We promote discovery science and translational research to enable precision medicine and improve health outcomes for all.
Strategies
1. Invest in investigator-led research platforms and programs, linked to innovation in postdoctoral and graduate training
- Evaluate opportunities to leverage new seed grants
 - Prioritize new platforms based on impact on growth of investigator-led research programs
 
2. Create incentives and infrastructure to support translational and transdisciplinary research activities
- Expand multidisciplinary collaboration, such as with the Faculty of Science, on medicinal chemistry approaches (new chemical entities, repurposing and antisense directed strategies)
 - Enabling clinical trials with repurposed chemical entities, new chemical entities, new chemical compounds, novel peptide strategies, immunotherapies, antibodies and mRNA/DNA based technologies
 - Collaborate with UCalgary on transdisciplinary scholarship initiative
 
3. Develop novel approaches to precision therapeutics
- Accelerate progress in living medicine approaches (biologics and cell-based therapies)
 - Modify human cells and microbes to harness biologic symptoms within the patient to treat diseases (ex. immune cell therapies, stem cell therapy, microbial therapeutics and in vivo gene editing)
 - Leverage existing infrastructure from the International Microbiome Centre, the Centre for Cancer Immunotherapy, and key departments in UCalgary (ex. Biomedical Engineering and Biological Sciences)
 - Expand research into advanced technologies, such as therapeutics in devices or robotics
 
4. Develop and implement novel diagnostic strategies
- Advance integration of genetic, proteomic, biochemical understanding in pursuit of new clinical therapies
 - Protein and biochemical diagnostics offer additional opportunity for important insights beyond DNA/RNA
 - Patient data-based diagnostics and clinical trajectory analysis (complex data-imaging, physiological, behavioural, psychosocial, social determinants data)
 - Complex data such as imaging, physiological, behavioural, psychosocial and social determinant data present incredible opportunities for understanding and diagnosing disease
 - Multiscale, multidimensional data analysis and integration (bioinformatics)
 
5. Design, implement and facilitate interventional investigator-initiated clinical trials
- Support interventional clinical trials with various therapeutic strategies
 - Building on existing Clinical Research Unit expertise, we will develop a repository of expertise for regulatory, statistics and therapeutic design
 - Develop more efficient ways of conducting clinical trials
 
6. Develop platforms and funding programs to facilitate research innovation and scholarship
- Expand support of faculty members pursuing startup companies and social innovation
 - Include academic reporting on entrepreneurship in university processes
 - Investigate a CSM ‘equity stake’ in startup companies