Ontario Looks To The U.S. And Asia For Collaborative Opportunities

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By Shawn Lawrence

It was one year ago at BIO 2008 in San Diego, that Ontario launched a partnership with California’s Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease in San Francisco to combine stem cell research efforts in revolutionizing the treatment of major illnesses, including heart disease, Parkinson’s disease and cancer.This was followed with news of an Ontario partnership with Kyoto University based on Dr. Shinya Yamanaka’s pioneering method of reprogramming skin cells two years ago.

Yamanaka’s decision to work with Ontario was not surprising given the long history and expertise of the Ontario stem cell community since the initial discovery of the first stem cell in 1961 by Ontarians James Till and Ernest McCulloch, and a provincial government body, the Ministry of Research and Innovation, which highly supports stem cell research. Ontario has maintained a leadership role in stem cells-both for embryonic and adult stem cells, for over the last four decades.

Breakthroughs since then have cemented Ontario’s continued prowess in the field and have lead to further discussions on collaboration with Japan and now Korea.

On the home front, Ontario has seen expansion of its facilities and technologies, an infusion of government support that is allowing Ontario to recruit to the province some of the best stem cell researchers in the world.

Recent U.S. recruits to the province include Dr. Gordon Keller, Dr. Ben Neel, Dr. John Dick and Dr. John Hassell.

The world’s attention again turned to Ontario as news broke of a breakthrough by Mt. Sinai’s Andras Nagy in safely turning skin cells into stem cells. Nagy and his team of researchers had found a new, safer way to create stem cells from the most ready and accessible of sources, our own skin cells. These findings were published in the internationally respected science journal, Nature. The discovery made by Dr. Nagy and his team represents an enormous contribution to the future of health science.

“Everyone who visits Toronto or Ontario from outside says ‘you guys are really poised to become leaders in this area,” notes Dr. Janet Rossant, chief of Research at The Hospital for Sick Children, and one of the world’s leading developmental biologists.

“We have a deep intellectual richness in understanding stem cells,” adds Mick Bhatia, Scientific Director of the Cancer and Stem Cell Biology Research Institute at McMaster University in Hamilton.

In October 2008, Ontario undertook a scientific delegation to BIO Japan 2008 at which time the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation sponsored a sold out seminar of over 300 people to introduce the Ontario-Japan partnership.

Ontario and Japanese stem cell researchers came together in a bid to more quickly translate scientific discoveries from the lab into treatments for people with such diseases as autism and cystic fibrosis. A Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the University of Toronto and Dr. Yamanaka’s Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA) that has lead to the sharing patient samples, technologies and protocols.

Ontario researchers like Tony Pawson, senior scientist, Mount Sinai Hospital are also being honoured by the Japanese.

Pawson, a British born Canadian microbiologist whose research has revolutionized the understanding of how cells in a body communicate and control another’s behavior through chemical signals, was recently announced as the winner of the Kyoto Award. His work has also led to the development of a new generation of drugs that stop the growth of diseases like cancer.

Likewise, Dr. Yamanaka was recognized here in Canada for his demonstration that the key transcription factors which specify pluripotency may become reprogrammed somatic cells to pluripotent stem cells, winning a prestigious Gairdner Award.

In terms of further opportunities in Asia, stem cell collaborations have created a very real bond between Ontario and Kyoto that have spilled over into other scientific disciplines and jurisdictions in Asia. Ontario is focused on expanding its biotech collaborations with other Asian countries like Korea where over the last two years representatives have attended the BIO Korea Conference and are forging partnerships like the one shared between the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario and the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology (KRIBB).

The massive project “Barcode of Life Initiative” aspires to catalogue all living species on earth, both plant and animal. Based on the research of Dr. Paul Rebert, his research team is developing technology they hope will allow for virtually instant DNA identification by simply scanning a specimen with a hand held device.

In the face of President Obama’s $10B commitment to scientific spending and the reinstatement of funding for stem cell research in the U.S., Ontario remains vigilant in ensuring Ontario’s top stem cell researchers remain in Ontario. And closer to home, Ontario stands to benefit from this change of policy south of the border that could lead to further collaborations and partnerships. Rather than competing, the two sides are continuing to work together to build other initiatives like the cancer stem cell consortium that Premier Dalton McGuinty and California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced two years ago and the MOU that was signed between the Gladstone Institute and the University of Toronto and the Hospital for Sick Children in 2008. In fact, this commitment of dollars could give Canadian researchers further access to US federal research funding.

The key to Ontario’s continued success comes from its ability to work with other countries, and as the place to come if you want to be part of world-class stem cell research community, there will be no shortage of countries to work with.