John Bell

Dr. John Bell received his Ph.D. from McMaster University in 1982. In the three years that followed, he trained as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Ottawa and then at the Medical Research Council in London, England. Dr. Bell began his independent research career at McGill University in 1986 and moved to the University of Ottawa, Department of Medicine, in 1989. He is a member of the Center for Cancer Therapeutics at The Ottawa Hospital Cancer Center, a Senior Scientist with the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, and a Professor of Medicine at the University of Ottawa. He heads the Canadian Oncolytic Virus Consortium, a Terry Fox-funded group from across Canada that is developing virus-based cancer therapeutics, and is the Director of the Biotherapeutics Program for the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research. He is the Scientific Director of the National Centre of Excellence for the development of Biotherapeutics for Cancer Therapy and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Bell is the founder of the Canadian Oncolytic Virus Consortium, the first of its kind in the world, and it aims to expand cancer viral therapy discovery and application at all levels.

Bell is the co-founder and chief scientific officer of Jennerex, Inc., which is a biotech company in San Francisco that is producing oncolytic viruses as a new therapeutic technique to treat cancers. Early trials of this technique have been shown to be very effective in eliminating tumors, most notably so far OncoVEX GM-CSF (BioVex Inc, Woburn, MA) which is in Phase 3 clinical trials for melanoma.[4] These viruses are thought to even provide immunity against certain types of cancer.[5] It is hoped that these therapies will become a viable, and even more successful alternative to treatments such as chemotherapy, which are extremely physically demanding for patients.