Member Press Release 

UBC Gains $26M in Federal Funds for Infrastructure

November 27, 2006

Media Release | Nov. 27, 2006 - Researchers at the University of British Columbia and its clinical academic campuses have earned more than $26.5 million to fund facilities and equipment for six projects, from the federal Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI).

CFI today announced a Canada-wide investment of $422.3 million to support 86 projects at 35 Canadian universities, colleges, hospitals and not-for-profit research institutions.

"Our researchers are to be congratulated for their determination to advance new knowledge by acquiring sophisticated technologies and equipment," says John Hepburn, UBC Vice-president, Research. "Establishing this level of research infrastructure also goes a long way toward attracting and retaining the best investigators."

Funded projects include:

The Centre for Drug Research and Development, funded for $8 million, will help commercialize research by maturing academic discoveries into high-value candidate drugs that will attract investors. By developing, formulating and testing therapeutics and diagnostics, the centre, which will serve all B.C. research universities and associated institutions, will bridge the "commercialization gap" or lag between identifying new therapeutics and getting them to market.

A Translational Research Facility at the Brain Research Centre at UBC Hospital, a part of Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, received $6.8 million. Technology at the facility will be used to characterize the molecular mechanisms underlying brain disease and to develop new diagnostics and therapeutics for patients.

A Quantum Materials Spectroscopy Centre was funded for more than $6.4 million. The centre will be located at the Canadian Light Source -- a source of brilliant light beams that allows scientists to view the microstructure of materials -- at the University of Saskatchewan. The new funding will help UBC and other researchers probe low energy electronic properties of solids and develop new electronic technologies.

A Centre for Understanding and Preventing Infection in Children (CUPIC) received $3.2 million. UBC researchers will focus on innate immunity in children and new information will help diagnose and treat children with severe infection and contribute to development of preventive strategies. The centre will be located in a new Translational Research Building, funded by B.C. Children's Hospital Foundation and the Provincial Health Services Authority, at the Child and Family Research Institute on the campus of the Children's and Women's Health Centre of B.C.

A Centre for Microscopy of Intermolecular and Cellular Dynamics has been funded for $1.6 million. The UBC centre will provide high-resolution, three-dimensional, structural information about cells and molecules. Sophisticated microscopes, tomography, and imaging systems will help researchers analyze dynamic processes in living cells and support discoveries in biotechnology, health and the environment.

A Tunable UV and Soft x-ray Laser Source for Coherent High-resolution Spectroscopy has received almost $375,000. The UBC facility will be used by researchers in medicine, biology, physics, and chemistry. The small-scale laser will serve as a tabletop source -- competitive with beam lines at synchrotrons -- and will allow scientists to rapidly develop and test new spectroscopy techniques.

The CFI support represents 40 per cent of required funding. UBC researchers will apply to the provincial government for a matching 40 per cent and remaining support will come from private sources and industry.

CFI is an independent corporation created by the Government of Canada to fund research infrastructure to strengthen the capacity of Canadian universities, colleges, research hospitals, and on-profit research institutions to carry out research and technology development that benefits Canadians.

UBC researchers earned more than $65 million from CFI for 142 projects and attracted $485.6 million in overall research funding in 2005/06.

CDRD will build a shared and dedicated facility to advance early state health-related discoveries through core activities of drug discovery, design and synthesis, screening, testing, and drug formulation and evaluation. The facility will also provide a new research and training model to build and broaden the pool of highly qualified personnel in drug discovery and development. CDRD is a non-profit society that enables B.C. researchers to focus and amplify their drug discovery and development efforts and commercialize technology. For more information on CDRD visit www.cdrd.ca.

Researcher: Microbiology and Immunology Prof. Robert Hancock, Canada Research Chair in Pathogenomics and Antimicrobials

The Translational Research Facility will directly advance lab research towards improved therapeutics for patients, thereby translating our research at the bench-side into care for patients at the bedside. Specifically, the facility will enhance and accelerate research and development to improve our understanding of brain diseases; develop strategies to prevent brain diseases; clinically develop and evaluate new therapies to treat these diseases; and create economic wealth by generating spin-off companies. The centre is a partnership of UBC and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, the research body of the health authority.

Researcher: Prof. Max Cynader Canada Research Chair in Brain Development and Director, Brain Research Centre

To achieve new electronic functionalities for the next generation of material-based devices, the QMSC will be established at the Canadian Light Source for the design and exploration of novel complex materials. This national centre includes spin- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy beamlines for probing the electronic structure, a dedicated materials preparation facility, and integrated theoretical support. The QMSC will advance Canada's role in furthering the quantum theory of solids and developing technological advances in fields such as electronics, telecommunications, computer science, and biomedicine.

Researcher: Asst. Prof. Andrea Damascelli, Physics and Astronomy Dept.

Centre for Understanding and Preventing Infection in Children (CUPIC) CUPIC will be the only centre in Canada, and possibly the world, with an integrated focus on innate immunity and infectious disease in children. Science at CUPIC will be translated into clinical interventions and, in turn, clinical observations will inform scientific investigation. Infrastructure includes labs and a tissue and microbe bank to give researchers in Canada and internationally access to human pathogens for study. CUPIC will serve as an incubator for technology development, knowledge translation and health promotion for children in Canada and the world.

Researcher: Dr. David Speert, Division Head and Prof. of Pediatrics

This new funding will allow biomedical researchers at UBC to view living cells at an unprecedented level of detail. The new centre, to be based in UBC's Bio-Imaging Facility, will comprise three major high-end instruments: a spectral imaging confocal laser scanning microscope to analyze molecular interactions; a live cell real time confocal imaging system to analyze dynamic events in living cells; and a transmission electron microscope equipped for tomography that creates virtual 3-D models of cell structures.

Researcher: Botany Prof. Geoffrey Wasteneys, Canada Research Chair in Plant, Cell Biology, Academic Director of the UBC Bio-Imaging Facility

This project involves a small-scale, low-cost, high-flux source capable of producing tunable coherent photons that span wavelengths from the extreme ultraviolet into the soft x-ray region, with high resolution. Housed at UBC's Advanced Materials and Process Engineering Laboratory, this new laser-based system will be an ideal tool for the most advanced photoelectron spectroscopy experiments, metrology of nanoparticles and other techniques such as holography, microscopy and nanolithography. Commercial applications range from design of specific and targeted drug delivery methods to development of next generation integrated electronic circuits.

Researcher: Asst. Prof. David Jones, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy

Contact

Hilary Thomson
UBC Public Affairs
Tel: 604.822.2644
Cell: 604.209.3048
E-mail: hilary.thomson@ubc.ca