Guy Paquin, La Presse
(Translation) The province of Quebec has launched itself into the field of personalized medicine. A new major project will be bringing together pharmaceutical companies (Sanofi-Aventis, Pfizer, Merck), universities, the ministries of Health and Economic Development as well as the Fonds de Recherche en Santé du Québec (FRSQ).
The project co-presidents are Howard Bergman, general manager of the FRSQ, and Michelle Savoie, general manager of Montréal InVivo, the life sciences cluster of the greater Montreal area. This project is a public-private partnership endowed with $40 million over the next 4 years, half of which is from the private sector and the other half from the public sector.
In parallel with this initiative, Genome Canada and Genome Quebec will be initiating another project by the end of this month, wherein Genome Canada will be launching a competition to fund academic projects in personalized medicine. There is $80 million dollars in the pool, half from the private sector and the other half from the public sector. And Genome Quebec wants researchers from Quebec to get their share of the scholarship.