Think of the Grander Issues
A black-and-white photo of Albert Einstein hangs in the office of Jason Maynes, an Assistant Professor of Anesthesia and Biochemistry at U of T. He admires the father of relativity for much more than his scientific genius.
“Einstein was a physicist but he didn’t just work in physics,” recalls Maynes. “He was a humanitarian, a champion of quality science, a friend to philosophers. His scope was so far beyond his immediate realm. That’s something I try to bring to work every day.”
Maynes operates at the intersection of anesthesiology, paediatrics, cardiology, pharmacology and physics. He uses all these specialties in his search for safer ways to treat kids, especially those undergoing chemotherapy.
“A lot of the drugs in paediatric oncology have very significant effects on the heart,” says Maynes, who is also Director of Anesthesiology Research at SickKids. “Treatment has improved to such an astounding degree in the last 30 years that patients survive long enough now to worry about the complications. Among kids with cancer, 70 per cent will end up with some kind of heart dysfunction, and many will get heart transplants.”
Maynes is haunted and motivated by the rare case of a young girl with brain cancer who ended up in end-stage heart failure from a single dose of chemotherapy. She died waiting for a transplant.
He works toward the day when doctors are able to learn in advance which drugs will be too toxic for which patients.
In his lab, researchers perform gene editing to help understand the effects of drugs on patients. They also model cardiac disease using heart muscle cells made from stem cells – an area that particularly excites Maynes.
One day, scientists will be able to quickly recreate a patient’s tissue so they can test the toxicity of different drugs on each patient in advance, he says. Then perhaps no more children will die in treatment.
In his own career, Maynes has crisscrossed many worlds. The Calgary native completed a PhD in biophysics, then did postdoctoral work at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where Einstein’s colleagues developed the atomic bomb.
Then Maynes went to medical school. When it came time to pick a specialty, he gravitated toward anesthesiology rather than the more obvious choice of radiology. As a researcher, he had always worked on drug toxicity, and anesthesiology was a chance to see the immediate effects of a drug, to be “the last of the clinical pharmacologists.”
The final piece fell into place when, through pure chance, he found himself at Stanford University, on a paediatrics intensive care elective.
“It was the best thing I ever did in my medical training,” recalls Maynes. “I loved working with kids – they’re so honest and forthright. Coming to work every day was so much more fun.”
Working with children, Maynes found that tragedies are more heart-breaking, such as the week at Washington University in St. Louis (where he completed his anesthesia training) when five children died in the intensive care unit. But overall, he learned, children survive and recover better than adults.
As well, “you’ll find the mood and atmosphere in a pediatric unit more inviting and collegial,” he adds. “Everyone knows each other, and everyone knows why they’re there. It’s much more collaborative than the silos on the adult side.”
This atmosphere fits with his mantra: “don’t get bogged down in your microcosm. Think of the grander, broader issues and how you can contribute to them. Walt Whitman said, ‘the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.’”
