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BC Cancer Agency researcher awarded Officer of the Order of Canada
Name: Dr. Victor Ling
Title: Senior scientist at BC Cancer Agency; President and Scientific Director of the Canada-wide Terry Fox Research Institute; Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at UBC; Director of the Interdisciplinary Oncology Program.
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Dr. Victor Ling recognized for his contributions as an esteemed health care leader, including his groundbreaking research that has helped the scientific community to better understand why certain cancers become drug-resistant.
Dr. Victor Ling has been a leader of cancer research for British Columbia for the past thirteen years and has attracted and inspired scientists and clinicians with his relentless pursuit of new discoveries and better treatments and cures for cancer. His inspiration is a catalyst for more than 250 research scientists and their staff. His leadership is part of the reason why the BC Cancer Agency boasts the best cancer outcomes in Canada.
Dr. Ling is the former Vice President Discovery at the BC Cancer Agency. In October 2007, he was named the founding Scientific Director of the Canada-wide Terry Fox Research Institute. He remains a senior scientist at the BC Cancer Agency and Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at UBC. He is also Director of the Interdisciplinary Oncology Program, a partnership between the BC Cancer Agency and UBC.
World renowned for his discovery of the existence and mechanisms of drug-resistant chemotherapy, Dr. Ling has given hope to patients suffering from leukemia, breast and ovarian cancers and cystic fibrosis. As a tireless campaigner for improved cancer treatment and research, he has given society a new insight and vision for confronting the treatment of cancer.
Dr. Ling is an authority on multi-drug resistance in cancer. His research has led to the discoveries of why many patients do not respond to traditional chemotherapy treatment. He has worked relentlessly in deciphering the language of cells. One in three Canadians is affected by cancer and Dr. Ling’s work gives hope that this disease will be beaten in the coming decades.
As a leader in scientific research, Dr. Ling has won every major cancer research prize in the world including the NCI(C) Robert L. Noble Prize, the AACR Bruce F. Cain Memorial Award, the General Motors Kettering Prize, the Dr. Josef Steiner Cancer Research Award, the Gairdner Foundation International Award and the Order of British Columbia. He has also been awarded honorary degrees from Memorial University and Simon Fraser University.
Dr. Ling was born in China, emigrated to Canada as a child, obtained his BSc from the University of Toronto, PhD in Biochemistry from the University of British Columbia, and undertook postdoctoral study on DNA structure with Dr. Fred Sanger in Cambridge. He returned to Canada to undertake cancer research at the Ontario Cancer Institute in Toronto before moving to Vancouver in 1995. A major focus of Dr. Ling’s research is the investigation of mechanisms of resistance to anticancer drugs, particularly those mechanisms which involve alteration in the transport of such compounds. He is best known for his discovery of P-glycoprotein associated with multiple drug resistance in cancers. His lab is also involved in genomics research to identify genes important in early stage cancers. Dr. Ling’s work to date has been documented in over 200 peer-reviewed publications.
The BC Cancer Foundation congratulates Dr. Ling on being named Officer of the Order of Canada.
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