Merck Canada Gives Patient-Oriented Research $4M Boost

Merck Canada is providing a $4 million grant to the Fonds de recherche du Québec - Santé (FRQS) for academic research as part of a commitment made in 2010 to inject $100 million over five years in biopharmaceutical R&D in Quebec. The FRQS grant will go toward supporting patient-oriented research conducted by the Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research initiative. 

Merck Canada says that this latest grant brings their total contributions to date as part of their $100 million commitment to approximately $68 million. In December, they provided a grant as part of the same commitment in the amount of $943,000 to fund research conducted at Concordia University's Center for Structural and Functional Genomics. Likewise, last November they invested $12.5 million to fund research at three university-affiliated and hospital-based research centers in Montreal: the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, the CHUM Research Centre, and the Montréal Heart Institute Research Centre.

"The initiatives we support are a part of our approach to research and development, which is about building collaborative research relationships," Thomas R. Cannell, DVM, president and managing director, Merck Canada, said in a statement. "In our view, private-public partnerships provide a fertile environment for innovation to grow and lead to new and efficient ways of caring for patients."

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