Health Committee on March 5th, 2013

[Dr. Aled Edwards]

I think we should create a pool of funds to fund basic science with industry partnerships and have the money there to attract the billions that pharma wants to spend in academia. They are looking around the world. They want to spend in Harvard, but it's complicated there. In Canada, if we say, “Here are our rules and this is how we do it”, I'm confident we can increase our research in the public, by government, first, with the cash, and then say “industry come”. I think they are ready to do it in Genome Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you very much.

Those were very good questions, by the way. Thank you.

We'll now go to Mr. Wilks.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here.

Mr. Meulien, you said at one of your talks that we are all very different. That would probably explain why my mom was always saying that about me and why I'm an only child.

Mr. Edwards, I enjoyed what you had to say. You talked in my language. I am retired from the RCMP, so I look at everything as good guys and bad guys, or good girls and bad girls.

Let's look at it in that perspective. When I think about the genes, and we have 20,000 of them, I suspect there are some good genes and some bad genes. Am I right, or do we even know?

[Dr. Aled Edwards]

I would say there are some that, when they are changed, cause disease. They could be bad when they're different. However, with most of them, we don't know what they do.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

We don't know what they do, but we do know that some of them would probably be high profile when they're identified, should they ever be identified.

[Dr. Aled Edwards]

Exactly.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

I'm going to ask the question that my colleague Mr. Lauzon asked, and that was that I don't understand why they don't go to Dr. Edwards and say, “You are going to explore gene 16386. Here's your money and don't vary off that gene.”

Do we have enough opportunities in Canada to even vary out of the...you say we're in that cluster of 200 or 300 right now. Do we even have the ability to move beyond that?

[Dr. Aled Edwards]

We have people as smart as any on the planet. We don't have the resources to do it all, but what we can do is effect a culture change in how medicines are discovered. The world will follow, but I want to be first, because the first movers always get the biggest economic rewards and the biggest scientific rewards.

It's about changing the culture of how medicines are discovered. Industry does it and we get a lot of money, and academia does its blue-sky stuff. But when that happened, industry folks were on the same thing and folks in academia were on the same thing, and no medicines are being discovered. We can change the culture. We're not going to discover it all ourselves, obviously.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

I want to refer, Mr. Meulien, to your 2012-17 strategic plan from Genome. There was a section in there on innovation that included the argument that innovation is not always science-based and that research and innovation are distinct enterprises. The example used was that of Apple Corporation, which is recognized as one of the most innovative companies in the United States, despite being ranked 82nd in terms of research and development spending.

Why is it important for Genome Canada to emphasize the difference between research and innovation?

[Dr. Pierre Meulien]

That's a great question.

Research is all to do with discovering new things, with creating new knowledge. Innovation implies some application. Innovation is something that a lot has been written about in Canadian terms, and we're missing some stuff in the innovation piece, the innovation continuum. We have this great research that gets a bit stuck in our academic institutions, and we don't have enough tools to pull that out into use.

That's what we're trying to do in our own little field of genomics. We're trying to do it not only in human health, but in agriculture and agrifood, in fish and fisheries, and in forestry. We're working with the users of that technology in each of those areas to try to facilitate true innovation. Innovation implies application.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

In your view, how are the two related?

[Dr. Pierre Meulien]

Well, you can't have innovation without having some new research or something in the pipeline, right? You can apply innovation to knowledge that is existing, of course, but you can also apply it to knowledge that's very new. That's the kind of perfect storm thing: you have a seamless pipeline between new discoveries coming out of academia and we can turn those into use very quickly, using whatever model, the open innovation model or other models.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you very much.

This has been an astounding committee meeting. We've sure learned a lot. Thank you.

Now we will go to Dr. Carrie.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses. I found today very interesting.

Dr. Meulien, you've said that in Canada we have brilliant research and that innovation implies application. We've had a number of different witnesses here basically telling us that in Canada we're the Boy Scouts of the world in a lot of ways. We do some really good primary research, but it's not translating into commercialization here.

I do have concerns if we put in a lot of government money but then don't get the benefits. I was wondering if you could explain for the committee a little bit about how the government has been working with Genome with some partnerships. Can you explain if that is translating into jobs for Canadians?

[Dr. Pierre Meulien]

Sure. There are a few things that we should mention here.

