6010 Katz Centre for Health Research
Edmonton, AB T6G 2E1
Canada
Disciplines
Biochemistry; Immunology; Infectious Diseases; Microbiology; Virology;
D. Lorne Tyrrell, OC, AOE, MD, PhD, FRCP, FRSC holds the CIHR/GSK Chair in Virology in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Alberta. He is also the Founding Director of the Li Ka Shing Institute of Virology. He has focused his research since 1986 on viral hepatitis. His work on the development of antiviral therapy was supported by CIHR and Glaxo Canada. It resulted in the licensing of the first oral antiviral agent to treat chronic hepatitis B infection – lamivudine – in 1998. Today, lamivudine is licensed in over 200 countries worldwide for the treatment of HBV. He has also been involved in the establishment of a biotech company―KMT Hepatech Inc. based on the first non-primate animal model for HCV.
Dr. Tyrrell was the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry from 1994-2004. Since leaving the Deanship in 2004, Dr. Tyrrell has taken on a number of important board positions in healthcare in Alberta and Canada. These include the Chair of the Board of the Institute of Health Economics and the Chair of the Board of the Health Quality Council of Alberta (2003-2012). He is the Chair of the Gairdner Foundation Board and serves on the Research Advisory Council for the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and was recently appointed to the Science Advisory Board to Health Canada.
For his studies on viral hepatitis, Dr. Tyrrell has received numerous prestigious awards including the Gold Medal of the Canadian Liver Foundation (2000), the Alberta Order of Excellence (2000), Officer of the Order of Canada (2002), Fellow of the Royal Society (2004), FNG Starr Award of the Canadian Medical Association (2004), and the Principal Award of the Manning Foundation (2005). He was awarded the University Distinguished Professorship at the University of Alberta and was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in April 2011.
