Stonebridge Farm's Dr. Cal Stiller was named one of this year’s finalists for The Globe and Mail’s Nation Builder award, which recognizes individuals who contribute to making Canada a better place

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In today’s The Globe and Mail, the 69-year-old was recognized for his work as a physician, scientist, transplant pioneer, entrepreneur and professor emeritus of the University of Western Ontario.

“Cal never bought the old mantra that ‘Canadians discover, Americans develop and Canada buys it back at inflated prices,’” Henry Friesen, professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba and president of the Medical Research Council through the 1990s, was quoted as saying in the article. “[Dr. Stiller] has been the voice and champion par excellence that we Canadians must do better.

“If you want to see the monuments to Cal Stiller, it’s like they said about Sir Christopher Wren: ‘Look all around – they’re everywhere.’”

Dr. Stiller is a leader of the Canadian multi-centre trials of the anti-rejection drug cyclosporine, leading to its worldwide use and the era of transplant medicine, and was first to establish Type 1 diabetes as an immune disorder. He generated billions of dollars for biomedical research, as co-founder of the Canadian Medical Discoveries Fund Inc., and was founding chair of the Ontario Research and Development Challenge Fund, founder of the Robarts Research Institute at Western, founder and chair of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, and co-founder and director of the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto.

Looking ahead, Dr. Stiller hopes to lead the way to the creation of the Great Canadian Pharma Corp., a private-public venture to back early-stage testing of new drugs in Canada.

Dr. Stiller, a member of the Order of Canada, was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame earlier this year, and also received the prestigious Gairdner Wightman Award for demonstrating outstanding leadership in medicine and medical science.

To read The Globe and Mail article in its entirety, click here.

(With files from The Globe and Mail)