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null D2R awards over $6 million to support Core Platforms

Three platforms at The Institute will benefit from new funding for innovation and sustainability

Source: Health E-News, McGill University and The Institute
February 21, 2025

The D2R (DNA to RNA) Initiative has awarded more than $6 million to support eight Core Platforms at McGill University and one at the University of British Columbia. The Core Platform Sustainability funding program supports state-of-the-art Core Platforms that are essential for advancing research and development and facilitating technology uptake and transfer in fields relevant to RNA therapeutics.

One of these platforms is the Centre for Applied Nanomedicine (CAN) at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (The Institute). The CAN, co-managed by the Immunophenotyping Platform at The Institute, is a specialized technology platform and research hub for studies on extracellular vesicles (EVs) and nanosized extracellular particles (EP).

The Institute’s Containment Level 3 (CL3) and Immunophenotyping Platforms will also benefit from this funding, jointly with the McGill Flow Cytometry Innovation Platform and the Integrated McGill Infectious Disease Platforms (iMIDPs). The Immunophenotyping Platform offers a variety of flow cytometry services including accurate purification of specific cell types with added fluorescence imaging of individuals sorted cells. The CL3 Platform offers highly controlled biosafety laboratories where live pathogenic bacteria and viruses can be studied in three independent research pods.

Photo on left: Nadim Tawil, Laura Montermini and Janusz Rak represent the Centre for Applied Nanomedicine at The Institute. On right, representatives of Core Platforms include (from left) Jorg Fritz, Camille Stegen and Julien Leconte of the McGill Flow Cytometry Core Facility (FCCF), Hélène Pagé-Veillette, flow cytometry specialist, Marie-Hélène Lacombe, Manager, Immunophenotyping Platform, Patrice Vaillancourt, Manager, Technology Platforms, and Ciro Piccirillo, Director, Immunophenotyping Platform at The Institute.

“I think this Core Platform Sustainability project is brilliant as it fills the gap in our present funding system, which does not provide accessible means to maintain essential, precious and expensive instrumentation,” Dr.Rak noted. “In our case, the investment in the Centre for Applied Nanomedicine could not have been more timely. CAN is among very few such facilities around the world, perhaps 2-3 in North America. At the present time, many groups within the D2R Initiative and elsewhere focus on different aspects of biomedical nanoscale, such as the use of natural nano particles, or exosomes, and synthetic lipid nanoparticles, or LNPs, as therapeutics, delivery systems, vaccines, or as molecular hubs with emerging new functions. CAN provides these studies with a considerable technological ‘edge’ and we believe that with this new D2R support we will be able to assist D2R researchers and beyond for many years to come, thereby contributing to our collective success.”

Core Platforms provide academic researchers and industry collaborators with the latest technologies and resources, enriching the quality of research and accelerating the pace of discovery. The D2R funding program offers operational support to existing or newly formed McGill Core Platforms, covering costs for technical personnel, data managers, extended warranties, and equipment repair and services.

The funded platforms include those specializing in health data science, mRNA therapeutics, cytometry, clinical sequencing, RNA therapeutics quality control, nanomedicine, infectious disease research, and animal modeling. These platforms support a wide range of research areas, including precision medicine, cancer, rare diseases, and pandemic preparedness.

The following is a list of the scientific directors and their awarded core platforms at McGill University:

  • Guillaume Bourque: D2R – Health Data Science (D2R-HeDS) platform
  • Thomas Duchaine: McGill messenger RNA therapeutic platform
  • Jorg Fritz: iCELL – Integrated Cytometry and Enhanced Learning Laboratories
  • Mark Lathrop, PhD, affiliate investigator in the Child Health and Human Development (CHHD) Program at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (The Institute): McGill Clinical Sequencing Service
  • Ioannis Ragoussis: End to end sequencing platform for RNA therapeutics quality control
  • Janusz Rak, MD, PhD, senior scientist in the CHHD program at The Institute: Centre for Applied Nanomedicine (CAN)
  • Silvia Vidal, PhD, investigator in the Infectious Diseases and Immunity in Global Health Program at The Institute: Integrated McGill Infectious Disease Platforms (iMIDPs)
  • Yojiro Yamanaka: MICAM (McGill Integrated Core for Animal Modeling) and MPCP (McGill Platform for Cellular Perturbation)

In addition, D2R has also funded NanoCore, led by Pieter Cullis at the University of British Columbia. NanoCore is a research facility that develops high quality, state-of-the-art lipid nanoparticles encapsulating nucleic acid, small molecule, or peptide drugs that enable proof-of-concept (POC) animal studies. NanoCore contributes to D2R by developing and producing lipid nanoparticles for POC and preclinical testing.

For more information on these projects, please visit D2R’s funded projects page.

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