On April 23, 2009, Raymond Bachand, Quebec’s Minister of Finance and Minister of Economic Development, Innovation and Foreign Trade, announced $3,458,000 to fund 17 international research projects. McGill University researchers are leading six of the projects:

• Paul Allison (Faculty of Dentistry), with adjunct professor Belinda Nicolau (Institut Armand-Frappier): $250,000 for the HeNCe (Head and Neck Cancer) Life Study, a large international hospital-based case-control study of 3,000 cases of cancer of the mouth, throat and larynx.
• Paul Lasko (Department of Biology): $150,000 for studying the mechanisms that regulate the ligand Gurken, which is implicated in cancer.
• Jerry Pelletier (Rosalind and Morris Goodman Cancer Centre): $150,000 for studying eukaryotic protein synthesis in order to create new cancer drug therapies.
• Moshe Szyf (Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics): $150,000 for studying how epigenetic factors promote type 2 diabetes.
• Theo van de Ven (Department of Chemistry), with Marcelo Wanderley (Department of Music Research): $100,000 for creating paper-based pressure sensors for musical and technological applications.
• Axel van den Berg (Department of Sociology): $126,500 for an international comparative study of evolving employment, social and environmental policies and industrial relations systems in the face of new economic uncertainties.

“This program is an excellent opportunity for Quebec researchers to showcase their know-how to the world,” says Bachand, “and to build prestigious international partnerships.”