications.

SOURCE: Ontario Institute for Cancer Research

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