Health Committee on Dec. 4th, 2012

[Dr. Warren Chan]

That's a very good question.

I believe in people. The CEO I am with is amazing. He's a salesperson. He's aggressive. He knows how to build structure. We actually built this company without any financial support, so he hasn't had a paycheque in three years. He's living to try to build the company. We have been using different types of grants to be able to translate. Right now, the company is three to four people. It's not so big, but the fact is, we have positive revenue after two years. With every dollar we are making, we are buying more equipment. Instead of going for venture capitalist money, we're investing every dollar back into building infrastructure. We did not go for venture money because we don't want someone to control what we're doing. We are competitive right now because our materials are much better than what is available through other companies, and they are much better characterized.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

One other quick question--

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

I'm sorry, you're out of time. My apologies.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

It was around intellectual property.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you.

We will now go to Mr. Kellway.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thanks, Madam Chair.

I agree with Mr. Lobb that it's all very intimidating. I think I took grade 12 chemistry when we had grade 13 in Ontario, so it wasn't even that high a level.

During the course of our study, we've heard, Dr. Chan, about this frustration with the commercialization of research in Canada. I have to confess it's not clear to me how this stuff should progress from basic research to, I presume, health care delivery for Canadians with illnesses.

To both of you, could you take a few moments to spell out where basic research should end, and what the role is? There has been reference to industrial research. Is there a way to define or describe it? How does that move into actually delivering this technology into the health care system?

[Dr. Normand Voyer]

The reason I went into academia was that I didn't want to have an industry. I didn't want to work in industry. I wanted to be free to do whatever research I wanted. I found out that this was not actually possible, but I was young and restless.

But I really admire scientists who create their own start-up companies. I think the role of academic researchers is to evolve, have new ideas, and develop and train the brightest minds to work in those start-up companies. For me, the best tech transfer I can do is to train good grad students who will work at Dr. Chan's company.

I think the best thing we academics could do right now is discover something with great potential. We create intellectual property. We protect it. We should have a task force to license those technologies, those patents, to companies. As to what I think is lacking in Quebec, this is basically it. I think that we need to have more people who will help and some money that will be diverted to universities for people who will be helping scientists write patents. Of course, you need to make money out of those patents. It's one thing to get a patent, and it's another thing to get money out of it.

Dr. Chan probably has some IP in his research, and the only reason he's making money on it is that he started his own company. Do the fundamental research, create intellectual properties, transfer it to local industries, and train the brightest minds to be able to work in these companies.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

What I may be missing is industry's role in this process, from a health care perspective.

[Dr. Warren Chan]

If there is an industry in an emergent technology, they're the perfect people to translate what's being developed. The challenge we're facing at this point is that industry is not there. I think the real question is: how do you create these industries in Canada? That's a billion-dollar question, and almost every country is asking it. In Korea, the way they've done it is that Samsung just took over. They bought hospitals. They know it's important to go into health care. Because Samsung is a global player, they've made their own impetus. They decided this was what they were going to go after.

In the emerging technologies in Canada, we don't have a full industry. How do we create the necessary energy? You have two options. One is the lottery approach, which is to start a bunch of companies and hope one or two are successful. The other is to take a targeted approach, focusing on a couple of areas and hoping they will come through in a few years if you give them support.

This is a big question that everyone is asking. I want to explain a little bit about how I came to be doing what I'm doing. When I was a grad student, the quantum dots you saw, those vials, that's what I developed in graduate school. I wanted to use those things in biology. Everybody used them in electronics. I read a 1977 paper from a Russian scientist. My adviser said we could use the quantum dot for biology, so we patented it. We sold it to a company, the Quantum Dot Corporation, but after four or five years, it never translated.

As a scientist, you are emotionally involved with your technology, because you are the one who developed it. It frustrated me because it wasn't translating and I couldn't understand why. I learned later on that there was a lot of infighting and different focuses, so that drives me to have a little bit more control of how to do translation. But I'm not sure if there are a lot of sciences that have that particular aim. It's just because I want to see things go forward.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

I don't know how comfortable you are at talking—

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

I'm so sorry, Mr. Kellway.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

I was watching you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

I know that, but I wasn't watching you. As much as I'd love to, Mr. Kellway, I just missed that minute.

We'll go to Mr. Lizon. Thank you.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair. It's too bad the other presenters couldn't be here.

Thank you, gentlemen.

I'm at a bigger disadvantage than Mr. Kellway because I graduated much earlier from university.

[Dr. Normand Voyer]

Come on, nobody has to apologize for science here.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

I'm trying to digest what I heard; they were very interesting presentations.

The first question I have is this, and it's too bad the other presenter is not here. How does that different work come together, or does it? Does anybody work on getting the results from your field of genetics and putting it together? It looks to me like the work is being done in completely separate channels; there is no interconnection there.

