Fonds F2980 - Nancy E. Simpson fonds

Nancy E. Simpson, a well-respected geneticist, started her scientific career by obtaining an undergraduate degree in Physical and Health Education from the University of Toronto, followed by a Master of Science in Physical Education at Columbia. Simpson taught for several years but decided to change her focus to human genetics and pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Toronto under Dr. Norma Ford Walker. Simpson researched juvenile diabetes mellitus and was able to demonstrate that Type I diabetes was genetically distinct from adult onset diabetes and had multifactorial causes. After a post-doctoral year at Nuffield Hospital in Oxford, England, Simpson became a Research Associate at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and obtained a Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship in population genetics for the Medical Research Council of Canada. Additionally, Simpson spent five years in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Toronto investigating the genetics of cholinesterases with Dr. Werner Kalow.

In 1965, Simpson moved to Queen’s University and continued her research on juvenile diabetes and serum cholinesterase. Her cross-appointments to the Departments of Pediatrics and Biology brought the first medical geneticist to the Faculty. Around this time, Simpson completed an extensive analysis of factors influencing serum cholinesterase in a Brazilian population and started studying serum cholinesterase in Canadian families when one member had a prolonged apnea after succinylcholine. This began an effort to collect a reasonable number of families with extremely rare cholinesterase variants for formal genetic studies, which was commonly found in Inuit and Indigenous communities.

In the early 1970s, Simpson was part of a group of genetic pioneers in Canada who became interested in perinatal diagnosis and collaborated in a five-year national study to assess the extent and effectiveness of these new initiatives. She was particularly interested in circumpolar genetics and studies of genetics disease in polar natives and participated in international meetings to disseminate this knowledge. As part of her research, Simpson spent time in Igloolik studying its population and collecting samples and family histories. Later in the decade, she became interested in linkage and mapping studies and moved into molecular genetics in the 1980s.

Towards the end of her career, Simpson turned her energies to the mapping of the locus for multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2a (MEN-2), a form of hereditary thyroid cancer identified by surgeons at Hotel Dieu Hospital in a Prince Edward County family. Simpson even helped organize the First International MEN-2 Conference in Kingston at Queen’s in 1984. A breakthrough occurred in 1988, when she found the marker gene on chromosome 10 in collaboration with Dr. Kenneth Kidd and his group at Yale University. Her application of recombinant DNA technology and the mapping of the MEN-2 gene won her national and international acclaim, including the Queen’s University award for Excellence in Research in 1989.

Simpson was a founding member of the Canadian College of Medical Geneticists and served on the board as treasurer and later, president. In 1994, She was awarded their Founder’s Award, an annual award to one member of the College who has made an outstanding contribution to Canadian medical genetics. Simpson also served as the Director of the Division of Medical Genetics in the Department of Pediatrics from 1980-1986.

At Queen’s University, Simpson made many contributions to teaching and various committees in Biology, Pediatrics and Graduate Studies. In 2004, Queen’s University established the Nancy Simpson Scholarship in Genetics in her honor to recognize the best Masters or Ph.D. student at Queen’s in a field of genetics.