John L. Wallace — Director, Farncombe Family Digestive Health Research Institute

John L. Wallace is the Director of the Farncombe Family Digestive Health Research Institute where he holds an endowed research chair for his work on inflammation. He is a Professor in the Department of Medicine at McMaster University and a pharmacologist with expertise in the commercialization of new technology.

Before joining the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster, Dr. Wallace was a Professor of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the University of Calgary and held a Canada Research Chair in Inflammation.

Dr. Wallace received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. from Queen’s University and his PhD from the University of Toronto. He completed his post-doctoral studies in the Department of Mediator Pharmacology at Wellcome Research Laboratories in London, England. That work was carried out in a group led by Sir John Vane and Dr. Salvador Moncada.

Dr. Wallace returned to Canada in 1986 as an Assistant Professor at Queen’s University and in 1989 moved to University of Calgary, where he founded the Inflammation Research Network.

In 1996, he co-founded NicOX S.A., based in Nice, France. He served as the Chair of the company’s Scientific Advisory Board from 1996-2003, overseeing the development of nitric oxide-releasing NSAIDs. NicOx went public on the Paris Stock Exchange in 1999 and presently has a market capitalization of about $1 billion.

In 2004, Dr. Wallace founded Antibe Therapeutics Inc., a company developing hydrogen sulfide-releasing drugs. He sits on the board of directors of Hosted Villas Holdings Inc. in Toronto. In 2009 he co-founded GInova Pharma, a Montreal-based company focused on the development of novel therapies for digestive disorders.

Dr. Wallace’s research is focused on mediators of inflammation and their contribution to mucosal injury and dysfunction. He is also interested in the mechanisms of injury induced by the gastrointestinal tract by anti-inflammatory drugs, and the factors that regulate healing of ulcers.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a member of the Brazilian Academy of Science and a Fellow of the British Pharmacological Society.

He has published more than 350 peer-reviewed papers and is among the top 0.5 per cent of biomedical scientists in the world in terms of citations (Hirsch factor of 72). He has delivered over 400 invited lectures around the world.

In 2007, Dr. Wallace completed his MBA degree, with distinction, from the University of Birmingham (UK), which included studies in Mauritius and Singapore, and a dissertation entitled "Evolution of Public Relations Practices in the Pharmaceutical Industry Since 1970."