UBC’s 100-plus MRC award winners honoured

More than 100 UBC recipients of significant Medical Research Council (MRC)
awards were recognized at the inaugural MRC Celebration of Excellence Reception
held earlier this month.

MRC President Dr. Henry Friesen was the special guest at the reception.

Among those honoured were researchers with 25 or more years of continuous
funding from the MRC.

They are: Barry McBride, Microbiology and Oral Biology; John McNeill,
Pharmaceutical Sciences; Michael Smith, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology;
James Hogg, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine; Chris Fibiger, Psychiatry;
Stephen Drance, Ophthalmology; Bernard Bressler, Anatomy; Philip Bragg,
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; and Alan Hannam, Oral Biology.

Also at the reception, Friesen announced the creation of the Dr. Harold Copp
Lectureship. Copp, a professor emeritus, discovered calcitonin, a
calcium-regulating hormone which inhibits bone loss and is one of the most
widely used therapeutic agents for the treatment of osteoporosis.


Friesen said Copp should also be applauded for his leadership in promoting
medical research funding in the 1950s, which led directly to the creation of
the MRC.

The MRC’s donation of $25,000 was matched with a similar gift from the Wolfe
and Gita Churg Foundation.