$344 million expansion for MaRS will create 4,000 jobs
July 27, 2011
Robert Benzie
Toronto Star
There is life on MaRS.
Research and Innovation Minister Glen Murray has announced the MaRS science complex at the corner of University Ave. and College St. will double in size after a $344.5 million expansion.
“It will make it arguably the largest innovation hub in the world here in Toronto,” Murray said Tuesday.
Hailing “some very creative leasing and financing arrangements with the private sector,” the minister said the 20-storey addition will create 4,000 construction jobs and enlarge MaRS to 1.5 million sq. ft. of offices and laboratories.
Infrastructure Ontario, the arm’s-length government agency that specializes in private-public partnerships, has loaned MaRS $230.3 million for the development.
“It will more than double the number of researchers and innovators and entrepreneurs at MaRS from 2,300 to more than 5,000,” said Murray, noting the facility’s success at rapidly commercializing scientific breakthroughs.
“Here is really where the future is being invented. Persistent challenges from prostate cancer to turning sewage into energy to ways of cleaning our air and storing energy so green energy is ‘dispatch-able,’” he said.
“We’re going to solve some of the most difficult problems facing humanity right here in the middle of this network and that’s why this is important.”
MaRS, which originally stood for Medical and Related Science when announced by former Progressive Conservative premier Ernie Eves in 2002, has been at capacity since opening six years ago.
“Our facility is bursting at the seams. This expansion of the MaRS platform offers a huge opportunity to accelerate that momentum and further strengthen our innovation economy for future generations,” said Ilse Treurnicht, the chief executive officer of MaRS Discovery District.
The addition, which should be completed by fall 2013, will house the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research and Public Health Ontario’s central lab, which prevents and controls infectious diseases.
Mindful of the Oct. 6 provincial election, Murray said MaRS symbolizes what the Liberal government is striving to achieve.
“Some of the people opposite on the right like to talk about us as latte-sipping liberals who live south of Bloor and are out of touch with reality,” said the Toronto Centre MPP.
“Ontarians, whether they’re assembling cars or in their labs, are some of the smartest, most committed people in the world and they like intelligence and they like smarts,” he said.
Toronto team first to isolate blood stem cells
July 07, 2011
Joseph Hall, Health Reporter
Toronto Star
In a study that will further cement this city’s pioneer standing in the field, Toronto scientists have become the first in the world to isolate the stem cell for human blood.
The work out of the University Health Network will greatly increase researchers’ abilities to study the blood-producing cells and will lead to better therapies for treating diseases like leukemia, the study’s authors say.
“We’ve never really had this stem cell in our hands before,” says John Dick, a senior scientist at the hospital’s Ontario Cancer Institute.
“And if you haven’t had it in your hands before (you) actually don’t know what makes it tick,” says Dick, the senior study author.
The study was released Thursday by the journal Science.
Blood stem cells have been utilized more successfully than any other variety in the treatment of diseases.
Donated stem cells from matched donors are most often used to replenish the blood-producing bone marrow that is destroyed by chemotherapy in the treatment of leukemia patients.
But those patients, who have their own defective stem cells destroyed to stop their runaway blood production, are currently being transfused with many other marrow elements in addition to the life-saving stem cells, Dick says.
“We’re transplanting a whole (mishmash) of cells and relying on the rare stem cells (in the mix) to actually do the job,” Dick says.
These non-stem cell components, he says, increase the risk of a rejection condition known as graft-versus-host disease, where immune cells lingering in the donated marrow begins to attack the recipient.
“By now going in and fishing out stem cells, we’ll be able to transplant pure populations of cells for transplantation,” Dick says.
The discovery will also allow researchers to study the cells far more closely and seek a technique that will coax them to multiply.
“Even after all these years of study, we don’t know what makes a stem cell tick . . . because we never had one in our hands,” he says. “Now we have almost pure stem cells in a test tube, we can begin to look at their molecular workings.”
The problem with stem cells in therapeutic use is that there are so few of them and those that are there cannot be made to multiply readily in laboratories.
By having actual specimens to study, Dick says, research can now focus on creating a recipe of growth factors and other bio-chemicals that will coax the cells to multiply, greatly expanding the supply for patients who need transplants.
“If we knew how to trick them to get out of their dormancy and to expand to make more stem cells, that would be a big advance,” Dick says. “That would open the window to having a lot more sources of stem cells for people who need it.”
The Toronto team uncovered the fountainhead cells — which account for only one in 3 million blood cells — by scanning for unique proteins on their surface known as markers.
By injecting cells with different markers into mice, which have a compatible system to humans, scientists could see which ones produced blood and which didn’t.
Through more than 20 years of such work, Dick and other scientists had narrowed the field of potential stem cells down to about 10,000 candidates, all of which possessed a common marker.
