Refunded government genomics initiative to become more targeted and collaborative

Stronger academic involvement envisioned

The federal government has renewed the Genomics Research and Development Initiative (GRDI) for the fifth time since its launch in 1999 with $59.7 million over three years. Designed to coordinate the research efforts of federal science departments and agencies, the GRDI will now be increasingly targeted with collaboration across member departments and agencies, pooling relevant expertise to tackle major challenges in which biologic science can provide a solution.

And in another major development, GRDI is in discussions with Genome Canada to find a mechanism to facilitate even wider collaboration by engaging with researchers in the academic sector.

The refunding announcement was made at the third annual Canadian Science Policy Conference in Ottawa by minister of state for science and technology Dr Gary Goodyear, who outlined the program's targeted focus on health care, food and water safety and environmental sustainability and natural resources protection. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency will also participate in GRDI's next phase, providing guidance on potential areas for new research projects.

The first two projects selected for GRDI's latest phase (see box) were selected from as many as 100 "challenges" requiring targeted genomics R&D by the ADM Coordinating Committee for GRDI, chaired by Dr Roman Szumski, VP life sciences for the National Research Council, a founding GRDI member.

"We want to make sure that people are experts in their field. The way to generate the best potential is to combine that expertise. That's when you start to see things move," says Szumski. "A really simple example is putting a scientist arm-in-arm with a business entrepreneur — then you get the best of both worlds. You create the things that are going get them to market and to improve the lives of Canadians."

Szumski says the targeted, inter-departmental approach to solving major challenges that could benefit from genomics distinguishes the latest phase of GRDI. Another programmatic innovation is the pooling of funds from GRDI members to work on common projects. This has been achieved by shaving the budgets of all aspects of GRDI-funded R&D and devoting it to focused, collaborative activity.

GRDI's work and impact could be enhanced further if discussions with Genome Canada bear fruit.

"We're in very involved discussions with Genome Canada to see how we can bring in the academic expertise that's been built up with GC funding over the last 10 years. We know that for some of these problems we're trying to solve, there's deep academic expertise around the country," says Szumski. "We're in discussions about what mechanisms we can create that can bring them to the table as well on these challenges and targeted problems that we've defined. We think we can amplify and accelerate our response through that coordination."

GRDI was created in 1999 — the same year as the creation of Genome Canada — following extensive discussions on how to proceed in the then-new field of genomics. Proposals to merge federal and academic genomics initiatives were ultimately rejected in favour of two separate programs (R$, September 23/98). GRDI received its first funding tranche ($55 million over three years) in the 1999 federal Budget (R$, February 24/99).

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