Tenacious & Audacious

Early in his career, a mentor told Dr. Smylie to specialize where the treatment options were poorest. He came to the Cross Cancer Institute in 1994 and gave his career to advanced melanoma, when only two to four per cent of patients lived past five years. An early believer in immunotherapy, he opened the checkpoint inhibitor trials in Edmonton, among them the CheckMate 067 Phase III trial, and once its treatment became standard care, long-term survival for advanced melanoma patients grew to 52 per cent. Mostly retired from melanoma since 2022, he still runs a monthly clinic in Yellowknife.