Dr. Tak Mak. Credit: PMCC, UHN
Toronto, Canada’s Tak Mak, OC, OOnt, FRS, FRSC, has won the prestigious Pezcoller Foundation-AACR International Award for Extraordinary Achievement in Cancer Research, valued at US$100,000.
Dr. Mak, who has his lab at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre (PMCC), is widely known for his discovery of the T-cell receptor in 1983 and pioneering work in the genetics of immunology (the study of the immune system).
CBC Radio’s “As It Happens” interviewed Dr. Mak this week after the award announcement was made. I was in my car and sat in my driveway (as we’ve all done!) to hear the full interview.
Click on the recording below to listen to Dr. Mak talk about his mentors – including Drs. Ernest McCulloch and James Till who discovered the existence of stem cells – and losing his wife to breast cancer while he was the head of the Breast Cancer Institute at PMCC. The interview begins at 26:00. I recommend listening, but the transcript also appears below.
Alternatively, you can read the CBC’s full transcript.
Chris Howden: For decades, Tak Mak has looked through a microscope, but some of the smallest elements in the human body and looking at those small elements has allowed him to see the big picture and change the way we look at cancer and our immune systems. The Toronto researcher has just been awarded the prestigious Pezcoller Foundation, American Association for Cancer Research International Award for Extraordinary Achievement, which comes with a prize of a hundred thousand dollars U.S. He was honoured for his work on T-cell receptors. We reached Tak Mak in Marseilles, France.
Nil Koksal: Tak, first of all, congratulations.
TAK MAK: Well, don’t congratulate me. It’s really a team thing.
NK: Andre Picard in the Global & Mail writes, It is hard to overstate Dr. Mak’s impact on the cancer field. At age 30 he discovered the structure of the T-cell receptor for antigens sometimes described as the holy grail of immunology. You’ve been doing this work for decades. It’s complicated, important work. Can you sort of describe what it is that you’ve been able to do?
TM: Yeah, Well, when I was a trainee at the Princess Margaret Hospital, I worked with Dr. McCulloch and Dr. Till. And there I realized that T-cell leukaemia has a very distinct angle to it, because T- cells are supposed to be the cells that sense everything in your body and look for anything like a piece of a virus. As in the case of COVID-19, for example, or a piece of a cancer cell that can be distinct from your own cells. And so, your own cells, you should not destroy because if you destroy, then of course you have autoimmune disease. And so luckily, two, at that time, very young investigators ourselves in Toronto, and Mark Davis at Stanford, we were the first to find that sensor. That can tell the difference between, yes, this is a piece of virus, call the troops and kill.
NK: And then that in turn, that information was used to make immunotherapy drugs, which then helped heal people, some people with certain forms of leukaemia and lymphoma is that right?
TM: Yes, that has been happening for 10 years. Many different groups took the T-cell receptor and programmed it to attack leukaemia and lymphoma. It’s now been approved and many end stage leukaemia, lymphoma patients treated 10 years ago are still alive with no signs of disease. So, great satisfaction for us finding the sensor.
NK: I understand, though, that just working in the lab at all kind of happened by chance for you.
TM: Yeah. I was a student at the University of Wisconsin. It was, well, not come from a rich family. And so, I go and take jobs. I tried a gardener. I tried being a construction worker. They didn’t really work because I just wasn’t physically strong enough. So, I took on a job washing test tubes and glassware in the laboratory of Professor Roland Rickert at the [inaudible] Cancer Centre. And after a few times I realized a dollar an hour is good, but it wasn’t enough. So, when I finished washing the glassware, I went to him and said, is there anything to do? And he said, Well, you can help me do experiments. I’ll pay you $1.50. And from then on, I learned from him. He is very rigid, very accurate. And with McCulloch in Toronto, I learned how to think very broadly. And he’d always say Tak, you cannot eat breakfast all day, let’s do something different. And so that, you know, the two combinations kind of got me doing something different precisely and vigorously. And I think over the years, those two attributes played a big part in my career.
NK: So many people are touched by cancer. They’ve lost loved ones. I know personally for you there was a stake in this research and this work that you’re doing. So, if you don’t mind telling us about that. I know. I know you lost your wife to cancer in the late nineties.
TM: Yes. 1998. June the ninth. Yeah. At the Princess Margaret Hospital, where I was. And I was the head of the Breast Cancer Institute. And she died of breast cancer. What can I say? And you would never forget. And people every now and then ask me, are you doing this as a revenge?
NK: What do you say?
TM: To some extent it is, but it’s not about her. She’s gone. Right. It’s about everybody else. One in six women in Canada is going to get breast cancer in their lives. And luckily, the field has been able to cure 70, 80 per cent of them. But still, it’s a lot. Many are very, very young. My wife was being treated in the hospital. The woman next to her was 16 years old. I mean, this is incredible. We have to do something.
NK: You’ve been doing this work for so long. What will you do next?
TM: I am not doing it for myself anymore. To some extent it is because I guess I don’t feel like I have exhausted my interest. But a lot of it is the young people. Last week I was in Germany. There were 30 ex trainees. 20 from Germany and the rest from the rest of Europe. I mean, they are directors of the cancer centres. They are vice presidents of universities, the chairmen of departments. And just looking at their achievements make me realize I need to plant more seeds because we need more flowers.
NK: Tak, I appreciate your time. Thank you very much.
TM: No problem. Thank you.
CH: We reached Tak Mak in Marseilles, France. He’s a senior scientist at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto. He has just been awarded the Pezcoller Foundation, American Association for Cancer Research International Award for Extraordinary Achievement.
Stacey Johnson
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