Vancouver’s upcoming research centre designed to spin out innovation

VANCOUVER – The architect’s rendering of the future research and support centre at the new St. Paul’s Hospital on the Jim Pattison Medical Campus – expected to open in 2028 – shows a sleek tower connected by a skyway to the hospital. That link will operate like an artery carrying people and ideas back and forth between the two centres.

“It’s a conduit allowing the flow of patients, clinicians and scientists, along with questions, problems and solutions,” said Dr. Darryl Knight, vice president of research and academic affairs at Providence Health Care and president of Providence Research.

“We host world leading researchers and clinician scientists developing new ideas and solutions, but all that amazing work won’t matter if it doesn’t leave our labs and get to the patients. This bridge will certainly expedite the process.”

The research centre and hospital are both important new projects at Providence. By juxtaposing such a large research and innovation centre directly beside a major, acute care and teaching hospital like St. Paul’s, the idea is to spur real-world problem-solving and innovation.

That research and innovation facility – currently known as the Clinical Support and Research Centre or CSRC – will house upwards of 950 researchers, clinician/scientists, students and staff. They will be equipped with the latest technologies, enabling them to test and develop scores of forward-thinking ideas and solutions.

The CSRC will also contain offices for medical specialists, bringing the connection between clinicians and researchers even closer. And to ease one of their own real-world challenges, it will have a childcare centre with space for 49 kids.

So, it wasn’t just political hype when Premier David Eby recently said, “This new research centre will help define the future of medicine. We are going to see scientific breakthroughs translated into real-world healthcare, delivering better services and treatments for patients.”

The provincial government and Providence are investing a large portion of the $638 million needed to build the centre, with additional funding coming from ChildCare BC New Spaces Program, and St. Paul’s Foundation, which has committed to raising $88 million from the philanthropic community to bring the vision for the CSRC to life.

There’s an emphasis on pushing its innovations out into the real world. To this end, the core of the CSRC will be the Innovation Centre, where the facility’s researchers will work closely with private-sector partners to produce viable products for worldwide use.

Already, the global medical devices giant Masimo has decided to open shop in Vancouver to work more closely with the centre’s scientists and clinicians. Many other alliances are in the works, as well.

There are facilities for meetings and presentations, as well as rooms where the partners can roll up their sleeves and test products in a sandbox environment. Companies are going to be encouraged to come in and develop products jointly with the CSRC researchers.

This model emerged after a good deal of fact-finding. “We worked hard to find what has succeeded in research institutes – in Canada, the U.S., southeast Asia, Australia and the UK,” said Dr. Knight. “And we also put our own spin on it.”

In addition to working with the corporate titans of the world, the facility will be fostering start-ups at its innovation centre.

Even the location of the centre is a kind of innovation – it will be located in the False Creek Flats neighborhood of Vancouver, next door to Vancouver’s East Side, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Canada.

Researchers at Providence already have expertise in addictions, HIV/AIDS and other urban issues associated with low-income populations. They will be developing solutions that can benefit this neighborhood.

“We’ve got an opportunity to solve pressing issues in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside community,” said Dr. Knight. “And if we can solve them here, we can take them around the world.”

To do so, Providence researchers will be using advanced ideas and technologies.

As Dr. Knight noted, those researchers are already working at the cutting-edge of medicine. For example, researchers are using 3D bioprinting technology to take tissues from patients – with permission – and to culture these tissues on 3D scaffolds. The cultured tissue can then be tested with a variety of drugs.

Not only will this accelerate the process of clinical trials, but it will also potentially identify patients who may not respond to new medications, or do so but with adverse side-effects.

“We’re using the patient’s tissue, rather than the patient,” said Dr. Knight.

In other instances, the researchers are using patient data in addition to the biospecimens. “We’re going to be taking a deep dive into phenotypes,” said Dr. Knight. “We’ll be looking at ‘omics’, such as proteomics, metabolomics, lipidomics. By collecting data about the various ‘omics’ , researchers can simulate how new and old drugs will work with at the individual patient level.”

He added, “We can use this in cancer research, to see individual characteristics and which medications are effective, and which ones are not.”

These computational technologies will be married with the latest imaging technologies to give researchers and clinicians new information for patient care and the development of novel therapies.
Together, these techniques will discover what works for individual patients faster than ever before.

The recent advances in generative AI will also be used, but Dr. Knight says researchers will be able to harness it even further. “Generative AI can predict who will have a heart attack in 20 years from now, but it doesn’t necessarily tell you how or why,” he said.

“As researchers, we want to know the how and why. Using a multi-omic approach, together with advanced imaging, we’ll be able to answer these questions.”

On these questions, and many others, researchers and clinicians in this innovative structure are set to make a significant impact. “The CSRC will be a nexus for people to come together and answer the increasingly complex medical questions posed by the patients we serve,” said Dr. Knight. “What we do here now, will echo throughout the generations.”