Tag Archives: Hospital for Sick Children Toronto

Are we spending money on the right research? Government of Canada launches Advisory Panel

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it’s a little surprising that this is not being managed by the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA) but perhaps their process is not quite nimble enough (from an October 6, 2022 Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada news release),

Government of Canada launches Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System

Members to recommend enhancements to system to position Canadian researchers for success

October 6, 2022 – Ottawa, Ontario

Canada’s success is in large part due to our world-class researchers and their teams who are globally recognized for unleashing bold new ideas, driving technological breakthroughs and addressing complex societal challenges. The Government of Canada recognizes that for Canada to achieve its full potential, support for science and research must evolve as Canadians push beyond what is currently imaginable and continue to find Canadian-made solutions to the world’s toughest problems.

Today [October 6, 2022], the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, and the Honourable Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Health, launched the Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System. Benefiting from the insights of leaders in the science, research and innovation ecosystem, the panel will provide independent, expert policy advice on the structure, governance and management of the federal system supporting research and talent. This will ensure that Canadian researchers are positioned for even more success now and in the future.

The panel will focus on the relationships among the federal research granting agencies—the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research—and the relationship between these agencies and the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

As the COVID-19 pandemic and climate crisis have shown, addressing the world’s most pressing challenges requires greater collaboration within the Canadian research community, government and industry, as well as with the international community. A cohesive and agile research support system will ensure Canadian researchers can quickly and effectively respond to the questions of today and tomorrow. Optimizing Canada’s research support system will equip researchers to transcend disciplines and borders, seize new opportunities and be responsive to emerging needs and interests to improve Canadians’ health, well-being and prosperity.

Quotes

“Canada is known for world-class research thanks to the enormous capabilities of our researchers. Canadian researchers transform curiosity into bold new ideas that can significantly enhance Canadians’ lives and well-being. With this advisory panel, our government will ensure our support for their research is just as cutting-edge as Canada’s science and research community.”
– The Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry

“Our priority is to support Canada’s world-class scientific community so it can respond effectively to the challenges of today and the future. That’s why we are leveraging the expertise and perspectives of a newly formed advisory panel to maximize the impact of research and downstream innovation, which contributes significantly to Canadians’ well-being and prosperity.”
– The Honourable Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Health

Quick facts

The Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System has seven members, including the Chair. The members were selected by the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry and the Minister of Health. The panel will consult with experts and stakeholders to draw on their diverse experiences, expertise and opinions. 

Since 2016, the Government of Canada has committed more than $14 billion to support research and science across Canada. 

Here’s a list of advisory panel members I’ve assembled from the Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System: Member biographies webpage,

  • Frédéric Bouchard (Chair) is Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the Université de Montréal, where he has been a professor of philosophy of science since 2005.
  • Janet Rossant is a Senior Scientist Emeritus in the Developmental and Stem Cell Biology Program, the Hospital for Sick Children and a Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto’s Department of Molecular Genetics.
  • [Gilles Patry] is Professor Emeritus and President Emeritus at the University of Ottawa. Following a distinguished career as a consulting engineer, researcher and university administrator, Gilles Patry is now a consultant and board director [Royal Canadian Mint].
  • Yolande E. Chan joined McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management as Dean and James McGill Professor in 2021. Her research focuses on innovation, knowledge strategy, digital strategy, digital entrepreneurship, and business-IT alignment.
  • Laurel Schafer is a Professor at the Department of Chemistry at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on developing novel organometallic catalysts to carry out difficult transformations in small molecule organic chemistry.
  • Vianne Timmons is the President and Vice-Chancellor of Memorial University of Newfoundland since 2020. She is a nationally and internationally recognized researcher and advocate in the field of inclusive education.
  • Dr. Baljit Singh is a highly accomplished researcher, … . He began his role as Vice-President Research at the University of Saskatchewan in 2021, after serving as Dean of the University of Calgary Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (2016 – 2020), and as Associate Dean of Research at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan (2010 – 2016).

Nobody from the North. Nobody who’s worked there or lived there or researched there. It’s not the first time I’ve noticed a lack of representation for the North.

Canada’s golden triangle (Montréal, Toronto, Ottawa) is well represented and, as is often the case, there’s representation for other regions: one member from the Prairies, one member from the Maritimes or Atlantic provinces, and one member from the West.