One of them is that we've already spun out or enhanced 24 young companies from Genome Canada research. These are companies that have benefited from funding early in their lives. It usually started off as academic funding. They then have created new companies. There are 24 of those that have happened. Some of them are now making revenue and hiring highly skilled Canadians. That's just one aspect of it.

The other thing is that we're working with the Government of Canada to create new programs that really facilitate partnerships between academia and industry. We're about to launch one that's called the genomic applications partnership program, which will build new partnerships between academia and the users of the technology, wherever they are.

If they're tree-breeders, or they're in the aquaculture industry, or they're farmers growing crops, or if they're in pharmaceutical or medical devices companies, we want to work with them, and we're building that program together.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

I was wondering if we could continue on this stream of questioning, helping to attract private partners. We've also heard when private partners invest in something, they usually vet it and they want to have a higher probability of success.

Could you give us suggestions around the table of how you think the government could encourage more of this happening? I know in your particular line of research it seems to be happening a little more than in others. How could we see that more of this happens?

[Dr. Pierre Meulien]

I think it's really to do with program design and targeting specific areas. Also, I know the government is very interested in putting more money into venture capital. That's very important. But Canada is a little too much of a risk-averse country. It's a cultural thing. I think we need to take more risk up front with that money. So whether that goes into BDC or other vehicles of venture funding, it needs to be more risky than it has been.

Second, for the genomic applications partnership program, we're going to be working very closely with IRAP, which has a fantastic lens to the industry side that we're certainly not going to recreate. Working with them will build a lot of value. It's not so much to do with structural changes; it's people on the ground, devising new programs and getting people excited about working together across the academia-industry divide. This will make a big difference.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

I know there are a few good examples of different incubators where we are trying to get academia, government, and industry together. You mentioned bringing academia into the clinical setting. As we look towards getting this research into personalized medicine at the clinical setting, how would this be better for the health consumer? Do you have any idea of how much money we'd actually save the system? You'd be personalizing treatments for individuals and you wouldn't have all of these by-guess-and-by-golly treatments that sometimes end up making the patient worse.

[Dr. Pierre Meulien]

I think those are great examples. The examples of adverse drug reactions are key. Here's a phenomenon—90% of it will be genetic. We should have our genotypes. We should have our genomes going to the pharmacy and the pharmacists telling us we shouldn't have this drug because we have this gene that will turn it into something nasty. As I said in my statement, adverse drug reactions cost the Canadian health system $7 billion per year. We know that we can have an impact on that. That's one kind of cost saving.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you very much.

Dr. Fry.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I want to follow up on what Dr. Carrie was saying. I think the concept of taking basic research and commercializing it was tried, actually. I checked that with one of the past Industry deputy ministers. We had done that. It was a part of Technology Partnerships Canada, where basic biomedical research was linked with the private sector. It was run by an arm's-length body, and there was a matching of funds. It did work. It was a 10-year project. It was canceled in 2007, which is unfortunate, because it was providing enormous amounts of venture capital. All the private sector wanted to be involved, all the industry wanted to be involved in getting this to the market. That is a model that was proven to be successful over 10 years and can be used again.

I want to go to something very different. Everyone talks about “little Canada” and how we can play a major role. Canada has a distinct advantage in this kind of research in that we are the only country in the world with such a diverse population that has all the information about patients in one insuring body, which is the provincial public administrator. In the United States, you cannot translate that from private industry, because of privacy laws. Here we have a unique ability to do translational research. We should be seizing that, running with it, because it gives us an advantage, not just in whether we're bright or not bright, but because of our population base and our national public health care system.

[Dr. Aled Edwards]

We should be realistic, though. Medco, a large insurer in the United States, looks after a quantity of people as large as the population of Canada. You hear similar arguments from the U.K. which has a single payer system. Sweden has a system.

So you're right, but it's not head and shoulders above the rest of the world, and we need to be competitive in that area and a whole bunch of other areas if we're going to attract the private sector investment into this area of research. So we're going to be careful.

[Dr. Pierre Meulien]

I'm more optimistic than he is.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Yes, so am I actually.

[Dr. Aled Edwards]

On the “optimist-ometer”, I'm 11 out of 10. You can't be more optimistic.