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If the similarities between cancer and heart to establish her own lab
title failure.”
“Heart bearing her name.
Whisperer” Untangling the spider’s web of genes
existed, implicated in both diseases led to Dr. “I’ve had great
it would Billia’s elegant and potentially game-
belong to changing hypothesis. mentorship,” she says,
Dr. Phyllis
Billia. “I started thinking about tumour giving credit to both Dr.
suppressor genes,” explains Dr. Billia,
While most physicians only listen to “especially the master regulator: p53. Tak Mak and to PMCC
the heart, Dr. Billia is unlocking its When it mutates, it’s one of those
secrets, modifying its behaviour and permissive signals that allows cancer cardiologist Dr. Heather
persuading the heart to regenerate. cells to divide. I wondered what would
happen if you knocked it out, just in the Ross. “I have a grant.
It’s not that the physician needs yet heart.”
another title. And we’re getting past
Would permitting heart muscle cells
She’s a clinical cardiologist, caring to divide create new healthy cells that some of the conventional
for patients at the Peter Munk Cardiac could compensate for damaged ones?
Centre (PMCC). thinking to get to the
She tested the theory on mice,
She’s Co-Director of the Peter Munk knocking out p53 and one of its master next great leap. It’s not
Cardiovascular Biobank, which provides regulators from their hearts. “The
living tissue and blood for research. result,” she says, “was astounding.” that the ideas aren’t there
She’s the mother of a 13-year old What she found was that, when the and the know-how – it’s
daughter and the wife of a physician genes were knocked out in the mice’s
with a private practice. hearts, the mice died within 10 days. the money to get the
She’s a medical volunteer, travelling “Looking into the microscope, I could work done.”
with her husband and daughter every see that the cardiomyocytes” – the
year to British Guyana, where she works heart muscle cells – “were tiny. ‘Could Having her own
at a heart function clinic, tending to this be happening because they were
patients with heart failure. dividing?’” she wondered. lab – her name is
And she is a scientist, a PhD in The mice were dying because “when prominently displayed
biochemistry, researching the genetic you let the whole heart proliferate, it
pathway to heart regeneration though fails,” she explains. – is a significant
heart cell proliferation, which, until
recently, was regarded as almost “So the next step was, ‘How do we achievement, physical
impossible, and the Director of target this at a site of injury?’ You
Research at the PMCC. may still have damage, but you get evidence of the Canadian
surrounding cells to regenerate and
Working in the cardiac clinic, Dr. compensate.” research establishment’s Dr. Phyllis Billia and
Billia is acutely aware of the toll of confidence in the her research team
heart failure. It’s the leading cause Dr. Billia acknowledges that her woman, the scientist, at the Peter Munk
of morbidity and mortality in North approach to healing hearts through the potential and the
America. Heart failure patients regeneration is different than the path commitment. Cardiac Centre
have poor quality of life and a poor being followed by most heart research are focused on
prognosis. colleagues. She’s especially proud
reversing heart
“Heart failure is an epidemic and it’s They’re trying to grow stem cells into
on the rise,” says the cardiologist. “There heart cells to replace those that have of her team, six women, failure by coaxing
are about 50,000 new cases a year in been damaged.
Canada, and a million Canadians have including a summer the heart to heal
it. It’s just as common in women as in “There’s a lot of work being done on student, and the feeling itself with genetic
men as women get older.” that around the world,” explains Dr. is mutual.
Billia, “but there are a lot of questions reprogramming.
In her lab, on the third floor of the about what cell to use, how to deliver
Max Bell Research Centre, affiliated it, what’s the best timing and for what Technician Daniela
with the PMCC, Dr. Billia and her team condition.”
are intent on reversing heart failure. Grothe has worked with
They are seeking to turn the almost What Dr. Billia is attempting, she says,
impossible into the possible, coaxing “is more complex. We’re tweaking the Dr. Billia since they were
the heart to heal itself with genetic genome, getting rid of the roadblock,
reprogramming. the p53 gene pathway.” together in Dr. Tak Mak’s
Having worked on a postdoctoral There are a lot of downstream targets lab at Princess Margaret.
fellowship with cancer researcher Dr. in her sights: other proteins that
Tak Mak at the Princess Margaret interact with the p53, other tumour “If she wants something, she works
Cancer Centre after completing medical suppressors, injury models and then,
school and specializing in cardiology, the Holy Grail, localized regeneration hard for it,” says Ms. Grothe, about
Dr. Billia recognized “a lot of genomic in the heart and other organs, including
the lungs and kidneys, that were long Dr. Billia. “She works her ass off. We
thought to be resistant to regeneration.
worked six years to set this up. This lab
But when asked about the biggest
challenge she faces in her work, Dr. was a dream. Now a lot of our ideas are
Billia doesn’t hesitate.
coming to fruition,” says Ms. Grothe,
“Money,” she replies.
The funding she’s received so far, who adds: “Most people who have labs,
mainly from the Canadian Institutes
of Health Research and the Canadian that’s their only job. Phyllis is always a
Cardiovascular Society, has allowed her
doctor at the same time. She’s 100 per
cent research scientist and 100 per cent
doctor. There’s never anything lacking
on either end.”
“My patients are used to seeing me in
jeans,” says Dr. Billia. “They know I’m
running back and forth between the lab
and the clinic.”
And there could be no greater
motivation for commitment and success
in the lab than seeing her clinic patients
suffer from heart failure.
“My gut says it will work,” she says
about the genomic approach to healing
hearts. “You can never be 100 per cent
positive about research, but what we’re
finding is quite striking.”
The next step is testing in larger
animals and developing what is known
as “preclinical proof of concept.”
Pressed for a timeline, Dr. Billia
predicts that in five to 10 years,
genomic research will result in the heart
repairing itself.
Genes, she believes, are the key to
heart failure.
36 Peter Munk Cardiac Centre
