Accueil

Regional Update

Genome BC

Dr. Robin Downey is replacing Society and Ethics Advisor Dr. Sarah Hartley, who is on maternity leave until October 2010.
Dr. Nadine Caron, a practicing general surgeon in Prince George and the first female First Nations student to graduate from UBC’s School of Medicine, has recently accepted a position on Genome BC’s Genomics, Society and Ethics Advisory Committee.
Genome BC has conducted an evaluation of the integration funding model first implemented by Genome Canada in Competition III in 2005 and also employed in Genome BC’s Applied Genomics Innovation Program in 2007.
Read more: see the related news story in this issue of Impact.
Genome BC’s new Genomics & Society Newsletter was published in September.
Genome BC is hosting a series of workshops to move knowledge generated from Genome BC grant-funded projects into the wider community. Two knowledge translation workshops have been held so far: one on ‘translational science’, the other on ethical governance in biobanking. For more information
A report from the workshop Measuring Success: Social science and humanities research in genomics, held June 2009, is now available.

Genome Alberta

In September 2009, the 5^th International DNA Sampling Conference, The Age of Personalized Genomics, took place in Banff, Alberta. The event drew 150 delegates from more than 80 institutions and organizations worldwide. A series of papers are currently being compiled for an upcoming edition of Public Health Genomics.
In October 2009, Genome Alberta GE³LS researcher Edna Einsiedel along with several Genome BC GE³LS researchers, including Michael Burgess and Kieran O’Doherty, hosted a symposium investigating the topic of public participation and emerging technologies. Held in Banff, Alberta, the two-day event hosted twenty-three presenters from all over the world. A related book examining the cultures, contexts and challenges of public participation and emerging technologies is expected to be released in Summer 2010. For more information, contact Edna Einsiedel or Erin Navid.
Imagining Science: Art, Science and Social Change, by Genome Alberta GE³LS researcher Timothy Caulfield and artist Sean Caulfield, won a first place award at the 2009 New York Book Show, received an honourable from the Alcuin Society, and was profiled in a recent issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
Timothy Caulfield’s team completed a survey of 1200 Alberta residents to explore attitudes and interest regarding different types of genetic tests. Results can be found in a recent issue of Public Health Genomics.
PhD student Yulian Ding, whose research is funded by the Genome Alberta GE³LS project Translating Science: Genomics and Health Systems, has probed the relationship between measures of trust and people's willingness to purchase a food with increased levels of omega-3 content. She found that levels of trust in strangers and trust in food institutions can effectively predict Canadians' preferences for GM food; however, a widely used measure of generalized trust, based on people's views that most people can be trusted, does not. (Advisors: Genome Alberta GE³LS researchers Michele Veeman and Vic Adamowicz)

Genome Prairie

The Province of Saskatchewan injected $680,000 into a large-scale Genome Canada GE³LS project: “Value Addition through Genomics” or “VALGEN”. The four-year, $5.4 million project, funded as part of Genome Canada’s Competition in Applied Genomics Research in Bioproducts or Crops (ABC), will investigate the future of agricultural innovation. Co-led by Peter W.B. Phillips and David Castle, VALGEN is being managed by Genome Prairie and administered by the University of Saskatchewan. The VALGEN team will investigate how new discoveries leave the laboratory as intellectual property, and the legal and business tools surrounding that property. It will also identify models for governing these new products, and identify meaningful ways for Canadians to participate in decisions about how we choose to use new agricultural technologies.
Read more: see the related news story in this issue of Impact.

Ontario Genomics Institute (OGI)

In partnership with Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT), a leading supplier of custom nucleic acids based in Iowa, and with support from GE³LS Alberta, OGI hosted Engineering the Future – an open public forum on potential societal and environmental impacts of synthetic biology held in October 2009.
OGI co-sponsored and helped organize the Canadian Science Policy Conference, “a measured first step towards building a robust science policy network in Canada”. Speakers at the October 2009 event included Preston Manning, Alain Beaudet, Heather Monroe-Blum, Christopher Paige, Peter Singer, Peter Hackett, Suzanne Fortier, and OGI President and CEO, Christian Burks.

