The road towards Canadian testing capacity began in Montreal
June 17, 2020
Source: National Research Council Canada and Med-E News. When looking at Canada’s COVID-19 testing capacity, Luke Masson, PhD, a researcher at the National Research Council of Canada (NRC), quickly realized we had a problem.
“Our collaborators at McGill and my team here at the NRC wanted to make sure that Canada would have enough testing capacity,” he says. “For this to work, we knew that every single component needed to be made in Canada.”
The road towards Canadian testing capacity began at McGill University in Montreal, where Martin Schmeing, PhD, and Don van Meyel, PhD, initiated a project to develop made in Canada testing kits for COVID-19. Thanks to funding from the McGill Interdisciplinary Initiative in Infection and Immunity (MI4), supported by the McGill University Health Centre Foundation, as well as funding from McGill’s Faculty of Science, the project was successfully launched in March.
Not long afterwards, a partnership with Luke Masson’s team at the Human Health Therapeutics Research Centre of the NRC was initiated, with crucial funding provided by Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada (ISED).
Through a collaboration with McGill University and support from the NRC Pandemic Response Challenge program, these scientists are working together to be part of the solution. Read more in MedE-News.
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