OTTAWA A KEY PLAYER IN NATION'S BRAIN GAIN: CANADA NEARS 'GOLDEN ERA' IN MEDICAL RESEARCH, SAYS LEADING U OF O CARDIOLOGIST
By: Joanne Laucius
May 21, 2004 - One of the country's leading cardiologists says Canada is on the verge of a "golden era" of medical research.
A federal grant program to recruit top foreign medical researchers and "repatriate" Canadian scientists has had early success in reversing the brain drain -- and Ottawa is benefiting in particular.
Earlier this month, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research announced that seven distinguished researchers have been recruited to Canada and a Canadian has returned under its Institutional Establishment Grant.
In the past five years, about $10 billion has gone into medical research, said Dr. Alan Bernstein, president of the institutes. The most recent announcements, and other researchers who have been trickling into Canada over the past five years, show Canada has become a very attractive place for scientists.
"I think the next few years will be the start of a golden era of research," said Dr. Bob Roberts, president and CEO of the University of Ottawa Heart Institute.
This week, Dr. Roberts was named one of North America's top experts in cardiovascular disease by Castle Connolly, a U.S medical research and information company.
Four Canadians have been lured back to Canada and the heart institute in recent years and chief of surgery Dr. Thierry Mesana was recruited from France.
Dr. Roberts believes that we're just seeing the leading edge of the wave of returning medical researchers. "As more of us get significant research going, more young people will train here."
Michael Pinkoski, a cellular immunologist now at La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology in San Diego, California, is an example of the reverse brain drain. Next month, he will be moving to Ottawa to begin research on cell death at the research institute at CHEO.
When he left Edmonton in 1997, there were few opportunities in Canada for him. But the landscape has slowly shifted since then and it's not just the funding. Canada just "feels better," he said.
He and his wife and two children will be trading a condominium in San Diego for a detached house in Ottawa. The same house in San Diego is worth almost $1 million. "People are working harder and harder to maintain their piece of southern California," he said.
Ottawa is a hotbed of science, said pediatrician and molecular geneticist Dr. Robert Korneluk, director of the apoptosis research centre at CHEO, where 10 principal investigators are probing the mysteries of cell death.
"We don't have much trouble recruiting people. It's an exciting place to be," he said.
"Personally, I just got back from a meeting at Cornell Medical School in downtown Manhattan. We have a lot better here. We have space, we have a beautiful environment," he said. "Everybody likes to live in this country -- except for paying taxes." Dr. Jeremy Grimshaw came to Ottawa 21/2 years ago, lured from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland by more infrastructure support and the promise of developing a research program very quickly.
The move involved uprooting his wife and two sons, now eight and 10 years old. It didn't hurt that Canada felt like a comfortable society to him.
The world-renowned expert in "knowledge translation" -- taking knowledge and moving it into the health care system -- is not sorry about coming to Canada.
"A lot of people want to come back to Canada from the U.S," he added. Heart surgeon Dr. Marc Ruel went to Boston for two years to train at Harvard University- affiliated hospitals.
"They love Canadians over there. Before the end of the (first) year, I was asked to stay there," he said.
He decided to return to Canada. While he notes that there is still an exodus of physicians to the U.S., Canada is becoming more and more appealing to medical researchers. "Research is becoming an international game," said Dr. Ruel, whose research is in creating new blood vessels biologically. "The U.S. doesn't have the same role it had before."
Dr. Roberts left Canada 30 years ago because he couldn't find enough "protected time" to do his research in a Canadian research institute.
Then, most Canadians physicians had to give up a significant amount of research time for clinical work and teaching.
But things have shifted in recent years. For one thing, research is now addressing some of the more fundamental scientific questions. Dr. Roberts, for example, is investigating the genetics of heart disease.
He believes that a lot more Canadian physicians are combining a career in research with one in medical treatment. If a medical researcher can count on 50 to 70 per cent of his salary coming from research sources, then it's appealing to stay or come to Canada, said Dr. Roberts.