MONTREAL, March 31st, 2022 – Canadian university students and young researchers will have new tools to investigate the effects of taking medications during pregnancy thanks to a new $2.4-million federal grant to a team led by Anick Bérard, researcher at the CHU Sainte-Justine Research Centre and pharmacy professor at Université de Montréal.

The funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research will support the Canadian Mother-Child Collaborative Training Platform – CAMCCO-L, for short – a transdisciplinary and cross-sectoral training platform to better identify the risks and benefits of prescription drug use during pregnancy.

Announced by Canadian health minister Jean-Yves Duclos and mental-health and addictions minister Carolyn Bennett, the grant is part of $31.1-million in new federal funding to develop 13 health-research training platforms across the country over the next six years.

Lack of data to be overcome

Some 75 per cent of Canadian women take some form of medication during pregnancy. But there is little data on the associated risks and benefits for the mother and the unborn child, as pregnant women are often excluded from clinical trials of prescription drugs.

“To be able to effectively measure the risks and benefits requires cross-sectoral knowledge on epidemiology, genetics and toxicology, and the use of causal analysis methods and artificial intelligence,” said Bérard, holder of the Medication and Pregnancy Chair of the Fonds de recherche du Québec - Santé.

“Right now, however, training is based on courses designed for individual academic disciplines. The CAMCCO-L program offers the next generation of scientists something different and innovative: a new set of tools to study medications and pregnancy.”

Schools, a symposium and internships ahead

The new program will:

• establish a virtual school offering perinatal-related courses in toxicology, pharmacogenomics, pharmacoepidemiology and artificial intelligence;
• establish a summer school on drug development and knowledge transfer;
• fund an annual symposium for the next generation of independent Canadian researchers in perinatality;
• and provide an opportunity for participants to complete four-month internships in research environments in addtion to their university training.

As well as teaching graduate students and early-career researchers practical skills such as project management and grant-writing, the platform also emphasizes the principles of equity, diversity and inclusion, including offering scholarships for students and researchers from First Nations communities.
 

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