Enabling world class discovery science, translational and health outcomes research

Source: https://cumming.ucalgary.ca/about/cumming-school-medicine/our-priorities/enabling-world-class-discovery-science-translational-and-health-outcomes-research Parent: https://cumming.ucalgary.ca/

We promote discovery science and translational research to enable precision medicine and improve health outcomes for all.

Objectives

1. Grow research revenue by 50 per cent
2. Double the growth of new CSM-led companies and support social innovation
3. Increase transdisciplinary research

Principles

• Create, disseminate and translate knowledge in precision medicine
• Build and integrate research platforms for discovery and translation
• Improve data access, data integration, information and analytics
• Promote transdisciplinary scholarship
• Enhance innovative postdoctoral scholar and graduate training
• Grow the societal impact of research to benefit communities
• Consolidate imaging and data platforms across the CSM
• Increase the number and improve alignment of Chairs/Professorships to the strategic plan

Strategies

1.      Invest in investigator-led research platforms and programs, linked to innovation in postdoctoral and graduate training

• Evaluate opportunities to leverage new seed grants
• Prioritize new platforms based on impact on growth of investigator-led research programs

2.     Create incentives and infrastructure to support translational and transdisciplinary research activities

• Expand multidisciplinary collaboration, such as with the Faculty of Science, on medicinal chemistry approaches (new chemical entities, repurposing and antisense directed strategies)
• Enabling clinical trials with repurposed chemical entities, new chemical entities, new chemical compounds, novel peptide strategies, immunotherapies, antibodies and mRNA/DNA based technologies
• Collaborate with UCalgary on transdisciplinary scholarship initiative

3.     Develop novel approaches to precision therapeutics

• Accelerate progress in living medicine approaches (biologics and cell-based therapies)
• Modify human cells and microbes to harness biologic symptoms within the patient to treat diseases (ex. immune cell therapies, stem cell therapy, microbial therapeutics and in vivo gene editing)
• Leverage existing infrastructure from the International Microbiome Centre, the Centre for Cancer Immunotherapy, and key departments in UCalgary (ex. Biomedical Engineering and Biological Sciences)
• Expand research into advanced technologies, such as therapeutics in devices or robotics

4.     Develop and implement novel diagnostic strategies

• Advance integration of genetic, proteomic, biochemical understanding in pursuit of new clinical therapies
• Protein and biochemical diagnostics offer additional opportunity for important insights beyond DNA/RNA
• Patient data-based diagnostics and clinical trajectory analysis (complex data-imaging, physiological, behavioural, psychosocial, social determinants data)
• Complex data such as imaging, physiological, behavioural, psychosocial and social determinant data present incredible opportunities for understanding and diagnosing disease
• Multiscale, multidimensional data analysis and integration (bioinformatics)

5.     Design, implement and facilitate interventional investigator-initiated clinical trials

• Support interventional clinical trials with various therapeutic strategies
• Building on existing Clinical Research Unit expertise, we will develop a repository of expertise for regulatory, statistics and therapeutic design
• Develop more efficient ways of conducting clinical trials

6.     Develop platforms and funding programs to facilitate research innovation and scholarship

• Expand support of faculty members pursuing startup companies and social innovation
• Include academic reporting on entrepreneurship in university processes
• Investigate a CSM ‘equity stake’ in startup companies