Grant: Planning Grants - Priority Announcement: Nutrition, Metabolism & Diabetes

The goal of this proposal is to seek support for an annual symposium on cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, obesity and metabolism in the Qc area. The Montreal Diabetes Research Center was created that brings together more than 50 research groups from five institutions (U Montreal, Laval, Sherbrooke, Ottawa and McGill). So far we have organized 6 annual retreat symposia with more than 200 participants that include researchers, clinicians, students, technicians, industry and non-profit organization personnel. It consists of a keynote lecture by an external speaker, plus 12 oral presentations by Laboratory directors and students, and a poster session of over 60 presentations. The Symposium will be held in Montreal on January 18, 2013 at the Centre Mont Royal. As a Keynote lecture Dr Steven Kahn, a renowned clinician researcher from U Washington Seattle, will discuss the major clinical trials that he directs and will explain the new challenges raised by the Food and Drugs Administration. We anticipated that this event, that for the first time will extend the scope of our retreat to the broader field of cardiometabolic diseases, will play key role in the training of highly qualified personnel and foster collaborations among groups and students that so far work in different areas (eg, diabetes, nutrition, hypercholesterolemia, hypertension), but have much more in common in term of the questions asked and the technologies to be used, than perhaps they are aware of. In term of dissemination of activity, 300 brochures that include the program and abstracts of all presentations will be provided to participants and will be sent to diabetes, cardiovascular diseases organizations in the Qc area. At the conclusion of the meeting the Steering committee of the Diabetes Center will meet to discuss the possible small and large-scale collaborative projects that might emerge following the science discussed at the meeting.