Through a process of elimination the search was now on for cells that possessed additional markers unique to the stem cell variety.
The new study has identified that signature marker, labelling it CD49f.
“Now, for the first time, we can basically sift through a haystack of a million straws and find that one needle that is the stem cell,” Dick says.
Following in the footprints of James Till and Ernest McCulloch, who discovered their existence at the same institute half a century ago, Dick’s finding is the latest in a subsequent series of groundbreaking stem cell work that originated in this city.
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Researchers discover a protein responsible for shaping the nervous system
TORONTO — A team of researchers led by The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), the University of Toronto (U of T) and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have discovered a protein that is responsible for shaping the nervous system. This research was made possible with the support of a $1.5-million NeuroScience Canada Brain Repair Program team grant that enabled scientists from across Canada to work together and fast track their research. This research is reported in the December 8, 2005 issue of
the journal Neuron.
“We discovered that p63 is the major death-promoting protein for nerve cells during fetal and post-natal development,” said Dr. David Kaplan, the paper’s senior author, senior scientist at SickKids, professor of
Molecular Genetics, Medical Genetics & Microbiology at U of T, Canada Research Chair in Cancer and Neuroscience, and co-team leader on the NeuroScience Canada Brain Repair Program grant with Dr. Freda Miller of SickKids. “Proteins such as p63 that regulate beneficial cell death processes during development may cause adverse affects later in life by making us more sensitive to injury and disease.”
At birth, the nervous system has twice the number of nerve cells than needed. The body disposes of the excess cells by eliminating those that go to the wrong place or form weak or improper connections. If this process does not happen, the nervous system cannot function properly. The expression of the p63 protein guides the nervous system in disposing of the ineffective nerve cells. The protein is from the p53
family of tumour suppressor proteins that is mutated in many human cancers.
While p63 is involved in determining which nerve cells die, the research team also suspects that it determines whether nerve cells die when injured or in neurological and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.
“The discovery of this new protein represents hope for thousands of people affected by neurological and neurodegenerative disorders, such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia, as well as spinal cord injury,” says the Honourable Michael H. Wilson, Chair of NeuroScience Canada, a national umbrella organization for neuroscience research, whose Brain Repair Program helped support this research. “Because this protein is responsible for the death of nervous systems cells, understanding how we could inhibit its functions could represent survival for many patients across Canada.”
Ten million Canadians of all ages will be affected by a disease, disorder or injury of the brain, spinal cord or nervous system. These conditions number more than 1,000. Fifty per cent of all Canadians — about 15 million people — have had a brain disorder impact their family. Based on Health Canada data, the economic burden of these disorders is conservatively estimated at 14 per cent of the total burden of disease, or $22.7 billion annually; however, when disability is included, the economic burden reaches 38 per cent or more, according to the World Health Organization. However, despite the magnitude of the problem, neuroscience research, with just $100 million total in operating grants in Canada annually, is still greatly under funded in this country.
To this end, future research for the research team involves testing whether p63 is the key protein that determines whether nerve cells die when injured or in neurodegenerative diseases, and will identify drugs that will prevent p63 from functioning that may be used to treat these conditions.
Other members of the research team include Dr. Freda Miller, Canada Research Chair in Developmental Neurobiology, Dr. W. Bradley Jacobs, Daniel Ho and Dr. Fanie Barnabe-Heider, all from SickKids, Dr. William Keyes and Dr. Alea Mills from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, and Dr. Jasvinder Atwal and Dr. Gregory Govani of Dr. Miller’s and Kaplan’s former group from McGill University.
This research was also supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, a McGill Major Studentship, a McGill Tomlinson fellowship, the Canada Research Chairs Program and SickKids Foundation.
Founded in 1988, NeuroScience Canada is Canada’s umbrella organization and voice for the neurosciences. Through partnering with the public, private and voluntary sectors, NeuroScience Canada connects the knowledge and resources available in this area to accelerate neuroscience research and funding, and maximize the output of Canada’s world-class scientists and researchers. The mission of NeuroScience Canada’s Brain Repair Program is to fast-track neuroscience research in order to develop treatments and therapies more quickly. Through the Brain Repair Program, NeuroScience Canada and its donors and partners have already invested $4.5 million to research teams conducting breakthrough work in the area of brain repair. The goal of the Brain Repair Program is to initially fund five teams, for a total investment of $8 million.
The Hospital for Sick Children, affiliated with the University of Toronto, is Canada's most research intensive hospital and the largest centre dedicated to improving children's health in the country. Its mission is to provide the best in family-centred, compassionate care, to lead in scientific and clinical advancement, and to prepare the next generation of leaders in child health. For more information, please visit www.sickkids.ca.
