Montreal

A new era opened for Canadian medical researchers last week with the launch of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). The new body replaces the Medical Research Council of Canada, which has been the major federal agency funding health research and training since 1960 (see Nature 393, 613; 1998).

The CIHR will bear some resemblance to the US National Institutes of Health. But there are also important differences. Whereas the NIH has 25 institutes and centres housed in 75 buildings in Bethesda, Maryland, the CIHR will have no main campus. Its researchers will be grouped into ‘virtual’ institutes, located in 16 health-science centres, 50 teaching hospitals and 65 research institutes across the country.

The aim is to link investigators in biomedical and clinical research, health systems and services research, and population-health research across Canada. There will be no intramural research in the NIH sense: instead, work will be done by investigators in the participating organizations, although it will be evaluated and reviewed centrally by peer committees.

Among the advantages — apart from a much bigger budget — is said to be the inclusion of a broader range of health research than any previous agency, encouraging closer collaboration between disciplines and possibly new avenues of research.

Bernstein: will preside over ‘virtual’ institutes. Credit: CIHR

Alan Bernstein, former director of the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, will be the CIHR's first president. A professor of molecular and medical genetics at the University of Toronto since 1984, Bernstein has made key contributions to the understanding of embryonic development, haematopoiesis, cancer and formation of the cardiovascular system.

Biomedical researchers, although initially apprehensive, have welcomed the new arrangements. Cecil Yip, vice-dean of research at the University of Toronto, says that the CIHR is “a good thing from many perspectives, not the least of which is that it represents a serious commitment [to health research] from the federal government”.

The budget of the institutes is set to double from the MRC's 1999–2000 figure of Can$302.5 million (US$184 million) over the next three years; it will be Can$402 million in 2000–01, rising to Can$533 million the following year. Henry Friesen, who was MRC president and chief architect of the CIHR, says that a budget of Can$1 billion is both possible and defensible.

The creation of the CIHR was announced in the 1999 federal budget, following the report of a National Task Force on Health Research, made up of representatives from the whole medical research community.

A 19-member governing council will set the strategic direction, goals and policies of the component institutes — whose details have not yet been announced — and determine the mandate of each. It will also appoint the institutes' scientific directors and advisory boards.

Federal health minister Allan Rock says that the CIHR “represents an entirely new way of conducting health research … its emphasis on partnerships with the voluntary healthcare sector, other government agencies and industry will be a model to be emulated around the world”.

http://www.cihr.ca