Connie Eaves
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Overview
Connie Eaves née Gregory FRSC PhD, Director and co-founder of Terry Fox Laboratory, Vancouver, Canada is internationally recognized for her pioneering research in basic blood stem cell biology, which led to a breakthrough in treatment for leukemia. She is one of the world leaders in the field of hematopoietic stem cell biology. Her major contributions are the development of stem cell assays, the molecular regulation of stem cell fate decisions, and studies of leukemogensis. She also has an interest in studies in progenitor and stem cells in normal a malignant breast tissue. Her recent independent discovery of breast stem cells has been a breakthrough understanding in the field of breast cancer.
Currently she is researching the unique properties of normal and cancerous stem cells in a variety of tissues, believed to be key in the development of definitive anti-cancer treatments, for breast cancer as well as leukemia.
Education
Eaves received a BA in Biology and Chemistry and a MSc in Biology (Genetics) from Queen's University in 1964 and 1966. She then pursued doctoral training under the supervision of Dr. Lazlo Lajtha - one of the founders of modern hematology - at the Paterson Laboratories of the Christie Hospital and Holt Radium Institute and obtained a PhD from the University of Manchester in Great Britain in 1969.
After an additional year of post-doctoral work in radiobiology at the same lab, she returned to Canada to undertake further post-doctoral studies at the Ontario Cancer Institute in Toronto where she worked with Dr. James Till and Dr. Ernest McCulloch from 1970-73.
Career
In 1973 she was recruited to the British Columbia Cancer Institute (now the BC Cancer Agency) as its second full-time scientist and National Cancer Institute of Canada Scholar to help develop the preclinical pius-meson radiobiology research program. At the same time she was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia. In 1980 she became a co-founder of the Terry Fox Laboratory at the BC Cancer Agency and was appointed its Deputy Director in 1986, an appointment she continues to hold. Throughout her training and subsequent productive scientific career she has received numerous awards and scholarships. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1993 and, in 2003, she received the prestigious Robert L. Noble Prize for Excellence in Cancer Research from the National Cancer Institute of Canada.
Her PhD studies provided the first evidence that two distinct cell populations contribute to the generation of antibody responses, heralding the discovery soon thereafter of B and T lymphocytes. This seminal work was published in Nature in 1967. As a postdoctoral fellow, Eaves’ studies contributed to the definition of the earliest stages of the red blood cell differentiation process. Her initial work as an independent investigator followed from this, laying the groundwork for the concept of a hierarchy of progenitor classes within different lineages in the blood-forming system, whose members can be distinguished by evolving biological properties and different regulatory mechanisms. She is widely recognized as a world authority on the stem cells of the blood-forming system and their regulation in both normal and perturbed states, with a particular emphasis on chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). Since the early 1990’s she has extended her contributions in understanding stem cell behaviour to normal and malignant breast cells.
Over the last 25 years Eaves has played a major role in the recruitment and education of many talented undergraduate and graduate students as well as post-doctoral fellows, particularly those with a clinical background, and has directly supervised more than 50 trainees at the post-graduate level. Many of these individuals have since become internationally recognized scientists in their own right in Canada, the U.S. and Europe. She remains particularly interested in the training of young investigators and continues to lead a dynamic research group at the Terry Fox Laboratory, with a publication record of more than 340 full papers including peer-reviewed articles, conference proceedings and book chapters.
Eaves has also devoted much energy to the successful development of collaborative research programs locally, nationally and internationally. She is currently involved in such activities within Genome BC, the Stem Cell Network (a Canadian NCE Program for which she served as the Associate Scientific Director for 4 years), a still active NCIC Program Project (started under her leadership in 1981) and an NIH-funded Program Project in Gene Therapy, now in its 10th year, that links investigators in Vancouver, New York, Boston and Chicago.
From 1996-99 she served an elected 3-year term as a Councillor of the American Society of Hematology and from 2000-2003 she was the elected Vice President, President-Elect and President of the International Society for Experimental Hematology. She continues to offer her services to grants panels, committees, NIH study sections and site review teams, reviews many papers each year for a variety of leading journals and has been an Associate Editor and/or member of the Editorial Board of most of the lead journals in hematology and stem cell biology including the recently started Cell Stem Cell.
Eaves is an active member of numerous national and international scientific societies and has held senior executive offices in the American Society of Hematology and the International Society for Experimental Hematology. She was one of the first Co-Chairs of the Canadian Breast Cancer Research Initiative and later served as President of the National Cancer Institute of Canada (1996-98). Dr. Eaves is a member of several editorial boards and the Associate Editor of Blood as well as the Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation.
Personal life
Eaves is the mother of 4 children - all of whom are university graduates now developing successful careers in business, politics and academia. Besides her work and her family, her passions are music, art and gardening.