Limited health care resources require organizations to have mechanisms for making funding decisions. Decision makers, however, may not be familiar with tools to assist in maximizing resources. Decision makers also face organizational constraints and other challenges that counter the use of priority setting tools. This award supports the development of a team that will bring together two leading-edge, BC-based research programs on priority setting and resource allocation in health care, while also tapping into other related research areas. The team’s overall aim is to develop a plan that will establish BC as the international lead on research in health care priority setting. The team will structure activities around a series of interactive decision maker-researcher forums addressing key areas for development in health care priority setting.
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Genomics Data Mining for Personalized Medicine Group
Personalized medicine is an approach to health care that involves using information about a person's genetic background to design strategies for the detection, treatment and prevention of diseases. But genetic variations, which can cause people to respond in different ways to medication, represent a barrier to personalized medicine. Individual genes or many genes interacting with each other can determine response to medication. Combing through this complicated genetic map is expensive and time-consuming. Data mining, the process of extracting knowledge from a large collection of data, is very effective at extracting the combination of genes that is collectively responsible for a reaction to a certain medicine and treatment. This award supports the emergence of a team that will develop relevant data mining and statistical programs that will help make personalized medicine a reality in BC.
BC Clinical Genomics Network
This platform is designed to link clinicians and clinician scientists with genomics researchers to advance their knowledge and accelerate the pace with which new discoveries about the genetic basis of health and disease reach and get applied at the bedside. It proposes a thorough and coordinated process to make the most up-to-date findings from genotyping, genomic sequencing, bioinformatics, genetic epidemiology and family studies available to assist clinicians and clinician research teams in the diagnosis, care and support of people with complex genetic disorders. This will involve the development of a province-wide network that coordinates clinical investigators, leading-edge genomic resources and scientists with expertise in complementary aspects of translational medicine.
Population Data BC – Phase I
This platform aims to improve the ability of researchers and the health system to access a range of data sources for the purposes of tracing and evaluating the effectiveness of strategies to treat disease and promote health at the community level. The proposal outlined a plan for providing coordinated and effective access to population health databases (including training), along with the development of integrated data standards and data management processes across BC. This includes support for technologies and methodologies that apply to the analysis of spatial (geographic) and non-spatial datasets. Successful implementation of the platform would position BC as a world leader in the use and protection of health data, and for the production of analyses to support public policy development.
BC Proteomics Network – Phase I
This platform will unify BC’s proteomics resources (human and technological) to increase British Columbia’s capacity to compete for funding in this emerging field of high technology science. Building on genomics research advances and the human genome project, this science focuses on proteins – chemical messengers produced by genes that act alone or in sequence to regulate all aspects of growth and function at the level of our cells. As such, these proteins fundamentally influence how we grow and function in healthy states and when disease or injury compromises our health. Proteomics researchers study how proteins are produced, how they communicate and interact to fulfill their functions and how their function is influenced by genetic or environmental factors – new knowledge that is key to understanding disease process and for the development of new drugs and other therapeutic interventions.
BC BioLibrary
This platform provides the governance and operations strategy to support the creation of the BC BioLibrary to ensure that researchers across the province have access to the highest quality biological specimens to support studies to expand our understanding of health, as well as the origins, course and treatment of disease. It brings together a network of advocates, researchers, clinicians, ethicists and information technology professionals whose goal is to improve access to biological specimens, such as tumour samples, within a framework that supports appropriate standards of quality, security, ethics and privacy in relation to the collection, storage and use of these specimens. The goal is to ensure that high quality, standardized biological materials are available to support the full range of research applications, including clinical trials, drug discovery, biomedical imaging technologies, proteomics, genomics, metabolomics and population-based outcome studies.
Centre for Drug Research and Development
Advances in the high through-put genome sequencing, informatics and proteomics technologies have increased the speed with which researchers are identifying new proteins and compounds that hold promise for the development of new drugs for the treatment of cancer, diabetes, infectious diseases and other acute and chronic health problems. This drug development and commercialization platform provides a structure and process for moving these early stage discoveries out of the laboratory and into commercial development, contributing to economic development and helping to bring much needed pharmaceuticals products into use faster.
OvCaRe
BC’s unique provincial cancer care system – with coordinated diagnosis, treatment and outcome tracking – has made it possible for our province to be a leader in the evolution of improved treatments for a number of different cancers. However, there have been no significant breakthroughs in ovarian cancer treatment for more than a decade. OvCaRe was created by a group of clinicians and scientists with the explicit goal of improving ovarian cancer outcomes by freely sharing data and promoting collaborations within the group and with outside researchers interested in ovarian cancer. OvCaRe has three major goals: to develop diagnostic tests for the most promising tumour markers and offer these tests province wide; to identify novel therapies in laboratories and translate these to the clinic; and to explore markers, diagnostics and potential therapies for ovarian cancers that are unresponsive to current therapies.
Model Systems and Cancer Therapeutics
Mutations that cause genome instability are known to contribute to the development of cancer. Most solid malignant tumours exhibit chromosome instability (mis-segregation of chromosomes during cell division), resulting in daughter cells that contain an incorrect number of chromosomes. A better understanding of the basis for this type of genome instability holds promise for identifying new targets for cancer-killing drugs.
Timely Access to End-of-life Care for Patients with Life-threatening Illness
The goal of this study is to ensure patients with cancer and other fatal illnesses receive the right kind of end-of-life care at the right time and in the right place. For this to be possible, it is essential to improve the ability of clinicians to accurately assess how long these patients will live because their expected length of survival is a key factor in determining the types of care they will receive. In a research project involving one palliative care program in BC and two in Alberta, this team is assessing the extent to which health data that is collected routinely during initial and follow-up assessments can improve the accuracy of survival estimates.
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