This special article is written by Diane Peters and is originally published on The Globe and Mail on December 8, 2024.

Two decades ago, Dana Devine knew there was a better way to extract platelets from donated blood.

She advocated for Canada to adopt an approach used in Europe called the “buffy coat method,” which employs a centrifuge to separate a buff-coloured layer of white blood cells and platelets from other blood components. The process offers several advantages over the method used previously, making it easier to detect blood-borne pathogens, yielding higher quality platelets and mitigating transfusion-related acute lung injury, a rare but serious complication.

At the time, Dr. Devine was director of research and development at Canadian Blood Services (CBS), which operates the national blood and plasma supply system, and she showed how this approach could be put in place. In 2004, the organization made the decision to transition to the buffy coat method.

“This change was really driven by Dana’s scientific expertise and her passion,” says Graham Sher, CEO of CBS. “She provided the science and the technical know-how and the leadership.” Dr. Sher says this new approach likely saves lives. “The platelets work better. Patients bleed less and they need fewer doses. They have better clinical outcomes with fewer side effects.”

Dr. Devine was a key figure in helping Canada modernize its approach to the collection, storage and use of blood products in the wake of Canada’s tainted blood crisis of the 1980s, when 30,000 transfusion recipients were infected with hepatitis C and another 2,000 contracted HIV. After a national inquiry, Justice Horace Krever issued a damning report in 1997 on Canada’s failures to safeguard the blood supply, the Canadian Red Cross Society subsequently ceased its involvement in the blood system and CBS was created.

A master at managing multiple roles at once, Dr. Devine, who had served on committees at the Red Cross, began working at CBS in 1999, while also a professor at the University of British Columbia. At that time there was no place in Canada focused on blood transfusion research, so in 2002 – while still at CBS, where she later became chief scientist – she helped establish the Centre for Blood Research at UBC, later serving as its director.

“This was her visionary way of thinking. It was an important step forward for advancing transfusion medicine research in Canada,” Dr. Sher says.

She held major leadership roles in transfusion medicine internationally as well; she’s the only Canadian ever to be president of the Association for the Advancement of Blood & Biotherapies (AABB).

“That’s the most senior position in transfusion medicine,” says long-time friend and colleague Cedric Carter, emeritus member of the Centre for Blood Research and associate professor at UBC. “In transfusion medicine, she probably would have been regarded as one of the top world experts.”

Dr. Devine died on Nov. 12 at the age of 68 of complications related to frontotemporal dementia.

Her career spanned more than 35 years at UBC, mostly in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, where she was director of graduate studies for many years. She published more than 200 articles in scientific journals.

She was editor of the journal Vox Sanguinis, the International Journal of Transfusion Medicine, and president of the Biomedical Excellence for Safer Transfusion (BEST) Collaborative. She served on numerous boards and committees; Dr. Carter says her problem-solving skills were in high demand.

Her research focused on, among other things, blood storage and liposomes in blood, which are often used as a vehicle for drug delivery.

When Dr. Carter worked with her on liposomes, he says, they noticed certain behaviours and passed along this discovery on to UBC researcher Pieter Cullis. Dr. Cullis used the information to help a team work with Pfizer and BioNTech to develop COVID-19 vaccines, and two of his colleagues won the Nobel Prize in 2023 for this work.

“Two COVID vaccines that are available around the world use Pieter’s liposomes. So Dana indirectly made a terrific contribution,” Dr. Carter says.

Dr. Devine supervised numerous graduate students and often championed the work of women, especially those experiencing discrimination. “When she discovered women were unhappy with their supervisors, she’d take them on in her lab,” Dr. Carter says.

“She was a great believer in diversity, equity and inclusion,” Dr. Sher says. “She made sure people of colour and people from the LGBT communities were given a voice and given credibility and given space.”

For her contributions to science and patient care she earned numerous accolades, including a Women of Distinction Award from the YWCA Metro Vancouver in 2001, the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002, the Canadian Society for Transfusion Medicine ORTHO award in 2015, the International Society of Blood Transfusion Presidential Award in 2020 and the Hemphill-Jordan Leadership Award from the AABB in 2021.

Dr. Carter and other colleagues endeavoured to nominate her for the Order of Canada, but she was too ill to give her input for the award, they felt, so they pulled the application. In 2023, the Canadian Society for Transfusion Medicine and CBS introduced an award in her name to assist researchers with training and mentorship.

Dana Virginia Devine was born in New Bedford, Mass., on Oct. 5, 1956, to dentist and oral surgeon George Devine and accomplished pianist and music professor June Craig Fritzinger. (The couple divorced in 1971.) Her brother, Geoff, 21 months her junior, recalls her as a bossy big sister, and very precocious in general.

“She was extremely bright, extremely switched on. You can see what she did in her adult life. Her childhood was like that as well.”

They lived in a seaside town, so young Dana learned to sail skilfully and honed her skiing technique in Vermont, where the family had a place. She skied with the team at Boston University in her freshman year.

Meanwhile, in the summer after first year, her father urged her to attend a local debutante ball. When the biology undergrad was interviewed for the local paper, she said such events were not what they used to be, that the attendees were on professional tracks, not seeking husbands, and “it’s just a great party.”

“That ruffled the feathers of the women who organized it,” Geoff recalls. “My sister was dubbed the radical debutante.”

She was one of the first women to attend prestigious Amherst College, where her father had studied, but decided to go back to Boston U after a year, preferring its approach to scientific research. Graduate school at Boston U and its Woods Hole oceanside facility saw her focus on how lobsters use smell and taste to orient themselves.

During this time, she met fellow student Thomas Frommel, whom she married, and she moved with him to Texas A&M, where she briefly did graduate work in biology. When he transferred to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she took a job as a lab technician at nearby Duke University under well-respected hematologist Wendell Rosse.

“After a month, he said, ‘You shouldn’t be a lab tech. Join our PhD program,’” Dr. Carter says. She focused on immunology and published numerous papers during her studies.

A Canadian working in blood transfusion visited Duke and noticed her efficiency and the innovative work she was doing with Dr. Rosse. As she finished her program in 1986, Dr. Carter and others recruited her and crafted a job description only she could fill, skirting the rules around hiring a Canadian first.

Dr. Devine began at UBC in 1987, with Dr. Frommel joining her briefly, then the two divorced and he moved back to the U.S. A few years later, Dr. Carter says, “I took her to a party and she didn’t come home.” She had met Donald Brooks, a chemistry professor at UBC, and the two married in 1993.

It was with Dr. Brooks and others that she co-founded the Centre for Blood Research. The couple also travelled extensively, loved wine and fine foods, and had an adventuresome spirit. (Dr. Brooks is unwell and was not available for an interview.)

Dr. Sher says when the two were travelling together for work in Seoul, Dr. Devine took them to an off-the-beaten path restaurant where no one spoke English and the menu was entirely in Korean. They ate multiple courses of they knew not what, with Dr. Devine revelling in the experience. Dr. Sher says she always entertained everyone at work retreats, and was always relied upon to order the wine. She was also well-versed on car repairs, and could tell what was wrong with a vehicle and direct a mechanic with precise instructions.

Her friends, colleagues and family marvel at Dr. Devine’s skills at work, and loyalty, empathy and sense of fun in her personal life. “She was an incredible storyteller, an incredible friend,” Dr. Sher says. “She could put aside her science and put aside her stature, and she could just be the most wonderful, caring, compassionate, kind and interesting human being.”

Dr. Devine leaves her husband and her brother.