Our vision is to be recognized nationally and internationally as a leader in the pursuit and achievement of excellence in basic and applied Biomedical Research.
Our mission is to discover, develop, disseminate, and apply knowledge of basic and clinical biomedical research to improve the health and well being of Canadians. Health is the number one concern of Canadians, and both federal and provincial governments have responded to this concern by increasing their investment in health research. The importance of biomedical research in the University of Victoria's future is recognized in the University of Victoria's Strategic Research Plan. A key aspect of relating the importance of biomedical research to Canadians involves community engagement and public outreach.
As part of our mandate, we:
Handle resource databases and serve as a focal point for basic researcher and clinician interactions and cooperation;
Provide a conduit to train medical professionals for local hospitals, clinics and industry;
Serve as a resource for local community inquiries regarding medical research;
Assist in coordinating biomedical research opportunities and resources with UVic and the Victoria community;
Provide the scaffolding for biomedical research training at UVic and the surrounding community;
Actively engage and interface with the community to disseminate biomedical research activities and findings.
How does the nervous system coordinate the arms and legs during walking? Professor Dr. E. Paul Zehr has expanded the focus of neuroscientists studying motor control, leading to new treatments for stroke victims. More
Dr. Chris Upton bridges gap between genetics and computers with the
Dr. Jim Tanaka, a cognitive neuroscientist, is examining whether autistic children can be taught to overcome "face blindness" by engaging a part of their brains, which they use to expertly recognize other objects. More
Dr. Terry Pearson is banking on mass spectrometry to be the next big thing for antibody-based diagnosis. More
Dr. Brad Nelson thinks the time is right for T cell therapy. More
Neuroscientist Dr. Raad Nashmi found a new pathway for nicotine addiction, which also helps explain nicotine’s benefits for those prone to Parkinson’s. More
Whether he is finding a genetic cure or tracking a rare mutation, Dr. Patrick Macleod is a vital link between patients and molecular researchers at the CBR. More
Dr. Ben Koop co-founded the consortium for Genomic Research on All Salmon Project (cGRASP), an international team devoted to understanding salmon from its DNA out: its evolutionary history, its ecology, its health. More
Neuroscientist Dr. Sandra Hundza explores ways to teach people to walk again after a neurotrauma like a stroke or spinal cord injury, based on understanding the neural patterns that control rhythmic movement
The field of signal transduction is fulfilling its early promise of cancer cures. Professor Dr. Perry Howard is looking for signals to kill cancer cells. More
Subheadline for CBR front page flash: Cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Clay Holroyd is rephrasing the symptom of “inability to focus” to “an inability to get the appropriate dopamine reward for focus.” More
If you can’t find the right chemical tool to suit your medical research, you could ask chemist Dr. Fraser Hof to build one. Histone experts eye up Hof’s latest: a synthetic molecule that binds histones, disrupting a gene regulation pathway. More
Forty years after Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, Dr. Caren Helbing’s work warns us that we still don’t really know how to test for chemical contaminants in the environment. More
Dr. Barry Glickman helps Health
Dr. Roderick Edwards finds patterns invisible to the naked eye, as he seeks for order in systems as complex as neuronal nets. More
Dr. Johan de Boer describes how a salmon ancestor diverged so quickly into dozens of species thanks to transposons. More
Dr. Brian Christie was one of the first neuroscientists to discover that exercise promotes the generation of new brain cells. In his latest research, he found that exercise can even reverse FAS-related brain damage. More
Dr. Francis Choy's study of inherited diseases has immediate impact on patients. More
Dr. Robert Chow is finding genes that control eye development. More
When Dr. Caroline Cameron is not studying syphilis, she’s catching snot from whales: the strange path from syphilis to marine biology. More
Dr. Robert Burke has seen developmental biology grow up and zoom in. When he helped finish the sea urchin sequence in 2006, the field took another quantum leap forward. More
Dr. Juan Ausio helped figure out the structure and nature of chromatin, which led to the idea of a histone code. More