Dr. Jim Russell MD

Dr. Russell pursued his undergraduate degree (AB) in Biology and Biochemistry at Princeton University and medical degree (MD) at the University of Toronto. He completed a residency in Internal Medicine at Toronto General Hospital and University of Toronto. He chose to go to the University of California, San Francisco for his Fellowship in Critical Care Medicine and research training. He then returned to Toronto General Hospital as Director of the Medical ICU before being recruited to Vancouver, BC as Director of the Medical Surgical ICU at St. Paul’s Hospital. He built a world-class team of basic science, translational, and clinical researchers in Critical Care focused on molecular mechanisms and treatment of sepsis. He was Chair of Medicine at St. Paul’s and Head of the Division of Critical Care Medicine for University of British Columbia (UBC).

He is now a Professor of Medicine at UBC, a Principal Investigator at the SPH-based Centre for Heart Lung Innovation (HLI) and a member of the Board of Molecular You and of the Personalized Medicine Initiative. Dr. Russell was also a co-founder and founding CEO of Sirius Genomics Inc., a spin off company of UBC and SPH. Sirius raised $16M to attempt to identify and validate genomic markers (i.e. predictive biomarkers) of improved response to what was the only approved drug for sepsis, activated protein C (Xigris). Dr. Russell is also co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of Cyon Therapeutics, another spin-off of UBC and SPH. Through their groundbreaking scientific discoveries the team is developing the means to boost the body’s natural ability to clear infectious toxins from the bloodstream. Bacterial toxins are found in cholesterol, so Cyon’s technology will focus on increasing the clearance of cholesterol bound toxins. The major discovery is that genetic variants of PCSK9 – loss of function variants - have improved survival from septic shock and that in murine models, PCSK9 knock-outs and antibodies to PCSK9 also have improved survival from septic shock. This important discovery has potentially important therapeutic implications in septic shock; we are now investigating the potential efficacy and safety of PCSK9 inhibitor(s) in septic shock.