Dr. Constantin Polychronakos of the MUHC’s Department of Pediatrics (Montreal Children’s Hospital) is this year’s recipient of Canadian Pediatric Society (CPS) Research Award for his work on the genetics of diabetes. The Award, which honours the best in Canadian child and youth health research, was handed out at the CPS’ 86th Annual Conference this past weekend in Ottawa.
Dr. Polychronakos’ work focuses on the field of common complex diseases. His major discoveries have come from two areas of investigation: First, the exploration of the human genome to uncover DNA variant sites indicating a person’s risk for disease, and second, using these variants to find out how they alter the body’s biology. Dr. Polychronakos’ findings will heighten understanding of common diseases and improve
treatments.
For his research, Dr. Polychronakos assembled the second-largest sample size in the world—just under 5,000 DNA samples from Canadian families recruited in the 1990s. The resulting paper, A genome-wide association study identifies novel risk loci for type 2 diabetes, appeared in the journal Nature in 2007.
Dr. Polychronakos is a professor in the Department of Pediatrics and associate member of Experimental Medicine and Department of Human Genetics at McGill. He is also a founding member of the Type 1 Diabetes Genetics Consortium.