The mandate indicates they could have five to eight members. With seven spots filled, they could include one more member, one from the North.

Even if they don’t add an eighth member, I’m not ready to abandon all hope for involvement from the North when there’s this, from the mandate,

Communications and deliverables

In pursuing its mandate, and to strengthen its advice, the panel may engage with experts and stakeholders to expand access [emphasis mine] to diverse experience, expertise and opinion, and enhance members’ understanding of the topics at hand.

To allow for frank and open discussion, internal panel deliberations among members will be closed.

The panel will deliver a final confidential report by December 2022 [emphasis mine] to the Ministers including recommendations and considerations regarding the modernization of the research support system. A summary of the panel’s observations on the state of the federal research support system may be made public once its deliberations have concluded. The Ministers may also choose to seek confidential advice and/or feedback from the panel on other issues related to the research system.

The panel may also be asked to deliver an interim confidential report to the Ministers by November 2022 [emphases mine], which will provide the panel’s preliminary observations up to that point.

it seems odd there’s no mention of the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy. It’s my understanding that the funding goes directly from the federal government to the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), which then distributes the funds. There are other unmentioned science funding agencies, e.g., the National Research Council of Canada and Genome Canada, which (as far as I know) also receive direct funding. It seems that the panel will not be involved in a comprehensive review of Canada’s research support ecosystem.

Plus, I wonder why everything is being kept ‘confidential’. According the government news release, the panel is tasked with finding ways of “optimizing Canada’s research support system.” Do they have security concerns or is this a temporary state of affairs while the government analysts examine the panel’s report?

Revising the view on genomes: mouse and human

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Researchers in Canada and the US have resolved a question about DNA and structural protein. From the Oct. 4, 2012 news release on EurekAlert,

Scientists in Canada and the United States have used three-dimensional imaging techniques to settle a long-standing debate about how DNA and structural proteins are packaged into chromatin fibres. The researchers, whose findings are published in EMBO [European Molecular Biology Organization] reports, reveal that the mouse genome consists of 10-nm chromatin fibres but did not find evidence for the wider 30-nm fibres that were previously thought to be important components of the DNA architecture.

Scientists were trying to understand how DNA can be packed into a cell,

“DNA is an exceptionally long molecule that can reach several metres in length. This means it needs to be packaged into a highly compact state to fit within the limited space of the cell nucleus,” said David Bazett-Jones, Senior Scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, and Professor at the University of Toronto, Canada. “For the past few decades, scientists have favoured structural models for chromatin organization where DNA is first wrapped around proteins in nucleosomes. In one possible model, the strand of repeating nucleosomes is wrapped further into a higher-order thick 30-nm fibre. In a second model, the 30-nm fibre is not required to compact the DNA. Differences between these models have implications for the way the cell regulates the transcription of genes.”

Scientists offer reasons for why they concluded Previous studies have suggested for a 30-nm fibre model in earlier studies,

The researchers offer several reasons for the observation of wider fibres in earlier studies. In some cases, the conditions outside of the cell, including those used in earlier studies where chromatin was extracted from the cell, may have given rise to structural artifacts. For some of the earlier spectroscopic studies, it may even be a question of poor resolution of existing 10-nm fibres.

Here’s what the scientists found,

“Our results revealed that the 30-nm chromatin fibre model is not consistent with the structure we found in our three-dimensional spectroscopic images,” said Bazett-Jones. “It was previously thought that the transition between thinner and thicker fibres represented a change from an active to repressed state of chromatin. However, our inability to detect 30-nm fibres in the mouse genome leads us to conclude that the transcriptional machinery has widespread access to the DNA packaged into chromatin fibres.”

The results are consistent with recent studies of the human genome which suggest that approximately 80% of the genome contains elements that are linked to biological function. Access to enhancers, promoters and other regulatory sequences on such a wide region of the genome means that all of these sites must be accessible. The 10-nm model of chromatin fibres provides sufficient access to DNA to allow potential target sites to be reached. The 30-nm model would not accommodate such widespread access.

You can read more about the research both in the EurekAlert news release or in the Oct. 5, 2012 news itemon Azonano. Or, you can read the article, Open and closed domains in the mouse genome are configured as 10-nm chromatin fibres, if you can get behind the paywall.