CRCHUM set to open its doors

québec 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 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

More importantly, the new centre allows CRCHUM to bring together its personnel who are currently distributed over six other locations under one roof.

is called Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanning, a frequently used molecular imaging procedure that will allow researchers to image various organs, tissues and, more importantly, metabolic activity.

“It’s not looking at the physical structure of a tissue, but rather at the metabolic activity. It’s used a lot in oncology to localize a tumour by its activity. It is also used in other applications, including cardiovascular diseases, neurology, etc. The tracers are time sensitive, they can’t be made elsewhere and shipped for example. You need to use them within a half hour of producing them, so having this ability in house will certainly make things much easier for us.”

Moreover, the centre already has the distinction of being at the forefront of clinical research, hosting 1,000 clinical trials in 2011. Strikingly, 30 per cent of those came from the private sector and 150 partner companies. Coupled with having access to major cohorts of patients, the CRCHUM will be more attractive to potential partners and, as such, Poitout believes these numbers should grow at the new centre.

“There are definitely major improvements with the new building on the clinical research side. First of all, we now have a centralized clinical research floor (6500 sq. metres of space), and because of its centralized nature we can pool staff, expertise and equipment for these clinical studies.”

The other change is the addition of the applied clinical research unit (ACRU).

“This benefits both the clinical research and population health units. It is not complete yet but when it is, it will be a methods and expertise centre. Methods in the sense that you will have expertise in biostatistics, in study design, in bioinformatics and essentially a set of resources available for clinicians who want to do a clinical study. It provides expertise of people who are involved in this kind of research and can provide advice and mentorship to the clinicians in the hospital and in the research centre who want to engage in these activities.”

He believes there is an opportunity for public/private partnerships that can result from both the assets and the people that make up the CRCHUM, and this is something he and his team are very proactive in exploring.

“I believe that as academic researchers, we don’t exploit publicprivate partnerships enough. So, this is something that we really want to develop in the new research centre with our assets and our people. Already we’re trying to put together internal programs to help identify projects, including therapeutic target projects, so that we can provide support to scientists in bringing their ideas to the next level in the early phases of drug development. We’ll look at all avenues, including working with other institutions, to get this off the ground. We still have a big gap to fill. I think that, like most academic institutions, we’re not well prepared or well equipped for this transition, but it’s a transition that has to happen, all the more so now that the private sector has pulled back from early phases of research and development in many aspects.”

Part of this transition is ensuring the development of new generations of researchers committed to research excellence and attracting the best and brightest to work at the centre.

“This is an important part of our mission. At any given time, we train about 450 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from various programs at the University of Montréal as well as from universities throughout the world. Of course, these are the living bodies that make up our laboratories and we’re very proud of them. We strongly believe that you can’t be a highly competitive research centre if you don’t attract the best and the brightest young people because those young scientists are the ones who make the important discoveries. Adequately supported and mentored by senior scientists, junior researchers represent the future of our institution.”

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