Room to break through
It started with a vision, five scientists and a brand-new but empty facility; 30 years later, the St. Boniface Hospital research complex has become 'an incubator for success' with 250 people in three buildings feeding their passion for discovery
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/04/2018 (2168 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
In the beginning there were plenty of questions about constructing such a big and expensive building with such beautiful desks if it would sit mostly empty.
The headlines were dubious, but what story might they have told if they’d known more details? That Grant Pierce and his four colleagues’ workspace occupied just half of the third floor, that the other half was temporarily designated for ping-pong and other lunch-break diversions, and that when Pierce needed to exercise he went up one level to run laps around the empty fourth floor.
Looking back makes Pierce, one of the original researchers to set up shop in what is now the St. Boniface Hospital Albrechtsen Research Centre, laugh.
“Literally, this place was empty,” he says. Journalists called to ask, “What’s going on with this big, empty building with nothing in there but mahogany desks?”
“It just takes time,” says Pierce, who is now executive director of research at St. Boniface Hospital. “It’s one thing to maintain research excellence. It’s another to create it. You have inertia to fight through and doubt.”
Today marks 30 years. In three decades, the centre has been transformed. Cardiovascular research has flourished, filling the entirety of the third floor and spilling into a few spaces on other floors. Floor two is now the Canadian Centre for Agri-Food Research in Health and Medicine. Take the stairs up to the fourth floor and you’ll find the Dr. John Foerster Centre for Health Research on Aging and the division of neurodegenerative disorders. Clinical research is one building over at the I.H. Asper Clinical Research Institute. Doctors can now go back and forth easily throughout the day, tending to their patients at St. Boniface Hospital and their research.
That research is the central reason the Albrechtsen Research Centre has notched significant wins, including being the No. 1 hospital-based research facility in Western Canada for six years running. By their own calculations, for every dollar the provincial government pours in, the centre generates 10 more.
“It’s like an incubator for success, for passionate people,” says Bill Peters. He would know. Peters, who’s currently manager of communications and media services, started as the guy in charge of audio-visuals in the auditorium just two years after the building opened. He never left, working his way up, a scientific dictionary firmly in hand.
His successes, he says, are firmly rooted in the centre.
“All of that came because all the people around me had the same passion for what they did and encouraged my passion for what I do and how it might help what they do,” Peters says.
Right from the very beginning, Pierce says, friendly, supportive relationships have been the bedrock. Being close, he says, was actually part of the impetus for the move. The other was space.
In the 1980s, cardiovascular scientists were crammed into basements and closets and any empty corner of Health Sciences Centre that could be found. One here, one there — there was no easy method of interaction or collaboration.
“You’re all over the place,” Pierce explains, which effectively created research silos: people worked on cancer or they worked on neurological problems. “Now, we can interact basic science with clinical, clinical with basic science, and all of a sudden you have a huge milieu for collaboration.”
It took years to secure the $25 million in startup funds and see the centre built. At the time, it was only the third research facility to focus on filling the gap between basic research and later-stage clinical trials on humans. St. Boniface, which actively courted private investors, touted the fact the centre could eventually provide 300 jobs — there are currently about 250 employees; summer students raise that number to 300.
But first there were five: Naranjan Dhalla, Elissavet Kardami, Dr. Vincenzo Panagia, Pierce and Pawan Singal. They came over in 1987, their materials and belongings lugged in crate by crate. They were hopeful but trepidatious.
They wanted the space and the opportunity to easily collaborate, Pierce says, but worried at being so far from “the movers and shakers.” Would it be out of sight, out of mind?
“The major concern at that time was our apprehension, the feeling of isolation that we had moved away from the mainstream and were across the river — just a small, teeny-weeny crook,” says Singal, who is still a cardiovascular researcher with the institute.
There was no real cure for that apprehension but time, both men agree. They needed to reach critical mass, which meant finding and securing funds. It took between four and five years.
“Luckily we were successful,” says Pierce.
Part of that, Singal says, was the fact they were able to coax more researchers to join their small team who brought with them their own salary support from a variety of national sources. Many had salary support guaranteed for 20 years, he says, which gave the research centre the chance to prove itself before the funds ran out.
“By that time enough credibility was built within the university that they were ready to pick up those salaries,” Singal says.
By that time, the atmosphere in the centre had been firmly set. That’s a credit to one of their original cardiovascular researchers, Naranjan Dhalla, as well as Dr. John Foerster, both men agree. Foerster, who was named to the Order of Canada last year, in large part because of his role in shaping the Albrechtsen Research Centre, wanted research staff to be like family.
“That family environment created a close relationship where people naturally wanted to collaborate, walk into other laboratories and help each other out,” Pierce says. “That makes a big difference and it isn’t there in all research environments.”
While Pierce and Singal remember what the building felt like empty, what it felt like to load their belongings into crates to be carted to St. Boniface, what research they did and when and what impact it has is fuzzy.
“Thirty years back?” Singal muses.
“It just rolls,” Pierce says, “it just rolled together.”
It’s Peters who, in preparation for the big anniversary, has compiled a running list of achievements. There have been many international awards, new partnerships, the introduction of Manitoba’s first nuclear magnetic resonance imager, and — of course — numerous breakthroughs. Researchers have made discoveries about the link between running and short-term cardiac dysfunction and discoveries that could impact breast cancer treatment, among others. Pierce determined that flaxseed helps lower blood pressure and just last year Pavel Dibrov led a study developing a drug that could finally help beat antibiotic-resistant infections.
Peters crunched the numbers: the centre has more than 30 laboratories, 250 staff, and has served as training ground for more than 450 students. It’s been possible, in large part, because of the space, Pierce says, which has widened the pool of researchers.
“We’ve gone from just the faculty of medicine to many different faculties,” he said. “That allows us to look at problems from different viewpoints with different expertise… that makes it much more exciting and much more valuable.”
jane.gerster@freepress.mb.ca