[Dr. Normand Voyer]

That's totally untrue. Nanotechnology had the greatest impact on genomic research, because that's how nanotechnology has been able to provide nanochips and that's how you can now sequence all the genes for a thousand dollars. It used to be a billion dollars for a gene. Nanotechnology has already impacted genomics research, so intrinsically, fields work together. Discoveries in nanotechnology have an impact in different fields, but when we describe it—and now it's just regular business—people doing genomics just take everything for granted and they now want to use this to translate into personal medicine. But nanotechnology has impacted genomics research.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

How does it work on the international level, because we have thousands of scientists working in different countries? Is there an exchange of information? Or are we all trying to reinvent the same wheel?

[Dr. Warren Chan]

I collaborate with people outside Canada. The great thing nowadays, with Skype and FaceTime, is we have regular meetings to discuss projects and we actually apply for grants together. The U.S. allows people from outside the U.S. to apply for money. When we do joint grants, if we get something, then they can siphon off some for me to do research up here in Canada.

Research right now is global, scientists are starting to be global. There are a lot of scientists who have a laboratory in Saudi Arabia and then have a laboratory in the U.S.; this is the trend. In Saudi Arabia, it's the same for the way they're doing it. They're just dumping money to people and forcing people to move part time, but you don't leave your job. Science is really international. When we get results, we share with our collaborators in the U.S., or in China, or somewhere in Europe. It's not a silo. In the old days, I think it was a silo area. You had countries competing with each other, but nowadays everybody is working together, trying to figure out a way, from a health perspective, to try to improve health care. This is really at the end of the day what scientists are trying to do.

[Dr. Normand Voyer]

The gold standard for a scientist is to publish his research. We do a lot of research and we publish a lot, and we read what the other scientists are publishing. We know who's in the field and we go to meetings as well, so we hear what's going on and we participate in lots of international collaboration in Europe, Japan, and China nowadays.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

I probably am going to run out of time for my last question. You mentioned that it's difficult to translate your research into a practical way to get industry involved. Let's say I am a businessman, I'm interested in your work, and you come to me with the results of your research. How would you explain to me what you're trying to build? Let's say you came to me and said that you wanted to build a scanner that could scan the entire body and would show the genetic codes of every cell. It's probably not possible, but let's say something of that sort may be down the road. What is actually your goal? What are you working on right now? What would you like to develop?

[Dr. Warren Chan]

Right now, the first device that we're going to be translating is a hand-held system for infectious disease diagnostics. We're taking all the genomic information that you heard about and we're building it into our bar-coding system. Can we essentially develop a system where we bar-code your blood to tell us what you have, and then start to build databases out of that?

I gave a talk to the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency in the U.S., because they're also interested in that concept, for monitoring of activities. We also find collaborators right now. I have a collaborator in Minnesota. We have collaborators in South Africa and Nairobi. In fact, some of the samples we might be analyzing are from Nairobi hookers, who have very dirty blood samples, who have different infections. We're taking information that's being developed by the genomics guy and we're now adding that information to our nano to develop these hand-held devices. So again, if you're a business person, I would try to sell it to you differently from an academic.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you, Dr. Chan.

We'll now go to Dr. Morin.

[Dany Morin, NDP, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

If you don’t mind, I am going to take one minute of my time to introduce a motion. I would like us to go over this motion together when we will study current committee business.

You can circulate the motion.

It reads as follows:

That the Committee study resources to ensure that Canada is able to fulfill its responsibility to develop a national blindness prevention strategy, pursuant to resolution 56.26 adopted by the World Health Organization in 2003, called Vision 2020: The Right to Sight. The strategy should be based on four major objectives: to integrate vision care into already existing health care systems; to provide sustainable funding and other resources; to ensure that the care is fair and accessible to everyone, not only to the rich; and to ensure excellence on all levels.

My apologies to the witnesses for introducing it right away, but I would like Canadians to be informed of what we do in committee, since I find in camera meetings exasperating.

I am now going to ask the witnesses questions. In November, the Conservative government made significant changes to the National Research Council Canada. One of the first effects of those changes is the loss of hundreds of research jobs related to the National Research Council Canada.

As a witness, do you feel that the changes made by the Conservative government to the National Research Council Canada will help you in your work? Is that a good thing for research in Canada?

[Dr. Normand Voyer]

That is an excellent question. Actually, the Government of Canada has always had research centres. The National Research Council has always been an incredible ambassador for Canadian research. However, over the years, we have seen the potentially useful proliferation of national research councils. But, since grants for basic research were becoming increasingly harder to find, the government had to choose between NSREC, CIHR and other organizations such as CRH, in addition to supporting research conducted in universities.

It is unfortunate that some research councils in Canada had to close. Over one hundred very experienced scientists are going to lose their jobs. However, in Canadian universities, more and more very promising young researchers are sorely lacking grants and, as a result, are not able to conduct high-level research and compete on the international stage.

Yes, it is unfortunate for the National Research Council, but university researchers on the ground agree that it was necessary to streamline the National Research Council. However, if that is done at the expense of all basic research, I don’t think that we will gain anything from that in Canada.