RNA & the Future of Medicine

The power of combining genomics with RNA technology is exemplified by the remarkable and rapid success of mRNA vaccines against SARS-CoV-2. We are at the beginning of a revolution that will enable the rapid, low-cost development of genome-guided RNA-based medicines for a wide spectrum of diseases, such as those caused by emerging viruses that threaten our society with pandemics and their associated catastrophic health and economic consequences, high-burden diseases such as cancer, which is the number one cause of death in Canada, and rare genetic disorders that are incurable or prohibitively expensive to treat.

McGill University recently founded two inter-disciplinary institutes, the McGill Centre for RNA Sciences, and the Victor Phillip Dahdaleh Institute of Genomic Medicine with the vocation to match the potential of personalized medicine with the flexibility and speed promised by RNA therapeutics. At the forefront of this meeting will be collaborating RNA academic poles in Quebec and Canada that are part of several ongoing projects and proposals, but most prominently with leading industrial partners.