Jia , William
Associate Member, Dept of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Research Interests
Dr. Jia was the first in Canada and the first few scientists in the world using human Herpes simplex virus to treat cancer. His major contribution was the first to prove that genetic engineered virus could selectively destroy malignant brain cancer in an animal model with a competent immune system. This finding was directly related to the clinical application of gene therapy strategy since viral vector mediated gene therapy prior to Dr. Jia?s study all used immune defective animal models that could not truly mimic clinical situations of human cancer patients. His finding showed that herpes virus can overcome the resistance from the host immune system and reach the tumor cells to selectively destroy the tumor. This work was published in the highest ranked cancer journal: The Journal of National Cancer Institute with an editorial comment and gained a lot of attention in general public as well. His next contribution was to prove the safety of the genetic engineered virus. The results were cited repeatedly at hearings of the US congress for gene therapy and used as a critical evidence for the safety of gene therapy. The results were also the key evidence to get approval from US FDA for the clinical trial of herpes viral gene therapy that is now in its Phase II stage.
The other research activity of Dr. Jia?s laboratory is to study natural product for its anti-cancer and anti-viral infection effects. They have recently discovered that a compound extracted from American ginseng not only possesses strong tumor inhibitory effect but also can dramatically enhance the efficacy of conventional anti-tumor drugs on multidrug resistant tumor cells. A patent application based on this finding has been filed.
In the past 10 years, Dr. Jia has received many awards and research funds. Since 1997, he has been a Medical Research Council Scholar, which is awarded to less than 10 Canadian outstanding scientists every year. He has been interviewed by various media reports including Canadian national TV network CBC and major popular science magazines such as Discover for his research. Recently, he was among 20 Canadian 'the world?s finest medical researchers' in a campaigning for Canadian Health Research in TIME magazine (1999. Aug.30).
Selected Publications
Jia W, McDermott M, Tufaro G, Goldie J: Thymidine kinase defective herpes virus type-I selectively destroy gliomas in immunocompetent rats. J Natl Cancer Inst 86, 16:1209-1215, 1994.
Wang Q, Guo J and Jia W: Intracerebral recombinant HSV-1 vector does not reactivate latent HSV-1. Gene Therapy 4:1300-1304, 1997.
Yang DC, Song J, Bacchetti S, Rennie P. and Jia W: Herpes Simplex Virus Type-1 infection upregulates cellular promoters and telomerase activity in both tumor and non-tumor human cells. Gene Therapy 10(17):1494-502, 2003.
Jia W, Yan H, Bu B, Li G: Rh2, A compound extracted from Ginseng, hypersensitizes multidrug resistant tumor cells to chemotherapy. Can J Physiol Pharma 82:431-437, 2004.
Zhou Q and Jia W: Viral vectors for cancer gene therapy: Viral dissemination and tumor targeting (review). Current Gene Therapy, 2004 (in print).