Génome Québec

An Expert Roundtable on “Informed Consent in Pharmacogenomics” was held on November 26, 2009, at the Pharmacogenomics Centre (Montreal Heart Institute). GE³LS team leaders, Drs. Yann Joly and Denise Avard, presented “Points to Consider,” a document exploring ethical and legal issues related to informed consent in pharmacogenomics research projects. For more information, please contact Rhonda.grintuch@mail.mcgill.ca.
Read more: see the related feature story in this issue of Impact.
CARTaGENE held a discussion forum on December 1, 2009, at the Hilton Bonaventure in Montreal, to take stock of progress and explore future applications of one of the most ambitious scientific projects on health and population genomics in Quebec’s history. To view the program, please visit www.cartagene.qc.ca.
Génome Québec congratulates two GE³LS researchers, both with the Centre of Genomics & Policy of McGill University: Yann Joly, who successfully defended his thesis for a Doctorate of Civil Law (DCL) at McGill University under the supervision of Prof. Richard Gold, and Julie Samuel, who received an Erasmus Mundus grant from the European Commission.
The virtual game GÉNOMIA is proving to be an enormous success; to date, close to 350,000 people have signed up to play the game about saving island gnomes from a deadly disease through genomic research. Funded by Génome Québec, Genome Canada, the Ministry of Economic Development, Innovation and Export Trade, Telefilm Canada, and many other partners, the game was launched in June 2009 as part of Festival Eurêka, the first science festival in Quebec.
On the theme of “Tous ensemble vers un but commun” (“All together toward one goal”), Génome Québec organized two forums in September 2009 in Montreal: one for researchers to discuss the results of their ongoing large-scale projects funded by Génome Québec, as well as the impact of their projects on the development of genomic research in Québec; and the other for Genome Québec’s partners, to enhance understanding of each other’s goals and promote opportunities for collaboration and co-funding.
Génome Québec’s new web site was launched September 8, 2009: www.genomequebec.com.
Two large-scale projects were funded in Quebec through the recent Genome Canada Competition in Applied Genomics Research in Bioproducts or Crops (ABC): Thomas Bureau’s scientific project has an integrated GE³LS project led by Anwar Nasseem on “The Integration of Genomics with Plant Breeding”; and Adrian Tsang’s scientific project has an integrated GE³LS project led by David Secko on “A Methodological Approach to Environmental Impacts and Public Engagement”.

Genome Atlantic

In October 2009, Genome Atlantic partnered with the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Public Affairs (CCEPA) to present the first talk in a five-part, national series, Trust in the New Sciences: Remaking the Human. The first talk was entitled “Engineering Selfhood in the 21st Century”, with Dr. Nikolas Rose, Martin White Professor of Sociology and Director of the BIOS Centre for the Study of Bioscience, Biomedicine, Biotechnology and Society, at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The event was held in Halifax.
Genome Atlantic wishes to congratulate the members of its human health project on their award for advocacy for the hard of hearing community. The Genome Canada-funded Atlantic Medical Genetics and Genomics Initiative (AMGGI) is seeking the genetic cause of many disorders in the region. Their Hereditary Deafness and Hard of Hearing Study Group was the recent recipient of the Advocacy Award presented by the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association in Newfoundland. The study group was lauded for its efforts in "helping to provide a better understanding of the causes of hearing loss, which may lead to a cure at some future date."
Daryl Pullman, lead of AMGGI’s integrated GE³LS component, gave two presentations in September. “SNPs, Chips and Privacy Paradoxes in the Expanding Genomics Era” was delivered to the Federal, Provincial, Territorial Privacy Commissioners Annual Meeting in St. John’s, NL. “Does Canada need genetic non-discrimination legislation?” was given at the CIHR Genetic Discrimination Workshop in Banff, AB.
Read more: see the related news story in this issue of Impact.
Pullman and AMGGI colleague Kathy Hodgkinson also co-presented a poster at the Human Genome Organization Symposium on Genomics and Ethics, Law and Society in Geneva, Switzerland in November on “Managing the nebulous distinction between genetic research and clinical genetics: A triage tool to assist Research Ethics Boards”.