One of this year’s inductions into the BC Innovators Hall of Fame is unusual in that it includes a husband-and-wife team: Drs. Connie and Allen Eaves.
Sadly, the honour will be bestowed posthumously for Connie, who died on March 7 this year, at the age of 79, from colon cancer.
BC Tech president and CEO Jill Tipping said it was important to recognize the couple jointly.
“They’re both really distinguished scientists in their field,” she said.
Indeed, both Connie and Allen Eaves were named to the Order of Canada—in 2021 and 2022, respectively—in recognition of their research in the fields of cancer and stem cells. In 2021, Connie was given one of the highest honours any scientist can receive when she was elected to the London Royal Society in recognition of her work in the identification of blood and mammary stem cells.
She was also inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in 2019.
Connie and Allen had parallel careers working in cancer and stem cell research, and they sometimes worked as a team at the same lab at BC Cancer.
The couple met at the Ontario Cancer Institute in Toronto.
“We bonded there on our interest in understanding the regulation of [stem cells] and differentiation and how it goes on in cancer,” Allen said in an interview with BIV.
Connie came to Vancouver in 1973 to work at the BC Cancer Institute, and Allen followed her to Vancouver a couple of years later, after he finished his clinical training. He eventually became head of clinical hematology at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and Vancouver General Hospital, where he spent nearly two decades building B.C.'s Leukemia Bone Marrow Transplant program.
While at BC Cancer, the couple founded the Terry Fox Laboratory in 1981. Connie worked there until her death this year, and led the Connie Eaves Lab, which specialized in hematopoietic stem cell research.
In 1983, the couple was among five scientists who published a seminal study in the New England Journal that demonstrated how normal stem cells could be found in patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia. It was not known until then that leukemia patients could have healthy stem cells, Allen explained.
This led to a new therapy in which a patient’s non-cancerous stem cells could be separated out and cultivated, while the cancerous cells in the patient were killed off with chemotherapy or radiation therapy. The patient’s own healthy stem cells could then be reintroduced into the patient, obviating the need for bone marrow donors.
“This was the basis of doing autonomous bone marrow transplantation—that is using the patients’ own cells to treat cancer,” Allen explained.
Connie’s research at the Terry Fox Laboratory enhanced the scientific world’s understanding of hematopoietic stem cells—which produce blood cells—and, in particular, “quiescent” cancer stem cells.
Quiescent cells are semi-dormant and resistant to treatment. Drugs used to treat cancer fail to target these types of cells, which can later become active and lead to the recurrence of tumours. Connie’s lab identified molecular pathways that regulate quiescence in cancer stem cells, opening up potential therapeutic targets for different types of cancer, including leukemia.
She also discovered the stem cells that make breast tissue, which is important in understanding breast cancer—something Connie herself battled at one point.
In addition to heading her own lab at the Terry Fox Laboratory, Connie was a professor in the Department of Medical Genetics and the School of Biomedical Engineering at UBC, and editor-in-chief of the journal Experimental Hematology.
In 2006, Allen was forced to retire at 65, so he launched his second career building one of Canada’s largest and most successful life sciences companies.
StemCell Technologies makes specialized media and reagents for the growing stem cells, immune cells and other cell types. It now employs 2,000 people and has annual sales of $500 million.
A few months after Allen’s initial retirement, employment rules were changed, which allowed Connie to continue running her lab.
“Connie stayed on at the cancer agency and I went off and built StemCell Technologies,” Allen said.
While he said both he and his wife had a passion for research, he said Connie also was particularly passionate about mentoring young scientists.
“Connie was a big mentor of many graduate students and post-doctoral fellows,” he said. “In fact, she had over a hundred. And that was the thing she prided herself most on was teaching people how to do cancer research.”
Boris Wertz and Ray Walia have also been announced as 2024 inductees into the BC Innovators Hall of Fame. Including this year’s honourees, 55 individuals have been recognized by the initiative, which aims to highlight the role of innovation in B.C.'s economy, and the leaders that have left an important legacy of innovation in the province.
