Date and Place of  Birth:

Ronald Worton was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba on April 2, 1942.

Studies:

As a teenager, Worton's father encouraged him to pursue engineering, but when he attended the University of Manitoba, his interests shifted to mathematics and physics. With a desire to pursue a discipline with more practical applications and a better opportunity for social interaction, pure theoretical physics lost its appeal and Worton switched into Biophysics - the scientific study of the physics behind the biological structure and processes of organisms. In 1969, he received a Ph.D. in Medical Biophysics from the University of Toronto and spent two years as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Biochemistry and Biophysics at Yale University.

Mission:

In 1971, Worton joined the Department of Genetics at the Hospital for Sick Children (HSC) in Toronto, at a time when the scientific community was just beginning to recognize that a number of diseases were caused by genetic defects. Worton realized that to facilitate a better understanding of human disease, one would have to develop an appreciation for what genes are, how they function and the consequences of genetic defects. Thus, he began a new research program to identify the gene that is defective in children with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), a disease characterized by the degeneration of muscle fibers, and for the next several years Worton concentrated his research efforts on this extensive project.

Achievements:

In 1986, Worton's hard work paid off when his research group identified the gene encoding dystrophin (a very large protein that stabilizes the muscle fibres when they contract and expand) and the genetic alterations that are responsible for DMD. This concerted effort was not only a breakthrough discovery, but also a prototype gene discovery that provided scientists with a set of procedures to follow when studying the genetic defects underlying human disease.

The discovery of the gene for dystrophin offered both good and bad news; good news because it was finally understood that the lack of dystrophin inmuscle fibres was the cause of the muscle degeneration, and bad news because restoring dystrophin to the muscle would be a tremendous task, involving the replacement of the defective gene with a good gene, in order for the muscle fibres to manufacture the missing protein. Worton dabbled in gene therapy technology for a while but eventually decided that gene therapy would only prevent further degeneration of muscle fibres, not replace the damaged muscle.

Having concluded that only stem cells would have the power to repair the damaged muscle he prepared several successful proposals to federal and provincial governments to build, equip and staff a new Centre for Stem Cell and Gene Therapy at the Ottawa Health Research Institute. In addition he knew many talented stem cell researchers across Canada and led them in a proposal to the federal government to create a Network of Centres of Excellence dedicated to stem cell research.