Cancer genome consortium enhances Toronto's image as life sciences centre

The selection of Toronto's as the global and data headquarters for an ambitious $1-billion global genome consortium to combat cancer promises to dramatically increase the city's life sciences activity and profile, says the researcher who led the effort to attract the initiative to the region.

Dr Tom Hudson says the decision last month to locate the headquarters and database for the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) is excellent news for the battle against a host of cancers and recognition of the high level of Canadian expertise in the field.

"The level of interest by the province in terms of what we do is amazing," says Hudson who was recruited from the McGill Univ-Genome Quebec Innovation Centre to become president and chief scientific officer of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) (R$, August 21/06). "I like their approach to commercialization and recruitment as well as knowledge translation."

OICR will use $30 million from its base funding and $10 million in new money from the province to begin work on pancreatic cancer and establish a central database for the project, which is expected to take several years and tackle 50 different genomes (R$, April 30/08).

branding impact

OICR's leadership role in the ICGC is also expected to assist in the new agency's efforts to recruit scientists to Ontario, given the Institute's substantial core funding and provincial scope .

"It's going to have a branding effect for the Institute and it helps me recruit scientists to Ontario. OICR funds intramural research and research across the province," says Hudson. "We need 50 new scientists including 20 at the hub in the areas of genomics, informatics and medical chemistry. We're building clusters all over Ontario."

About 10 groups have committed to the ICGC to date and several of these, including Ontario, may take on more than one cancer candidate. Several more countries are interested in participating but are waiting on funding decisions from potential backers.

"The project will have more than $1 billion when it's fully assigned," says Hudson. "We expect 8 to 10 to launch in 2008 and more to roll out in 2009."

CANARIE/ORION link

Hudson says the incredible pace of technology development has made the ICGC's work possible that would have been inconceivable only three years ago. The same applies to the database component of the project which will handle 25,000 times more data than the Human Genome Project in the late 1990s.

OICR is connected to the CANARIE and ORION high-speed research and education networks through the MaRS Discovery District, where OICR is a tenant. "We need the fastest-speed networks available," he says. "The size of the data is massive with lots of imaging."

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