Spotlight on Québec
québec
By Shawn Lawrence
CRCHUM: A world class research centre gets a new home
A new research hospital is set to open in downtown Montréal this fall and is poised to invigorate the local biomedical sector. Occupying nearly 48,000 square metres in total surface area, the building is to be the new home of the University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre (CRCHUM). The new CRCHUM will house leading-edge technology platforms to advance and develop innovative applications that will directly contribute to the hospital’s mission: health care, teaching, research, health promotion and technology evaluation. Dr. Vincent Poitout is the scientific director of the research centre. He explains what sets the CRCHUM apart from most hospital research centres is its exceptional capacity for basic research, as well as its approach to clinical research and population health research. “It’s a beautiful institution which is populated with outstanding scientists who do very relevant and important research for the populations of Québec, Canada and people in general. We are part of the hospital, so we’re not an isolated centre that is strictly focused on one disease, nor are we focused solely on basic or even clinical research. We have a mission to be transformative for the patient and for the population. That’s integral to our position as the research arm of the hospital,” states Poitout. He adds that the CRCHUM’s greatest strength lies in its ability to tackle a health problem from the basic science at the bench to the bedside with the patient at the clinical level and back to the bench with new research questions, both of which inform and are informed by population health research. He refers to this dynamic and integrated convergence as “The research continuum.” Indeed, this expression has become the centre’s trademark. “What this means is we house a full research continuum that includes basic science, clinical research and population health research. This is really what sets us apart having these three different areas not working alone in silos but working together for the benefit of the patient and the larger population. That you have these three aspects under one roof is very unique in the context of a hospital research.” More importantly, the new centre allows the CRCHUM to bring together its personnel who are currently distributed over six other locations under one roof. As such the facility itself is built in a way that it will promote collaboration and interaction. “This concentration of expertise will create an incredible synergy
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Biotechnology Focus / October 2013
benefitting researchers and the population alike,” he explains. In all, the centre has 360 researchers (35 per cent basic researchers, 55 per cent clinical researchers and 24 per cent population health researchers; the total exceeds 100 because several researchers have a foot in more than one area) and around 450 students whose significantly collective output has contributed to maintaining an international reputation (an average of 2000 publications per year). Many, he comments, have high international visibility. “We have a very strong group of clinical scientists in prostate cancer, for instance, that are involved in many different Canadian and international trials and programs. We also have very strong basic scientists in ovarian and breast cancer, as well as large tissue banks of these different cancers being used by several pan-Canadian programs. In cardio-metabolic diseases we have strong scientists who have made major discoveries in type 2 diabetes, pancreatic β cell function, and the same can be said in the area of hypertension.” The areas of focus for the new CRCHUM are grouped into eight themes, with five of these focuses (cancer; cardio-metabolic diseases; tissue injury, infection, immunity, inflammation; neurosciences, imaging and engineering) covering the spectrum of universal pathologies. The others (global health; health risks; evaluation, health care and services) are concerned with population health. “We reviewed the strengths of our researchers and decided on these eight because we are well represented with some of the best and brightest in these areas,” says Poitout, adding that moving into the new building will only strengthen the CRCHUM’s capabilities in these areas. For starters, the new centre is equipped with instruments on the cutting edge of technology along with advanced facilities that include 75 laboratories, 36 clinical examination rooms, and 15 Phase 1, 2a and 2b beds for clinical trials. In each case it is also possible to adapt the space configuration and to modify the equipment according to the needs of individual research projects and technological advances. “It is very open to allow people to interact as much as possible; our facilities are conducive to that type of environment. We have four floors of open laboratory space, generic in nature for basic scientists. We have an entire building of dry space for population health and epidemiology studies, and in the basic science building we have one floor of state-of-the-art core facilities for genomics, metabolomics, flow cytometry, etc. We also have two floors of highly specialized animal facilities that surpass the standards of animal care in Canada and can support a lot of different experiments and procedures including imaging, phenotyping, etc.” Researchers will also have access to a world-class medical imaging platform, including a new 18 MeV cyclotron which “will significantly enhance our already strong human and animal imaging facility which is currently mostly based on NMR-MRI,” Poitout says. A cyclotron works by generating very short lived radioactive tracers that can be injected into people or animals at very low doses for what
