About CANNeCTIN

CANNeCTIN - the Canadian Network and Centre for Trials Internationally - is a national network funded by the CIHR/CFI Clinical Research Initiative program to improve the prevention and treatment of cardiac and vascular diseases and diabetes. CANNeCTIN is jointly led by Dr. Salim Yusuf, from Hamilton Health Sciences and McMaster University, and Dr. John Cairns, from the University of British Columbia.  CANNeCTIN includes investigators with expertise in cardiology, diabetes, obesity, cardiac surgery, anaesthesia, internal medicine, epidemiology, genetics and biostatistics. The vision of the network is that Canadian investigators and institutions will increasingly be internationally recognized as developers and leaders of high impact clinical research studies in cardiovascular disease and diabetes. CANNeCTIN brings together the best Canadian scientists and clinicians to work collaboratively to achieve major discoveries that would be difficult for a single centre to achieve individually. CANNeCTIN represents a unique opportunity for Canadian researchers from any university in the country to develop and collaborate on new trials addressing a variety of important questions and to use data collected in ongoing and completed trials to develop new hypotheses.

CANNeCTIN's national coordinating centre is located at the Population Health Research Institute (PHRI) of Hamilton Health Sciences and McMaster University. Over the past 16 years the PHRI has built global networks and a high quality, expert team with the requisite advanced knowledge and experience to conduct large, international clinical trials. At the heart of the CIHR/CFI application lay a request to provide the PHRI with funds to upgrade and standardize the physical and computing infrastructure necessary to meet evolving modern standards, core funding for key staff to stabilize and sustain its expertise beyond a single granting cycle, and resources to sustain and strengthen a national network of centres capable of collaborating in large RCTs addressing important questions, including those involving generic therapies and projects initiated by academic investigators as well as by industry.

Our goals are to increase the number and scope of high impact cardiovascular and diabetes clinical trials, registries and epidemiologic studies developed and led by Canadian investigators, to provide educational opportunities for the next generation of Canadian leaders of cardiovascular and diabetes clinical trials and to develop an effective knowledge translation (KT) program. CANNeCTIN will facilitate the development, conduct and leadership of large international clinical trials of important questions related to proprietary and generic interventions, will develop registries and epidemiologic studies which will generate hypotheses that can be evaluated in future clinical trials and will involve as many as possible of the 275 centres in the Canadian network.