NBCC support coming for clinical genomics in Atlantic Canada

A major expansion is in the works for Atlantic Canada’s supply of trained technicians to support the region’s growing use of genomic applications in clinical medicine.

“This need is real,” said Dr. Simon Potter, director of the New Brunswick Community College Office of Research Enterprise.

While it’s early days, he is optimistic the new program, a first for the region, could be ready to launch as early as spring 2025 at NBCC’s Allied Health Campus in Saint John. It is envisioned that the new curriculum will dovetail with NBCC’s existing medical laboratory technologist program and accommodate 20-40 students a year.

“We are directly responding to what we’ve been told,” he said. Dr. Potter was referring to the results of a needs assessment, backed by Genome Atlantic’s Genome Opportunity Review Program (GORP), that he completed last year with Dr. Kyle Brymer, NBCC’s Research Associate in Health, and Karen Debroni, Principal of Debroni & Associates.

 “Pretty much, everybody we spoke to said: ‘Yeah, we have a need here for this. At the moment it’s been met by us sending samples out of the region, or looking for people outside the region. We can’t hire here. And we can’t cost-effectively do things here.’ ” The consultation exercise left Dr. Potter convinced that NBCC’s role could be “critical” in helping build “that ecosystem in the Atlantic region” that will allow genomics to thrive here.

that NBCC’s role could be “critical” in helping build “that ecosystem in the Atlantic region”

- Dr. Simon Potter

While NBCC intends to focus initially on the health sector and primarily the requirements of big players like the health authorities, Dr. Potter noted that the college hopes to eventually supply the needs of industries such as Atlantic Canada’s aquaculture and forestry sectors, for which genomics is progressively taking a bigger role in drives for productivity, competitiveness and sustainability.

The health sector was chosen as NBCC’s starting point because of the growing use and importance of genomics in clinical settings for diagnostics and the practice of precision medicine.

NBCC’s ambitions are expected to be easier and quicker to achieve because of the pioneering work done by Canadore College in North Bay, Ont. It has had a functional genomics program in place for the last six years. It offers a certificate in functional genomics and clinical consultation and it is developing a certificate program in bioinformatics. NBCC hopes to take advantage of Canadore’s experience by forging a close collaboration with the Ontario college. That move has also been supported with some GORP funding from Genome Atlantic.

The current demand in Atlantic Canada health care is for trained personnel with genomics expertise who know how to handle various types of samples, run complex sequencing machines, interpret the reams of data generated and manage the laboratories where these activities take place. Most of the people now performing these tasks are being recruited from outside the region.

Dr. Potter believes the sustainability of NBCC’s proposed program is assured because of the growing pervasiveness of genomics in medicine and industry. The demand for trained genomics staff has the potential to expand in directions beyond medicine.

Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, B.C. offers a program in applied genomics that bridges the gap between universities that train academic researchers and community colleges that supply the lab technicians to support them. “They have a big program there, which we could eventually emulate, but we’re definitely taking small steps first,” said Dr. Potter.

NBCC is currently working on equipping a lab for its proposed new program and has applied to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, or NSERC, for money to acquire, amongst other equipment, a mid-range sequencer.

Dr. Potter was adamant that “without Genome Atlantic’s support, none of this would be happening. So we are deeply grateful for the support we’ve received and we really look forward to having a relationship with them in the future to realize the benefits of this program that they’ve helped us to start.”

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