TBA The Biotechnology Initiative

The Voice of Bioscience in Ontario



TCP comes to TBI

They say the dreams of cats are filled with mice. Well, the January TBI breakfast meeting was surely one that would have had the cat drooling.

The Biotech Initiative (TBI) kicked off its 2008 Breakfast schedule with members of the Toronto Centre for Phenogenomics (TCP) as its featured presenters. Unraveling the mystery of this remarkable facility, Dr. Colin McKerlie - CEO Toronto Centre for Phenogenomics and Dr. Mark Henkelman – Professor U of T and director of the Mouse Imaging Centre, discussed the work and the importance of the research being accomplished at the TCP and how it will translate into better health outcomes for some of the most serious diseases worldwide.

More than just a mouse house, the TCP is also home to the Centre for Modeling Human Disease (CMHD), the Canadian Mouse Mutant Repository (CMMR), and the Mouse Imaging Centre (MICe). Precedent setting in terms of its size and scale, the joint project involving Mount Sinai Hospital, The Hospital for Sick Children, University Health Network and St. Michael’s Hospital is as Dr. McKerlie put it, “a realization of where science is going, especially in terms of genomic research.”

Similarly McKerlie also discussed in his presentation the ways researchers at the TCP are able to pioneer and apply new strategies to determine the function of individual genes in mammals, and thus provide valuable new mouse models of human diseases such as cancer, diabetes and immune system diseases. The end objective, said McKerlie, “is to make the TCP a self sustaining research enabling centre.”

One of the other big things at the TCP is the section that houses the mouse-imaging centre. Dr. R. Mark Henkelman, director of Mouse Imaging Centre took the second half of the breakfast to discuss why this portion of the centre is a unique resource at the TCP. According to Henkelman researchers at MICe are able to combine the latest state-of-the-art digital imaging technologies to characterize mouse models of human disease and make phenotype discoveries. One such technology is the mouse MRI, which allows researchers the opportunity to image up to a couple of dozen mice at the same time, expediting analysis thus generating results at a quicker pace.

Summarily, both presentations underlined the importance of the facility to the research community in Toronto and the capacity of the building to do great science.