VGH to have the world's first hip-health centre
From The Vancouver Sun, March 09 2004.
By Pamela Fayerman
Vancouver General Hospital will become the world's first Centre for Hip Health and the "world's most comprehensive prostate cancer research facility."
The hip centre will conduct research intended to decrease hip fractures and osteoarthritis, conditions that cost nearly $3 billion a year to treat in B.C. alone.
Tom Oxland, the biomedical engineer who heads musculoskeletal research in the region, said the new hip centre will focus on research from childhood to old age.
It is known that good exercise and calcium-rich eating habits in childhood promote healthy bone development, and the centre will develop programs that strive to achieve those goals.
In mid-life and beyond, many people develop osteoarthritis and when they become seniors falls involving hip fractures and necessitating surgical repair and replacements are not uncommon.
The new centre will encompass the Arthritis Research Centre and will also bring together under one roof experts in bone health, orthopedics and mechanical engineering, surgery, biomechanics, rehabilitation and falls prevention.
With the grant money, the centre will purchase a mobile risk assessment semi-trailer unit that will travel to rural areas measuring bone density, bone mass and strength in populations at risk of such problems.
Researchers will develop prevention and intervention strategies to help teach seniors about measures to prevent falls and make their homes safer. An estimated 25,000 hip fractures occur each year in Canada. Of those, 20 per cent of patients die, and another 50 per cent wind up with disabilities.
Oxland said there is a real need to investigate ways to do "keyhole" or small-incision surgery, to reduce infections and other post-surgical complications.
VGH and UBC secured $5.2 million from the federal government for the hip centre, with a matching grant expected from the provincial government.
The Prostate Centre was awarded $7.6 million, again with a matching grant expected from the province.
The funds are part of the $585.9 million in grant awards announced Monday by the Canada Foundation for Innovation. The University of B.C. captured $33 million in research money. Under terms of the CFI grants, private industry sources are supposed to top up the grants by a further 20 per cent.
The location of the 40,000-square-foot building that will house the hip centre has not been determined, nor has a decision been made as to whether a new building will be constructed or space on the hospital campus will be renovated. However, a completion date of 2006 is set.
Dr. Martin Gleave, the urologist who directs clinical research at VGH, said a total of $19 million in government and private grants will pour into the Prostate Centre, which is the largest research centre and clinic of its kind in Canada. The new money, he said, will transform the centre into the "world's most comprehensive prostate cancer research facility."
The funds are coming at a good time. Five years ago, local business mogul Jimmy Pattison gave $20 million to the hospital for prostate research over seven years, so by 2006 he will be making his last instalment.
Together, the grants for hip and prostate research represent the "biggest and most exciting event that has occurred on the funding side of research at VGH for many years," said Dr. Bernard Bressler, vice-president of research at Vancouver Coastal Health, the regional agency under which VGH falls.
"These funds will start a process that will change the face of research at VGH," Bressler predicted.
Gleave said the CFI and provincial matching dollars will be used to buy robotic machinery and specialized microscopes that analyse the molecular structure of cancer tissue. As well, research and laboratory space in the Jack Bell centre on Oak Street will be renovated and expanded.
With Pattison's philanthropy, the prostate centre went to 125 researchers from from about 25 and some of them have invented potential therapies that are now in phase 1 and 2 clinical trials.
Copyright The Vancouver Sun 2004
