By Lauren Kramer

If you’ve never heard of DNA methylation, you’re in good company. The phrase describes the chemical changes in the DNA molecule, something you can learn more about when Professor Howard Cedar comes to Vancouver April 22.

The man known worldwide as the Father of DNA Methylation will be the guest of Canadian Friends of Hebrew University in a few weeks when he comes into Vancouver to celebrate the pending opening of the new Institute of Medical Research Israel Canada (IMRIC) at Hebrew University.

CFHU is hoping to raise some $50 million in the next few years to make the institute a reality. When its doors open, the IMRIC will consolidate five areas of bioresearch at the Hebrew University Faculty of Medicine in Ein Kerem, Jerusalem, thereby facilitating multi-disciplinary collaboration. Those fields are infectious disease and immunology, cancer, genetics and developmental biology, nutrition and metabolism, cardiovascular disease, and the brain and the central nervous system.

Cedar will be one of the faculty members to relocate his office to the new institute, and though the move sounds organizational, it’s much more than that, he insists. “This change towards multidisciplinary collaboration between the biological and medical sciences is going on all over the world,” he says. “If you want to study a disease, the only way to do it is by bringing people from different disciplines together so they can have day to day contact and use common equipment and facilities. The institute is really going to help with that.”

 
Cedar should know. His research may have groundbreaking implications in the study and possible future remedy of cancer and has all ready received acclaim. He won the equivalent of the Nobel in Israel – the Wolf Prize, last year, netting himself $100,000 for his work.

The process of DNA methylation turns on and off the 40,000-odd genes in the body. While everyone inherits genetic information, it has to be used in a programmed manner, Cedar explains. “That programming is called epigenetics, and the older one gets, the more likely the programming mechanism is to make mistakes. Changes in epigenetics could predispose a person to cancer, and in only 5 percent of cancer cases is methylation not involved.”

Cedar is a religiously observant father of six who was born in the United States, and after studying at medical school, received his doctorate from New York University in 1970. He conducted research at the US National Institutes of Health before making aliya with his wife Tzippi, and accepting a position at the Jerusalem medical school’s department of cellular biochemistry and human genetics 36 years ago.

He counts among his mentors Columbia University Professor Richard Axel, a biologist with whom he frequently discusses the fundamental principles in biology, and Hebrew University Professor Aharon Razin, with whom Cedar has collaborated and who “has had a major influence on me.”

Thanks to his work on the fundaments of DNA methylation since the early 70s, the field has expanded considerably and many other researchers are studying and recognizing the importance of the subject today.

“There are a number of diseases in which DNA methylation plays a very big role, and as a result new methodologies are now being used which are enriching the field, as well as work being done on a drug that can inhibit DNA methylation,” Cedar says. In Canada, McGill University professor Moshe Szyf, is working on the subject, while at UCLA, scientist Peter Jones is actively involved.

Still, research is in its relatively early stages, he says. “In mice there are a number of different tumours that can be prevented by using agents that prevent DNA methylation, but it’s a very big step to go from mice to people,” he explains. “My personal opinion is that we really don’t have enough basic information about the connection between DNA methylation and cancer. We have an important lead, though, and if we understand it better it will be easier to get strategies to diagnose and treat cancer.”

Cedar is a modest man who shies away from celebrity and describes curiosity as his main motivator. “No-one starts off saying, I’m going to cure this, but the nice thing is that when you do your research, often you discover something that will be part of the big picture in the end,” he says.

“That’s as important as curing the disease because it provides information and concepts for other scientists, to help them do their work. So I’ll be very happy if my contribution helps by allowing someone else do something practical.”

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