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Life Sciences | Quebec invests in personalized medicine and artificial intelligence

Four new projects in the life sciences sector will receive support of $ 35 million from the Government of Quebec. This was announced by the Minister of Economy and Innovation Pierre Fitzgibbon on Monday during the strategic forum “The pharmaceutical industry: at the heart of life sciences” which took place at the convention center of Montreal.




Isabelle Dubé

Isabelle Dubé
Press

With the support of some forty private partners, the aid totals 74 million over three years, 35 of which come from the government by the company of the Fund for the acceleration of collaborations in health (FACS).

The mission of the FACS is to support the development of projects that meet concrete needs.

The Acuity Quebec Consortium at the University of Sherbrooke, for example, which receives funding of $ 13.85 million, has a project that aims to predict and visualize the action of drugs. By using a decentralized private public technology platform augmented by artificial intelligence, the researchers want to improve the efficacy and safety of drugs for patients. This project is estimated at 27 million.

Quebec could also become a hub for virtual clinical trials thanks to the Montreal Heart Institute. To achieve this, its project “Paradigm shift in the conduct of clinical trials” receives 9.35 million. Traditional clinical trials are time consuming and expensive. However, the use of technologies, already adopted because of the pandemic, will allow patients to participate in clinical trials from the comfort of their home, thus reducing time and costs.

“With this personalized medicine there and artificial intelligence, I think we have the attributes to be a winner,” Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon underlined during the event.

For its part, the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Center is obtaining $ 4.8 million to support the implementation of the project The Quebec Intelligent Care Consortium. The Opal patient portal will be able to help patients better understand their care while enabling clinicians to work more efficiently.

Regarding the $ 7 million granted to the Neuro (the Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital) of McGill University and to the CERVO Center of the Integrated University Health and Social Services Center (CIUSSS) of the Capitale-Nationale, affiliated with Laval University, they will be used to carry out the Alliance Neuro-CERVO project for the discovery of drugs in cerebral diseases.

This is the sequel to the second call from Accelerator Fund for Collaborations in Health (FACS) launched in June 2020. The FACS’s first call for projects, in 2019, supported six medical research projects. These projects have generated 14 patents filed in 13 countries as well as some 40 products now in use by the company.

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