AMRIC to settle into renovated school with NOHFC funding

A health research facility in Sudbury will soon have a new, permanent home.

The Advanced Medical Research Institute of Canada, or AMRIC, will move into a renovated school on Walford Road, with help from a $4.9 million grant from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation.

AMRIC CEO Francisco Diaz Mitoma said the bigger space will allow the centre to hire two researchers and their teams.

"And the kind of research that those individuals will do, one will be a researcher in cancer immunology. And the other will be a vaccinologist,” he said.

“A vaccinologist is an expert that can develop vaccines for infectious diseases or cancer."

The provincial government is spending almost $5 million to assist AMRIC in building its new location.

The Walford Road school location, formerly known as St. Theresa, will complement AMRIC’s existing 12,000 square-foot laboratory at Sudbury's hospital, known as Health Sciences North. AMRIC is the affiliated research institute of HSN.

Created in 2011, AMRIC’s research activities are focused on investigating and developing promising new drugs and treatments that target key health concerns and priorities in northeastern Ontario and northern Canada, including cancer, infectious diseases, and chronic diseases.

Since its inception, AMRIC has received more than $4 million in funding for equipment, research, and capital expansion. It has also grown from a compliment of 40 researchers, support staff, and students in 2011 to its present team of 74 researchers, support staff and students.

AMRIC has a total of seven patents and patent applications underway.