The mission to Canada began in Ottawa with a series of presentations and subsequent negotiations with the representatives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other government institutions including Networks of Centres of Excellence of Canada, Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, Canada Foundation for Innovation, National Research Council of Canada, Canadian Commercialization Consortium and other key institutions involved in the research and development of innovations. “The aim of the official part of the programme was to present CEITEC as an ambitious European workplace doing research, which is an important potential partner for future cooperation with Canadian institutions”, said Zlatuše Novotná, Head of International Relations and Grant Office at CEITEC, Masaryk University and who represented CEITEC in Ottawa.
Experiences have been exchanged and more cooperation established in the area of medical research programmes. The Coordinator of the Brain and Mind Research research programme, Milan Brázdil, took part in a series of negotiations with peers from the Rotman Centre, the Krembil Neuroscience Centre and at McGill University in Montreal. He succeeded in establishing cooperation with the Rotman Centre’s Tomáš Paus in the preparation of an intergenerational research project in health prevention in the new field of population neuroscience. “There are other possibilities for cooperation on offer with experts at the Tanz Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases in Parkinson´s and Alzheimer´s research”, added Brázdil.
The Coordinator of the Molecular Medicine research programme, Šárka Pospíšilová and Michael Doubek, also consider the visit to top Canadian workplaces to be successful. “I see the visit to the Genome Innovation Centre at McGill University, which is equipped with first-class technology for the analysis of genetic information, as the most beneficial”, said Pospíšilová. A discussion with Pavel Hamet, Professor of Medicine at the University of Montreal, has resulted in finding areas for joint projects which can cut costs in the treatment of chronic diseases, mainly cancer and heart and circulatory diseases.
The CEITEC mission to Canada was initiated by Suzanne Drisdelle-Güven, Senior Trade Commissioner at the Embassy of Canada to the Czech Republic. The support of the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Ottawa was also important. “Our aim is tohelp Czech research institutions in establishing cooperation in the field of medical sciences and health care in Canada. It is the priority of the governments of both countries to make the expenses on health care more effective, and modern biological research can contribute to it”, said Karel Žebrakovský, Ambassador of the Czech Republic to Canada.
