Creation of the Institut de recherche sur le cancer de l’Université de Sherbrooke
Adopting a united research front to fight cancer better
Sherbrooke, le 06 avril 2021 – What if scientists could eradicate cancer, making it a disease of the past? Across the country, scientists are coming together with the goal of doing just that. The Université de Sherbrooke (UdeS) is pitching in by combining all of its specialized cancer teams under a single entity called the Institut de recherche sur le cancer de l’Université de Sherbrooke (IRCUS), which will focus on multidisciplinarity and student research, two of the institution’s strengths.
For nearly 40 years, the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (FMHS) at UdeS and the Research Centre of the Centre hospitalier universitaire de Sherbrooke (CHUS) have maintained an exemplary partnership that has led to the creation of a centre of excellence in cancer research.
UdeS has now taken another step by creating the IRCUS, whose goal is to increase knowledge in the field of cancer to better fight this disease and reduce its impact on patients’ quality of life.
“With this institute, the Université de Sherbrooke is now in a great position to harness all of its strengths to advance cancer research. We have excelled in this field for decades and even have a pavilion in applied cancer research. With the IRCUS, however, we are embracing cancer research in a broader, more multidisciplinary way,” explained Professor Jean-Pierre Perreault, Vice-President, Research and Graduate Studies.
Appointed as Scientific Director of the IRCUS, Professor François-Michel Boisvert from the Department of Immunology and Cell Biology, believes that this institute will help UdeS’s existing research teams work better together and that this breaking down of silos will accelerate discoveries.
“The IRCUS’s net effect will be to give existing teams new ways of interacting and collaborating and to support these efforts with strategic investments in projects, teams and infrastructure to maximize the pole of cancer research expertise at UdeS and its impact in the fight to eradicate this disease,” added Professor François-Michel Boisvert.
Accelerating discoveries, from bench to bedside
To gain the upper hand over cancer, science must better understand how the disease develops, evolves, and can be treated. Looking at cancer from a variety of angles is therefore essential. This is why the IRCUS will explore different research avenues, including RNA and protein biology, epithelial cancers and biological models, and diagnostic and therapeutic approaches.
These research avenues will be connected so that each area of expertise is pooled along with techniques and approaches from different phases of research (basic, translational and clinical). “Multidisciplinarity is one of our strengths,” said Professor Nathalie Rivard, Vice-Dean of Graduate Studies, Research and Innovation at the FMHS. “The combination of different therapeutic methods, such as surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy and immunotherapy, is essential to achieving major advances in oncology. This abundant collaboration between our basic scientists and clinicians will set the stage for the development of new treatments through innovative clinical studies that will ultimately benefit patients.”
Leveraging the expertise of five faculties
Major scientific advances rarely come from the work of a single field of study. The sciences influence, complement, and feed off of each other. This is why the IRCUS will draw from the multidisciplinary collaboration between the FMHS, Faculty of Science, Faculty of Physical Activity Sciences, Faculty of Engineering, and Faculty of Law at UdeS. Other faculties at the institution will also be invited to contribute to the IRCUS in the near future.
The IRCUS therefore brings together a wide range of complementary expertise that includes genomics, RNA biology, cell biology, immunology, radiobiology, medical imaging, neuroscience, pharmacology, microbiology, bioinformatics, clinical epidemiology and the law. It has 81 members and will be recruiting 10 more over the next few months.
A fight joined by many universities
To help advance research on this disease, the IRCUS will join forces with key cancer research partners in Montreal and Quebec City. According to the Vice President of Research and Graduate Studies, the IRCUS will be a key asset in cancer research provincially, nationally and internationally.
Its creation confirms that research at UdeS is as dynamic as ever, as we saw in winter 2020 when we learned that this Sherbrooke institution of higher education ranked 14th among the country’s top research universities.
– 30 –
Information:
Isabelle Huard, Media Relations Advisor
Communications Department | Université de Sherbrooke
medias@USherbrooke.ca | 819-821-8000, ext. 63395