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

The goal of this proposal is to seek support for an annual symposium on diabetes, obesity and metabolism in the Qc area. Following infrastructure funding by the CFI (2004), the Montreal Diabetes Research Center was created that brings together more than 40 research groups from five institutions (Montreal, Laval, Sherbrooke, Ottawa and McGill). So far we have organized 4 annual retreat symposia with 160 participants that include researchers, clinicians, students, technicians and non-profit organizations. These symposia consist of a keynote lecture by an external speaker, plus 10 oral presentations by PIs and students and a poster session of over 40 presentations. This is a well-attended forum to exchange results, ideas, disseminate knowledge and foster collaborations in the field of diabetes, nutrition and metabolism. A recent CFI leading edge funding on diabetes and metabolic syndrome (2010) has allowed us to considerably extend the scope of our research and we wish, therefore, to enhance the size of our meeting and participants. Over the last four years we organized the event seeking help from the private sector. However, funds from industry have become scarcer recently at a time when the cost of this new event will increase considerably. To ensure transition to this broader scope of research we seek complementary funding from CIHR for the first year of this enlarged research consortium. The next Symposium will be held in Montreal on Jan 28, 2011. As a Keynote J.D Denis McGarry lecture, Dr J. Zierath from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden will discuss novel mechanisms of insulin resistance. Five PIs and 5 students will each deliver a 20 min oral presentation. The chosen topics are translational ranging from genetics to population health aspects. Emphasis will be given on the Poster session and we anticipate more than 60 presentations, organized by research themes, 6 altogether, associated with evaluation by a jury that will identify the best presentations.