St. Paul's hopes star talent will help it become research leader in HIV/AIDS, heart disease

By Laureen McMahon

A million dollars from an anonymous donor to St. Paul's Hospital Foundation to improve the heart health of B.C. residents has helped kick-start two ground-breaking research projects at the Providence Health Care facility.

Laureen McMahon / The B.C. Catholic Dr. Julio Montaner, head of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (left), and Paul Levesque, president and CEO of Pfizer Canada, at a press conference at St. Paul’s Hospital on Oct. 16. Pfizer Canada is donating $3 million to help develop a new diagnostic screening test for HIV/AIDS patients and $1.25 million to cardiovascular research.

Less than one year after the first donation, pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer Canada has added $4.25 million to make St. Paul's a world leader in cardiovascular research and in the treatment of HIV/AIDS patients.

At an Oct. 16 press conference Paul Levesque, president and CEO of Pfizer Canada, announced a $1.25 million donation to endow the first Canadian research chair in cardiovascular prevention. It will be associated with Simon Fraser University and based at St. Paul's Heart and Lung Institute, which opened earlier this year.

SFU, said its president and vice chancellor Michael Stevenson, will give $1.5 million to the research chair while the Heart and Stroke Foundation of B.C. and Yukon will contribute $750,000, according to foundation president and CEO Bobbe Wood.

Dr. Andrew Ignaszewski, head of St. Paul's cardiology division and medical director of the Healthy Heart Program, said that the search is on for a "star" in cardiovascular research whose title will be the Pfizer / Heart and Stroke Foundation of B.C. and Yukon Chair in Cardiovascular Prevention Research. The individual, added Dr. Ignaszewski, will also have an appointment at SFU's Faculty of Health Sciences.

Heart disease, the leading cause of death in Canada, affects the lives of one of every two British Columbians, with one in three dying from complications, so the creation of the SFU / St. Paul's research chair is a tremendously exciting use of health dollars, said Dr. Ignaszewski.

Eradicating heart disease includes making healthy lifestyle choices, he added, "but we need to base our actions on the most up-to-date knowledge of this disease, its prevention, and early diagnosis. Research provides this knowledge and, through these endowments, we can attract the best scientists to our programs."

Pfizer Canada also announced a $3 million donation to the B.C.

St. Paul's seeks simpler test

Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS aimed at discovering a simpler, more cost-effective, and more widely available screening test for infected patients.

Called a "tropism" test, the screening method will enable doctors to tell by which door the virus has entered the cell so the appropriate drug can accurately target the infection.

Dr. Julio Montaner, director of the B.C. Centre for Excellence, explained that blood tests currently need to be sent to the U.S. for evaluation, resulting in costly delays.

"We need to develop our own simple test," said Dr. Montaner, who also is president-elect of the International AIDS Society.

Levesque said the screening test, which he expects to be developed within a year, will help patients whose disease resists treatment. The test will help identify if patients will respond to a new generation of drugs called CCR5-tropic antagonists. Pfizer has developed a medication called Celsentri which will be given to patients whose treatment with other drugs has failed.