Tak Wah Mak

Tak Wah Mak, OC OOnt FRS FRSC (born October 4, 1946 in China) is an award-winning Canadian researcher who has worked in a variety of areas including biochemistry, immunology, and cancer genetics. He first became widely known for his pioneering work in the genetics of immunology.^[1]

Born in southern China in 1946 and raised in Hong Kong, Mak studied biochemistry and biophysics at the University of Wisconsin. In the early 1970s, he earned his PhD in biochemistry from the University of Alberta, in Edmonton. After he obtained his degree, Dr. Mak moved to Toronto and became a Canadian citizen. In 1984, Dr. Mak discovered the T-cell receptor, which was one of the most elusive problems of the time. This work on the cloning of T-cell receptor genes, as of 2005^[update], has been cited nearly 1200 times. Dr. Mak’s role in advancing the use of genetically-altered mice in scientific study has led to important breakthroughs in immunology and understanding cancer at the cellular level. The basic research in cancer conducted by Dr. Mak has been published in top international scientific journals and he has given several keynote addresses at cancer symposia across Canada and the United States.

In spite of offers from prestigious institutions around the world, Dr. Mak remained committed to Canada’s scientific community. In 1993, Dr. Mak received support to establish the AMGEN Research Institute in Toronto. As of 2005, AMGEN-produced papers have been cited more than 40,000 times. Dr. Mak holds Honorary Doctoral Degrees from numerous universities in North America and Europe. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada and has been elected a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) as well as a Fellow of the Royal Society of London (UK.) He has won international recognition in the forms of the Emil von Behring Prize, the King Faisal Prize for Medicine, the Gairdner Foundation International Award, the Sloan Prize of the General Motors Cancer Foundation, the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize and the Novartis Prize in Immunology.

In 2004 Mak became the director of the Advanced Medical Discovery Institute and the Campbell Family Institute for Breast Cancer Research. He is also the senior scientist, division of Stem Cell and Developmental Biology, Advanced Medical Discovery Institute/Ontario Cancer Institute. He is a member of the Cancer Research Institute Scientific Advisory Council.^[2] Since 1984, he has been a Professor in the Departments of Medical Biophysics and Immunology at the University of Toronto.

From the early 2000s, Dr. Mak concentrated his efforts on the emerging field of cancer metabolism. Dr. Mak, Lewis Cantley, and Craig Thompson together founded Agios, a biotech pharmaceutical company whose sole purpose is to discover methods of targeting cancer metabolism. The trio have contributed immensely in a few short years to what was originally a forgotten paradigm. The discovery of the involvement of particular enzymes such as PKM2, mutated IDH as well as novel oncometabolites such as 2-hydroxyglutarate in cancer development have once again brought cancer metabolism back to the forefront of cancer biology.

Honours

• 1986, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
• 1988, awarded the Emil von Behring Prize
• 1989, awarded the Gairdner Foundation International Award
• 1990, awarded the Royal Society of Canada's McLaughlin Medal
• 1994, made a Fellow of the Royal Society
• 1995, awarded the King Faisal Prize for Medicine
• 1996, awarded the Robert L. Noble Prize by the National Cancer Institute of Canada
• 1996, awarded the Sloan Prize of the General Motors Cancer Foundation
• 2000, made an Officer of the Order of Canada
• 2002, elected as a foreign associate to the National Academy of Sciences in the discipline of immunology
• 2003, awarded the Killam Prize by the Canada Council for the Arts.
• 2004, awarded the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize.
• 2007, awarded the Order of Ontario.^[3]
• 2008, introduced to the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame.

References

Select Publications

Cano-Gauci, D. F.; Song, H. H.; Yang, H.; McKerlie, C.; Choo, B.; Shi, W.; Pullano, R.; Piscione, T. D. et al (1999). "Glypican-3–Deficient Mice Exhibit Developmental Overgrowth and Some of the Abnormalities Typical of Simpson-Golabi-Behmel Syndrome". The Journal of cell biology 146 (1): 255–264. PMC 2199732. PMID 10402475. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=2199732.  edit

External links

• University of Toronto biography
• University Health Network Profile