Canada joins Project MinE with the goal of providing up to 1,000 DNA-profiles to support ALS research discovery.
Canada today became the 17th country to join Project MinE, with numerous Canadian organizations stepping up in a cross-country collaborative effort to support the international research effort in determining why some people develop ALS while others do not.
The ALS Society of Canada is leading fundraising efforts for the Canadian component of project MinE, which seeks to sequence up to 1,000 genomes. Research expertise is being provided by four of Canada’s leading ALS geneticists in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Quebec City. Each has led or been part of international consortia that have resulted in some of the most important genetic discoveries in the field. They also represent a geographical balance that would provide a collaborative set of Canadian samples representative of ALS cases across the country. Project MinE represents their first-ever cross-country collaboration.
Other essential collaborators in Canada’s Project MinE effort are the four Canadian ALS clinics that are collecting and in some cases storing the blood samples being used for the initiative: the GF Strong Rehabilitation Centre’s ALS Centre in Vancouver, the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre ALS Clinic in Toronto, the ALS Program at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, and the ALS Clinic at the CHU de Québec.
Have a look at the Canada page on this website.