born and raised in hamilton, bell attended westmount secondary school, where he played football — “i wanted a career as a professional football player, but i was too small and too slow,” he said — before studying science at mcmaster university. in the fourth year of his undergraduate degree, he joined a lab as part of his thesis work.
ever since, the lab has been part of bell’s life.
“i found that doing research was really stimulating for me, really interesting, so i continued to pursue that,” he explained in an interview.
as a phd student, his thesis examined the biology of the vesicular stomatitis virus (vsv). he would return to virology again and again during his career.
dr. john bell, seen in his lab at the ottawa hospital research institute in july 2016, has brought a team-minded approach to science.
tony caldwell
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postmedia
“viruses need the cell in order to replicate, so i always felt, if you could understand viruses, it would help us gain inroads into helping us understand how cells work,” bell said. “viruses were really a tool at that time to understand how they use cellular machinery to replicate. almost everything we know about cells is from studying viruses and host cell interactions.”
after mcmaster, bell spent three years as a post-doctoral fellow at the university of ottawa, where he worked on a research team led by prof. mike mcburney, a cell biologist who was comparing the behaviour of cancer cells to normal cells. the lab was the first in the city to use stem cells for that purpose.