Saskatoon, SK: Winnipeg, MB – October 29, 2025: The keys to complex human diseases are already inside us – the tricky part is finding them and using them to unlock treatments and cures.
That, in a simplified way, describes what researchers around the world, including those in Winnipeg, Manitoba, are feverishly focused on. It’s called precision health, and it’s become a major tool in advancing human diagnostics and medicines.
In the spring of 2025, Genome Prairie and Genome Canada announced the funding of the PrairieGen Genomics Project. This four-year, $7.2 million human health genomics project will focus on identifying genetic markers, variants, and associated risk factors within the unique genomes of Manitoba and Saskatchewan residents to improve diagnostics and therapies for major, impactful diseases such as cancer, multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia, and genetic disorders.
Led by Dr. Athanasios Zovoilis and Dr. Cheryl Rockman-Greenberg of the Max Rady College of Medicine at the University of Manitoba and the Paul Albrechtsen Research Institute at CancerCare Manitoba, PrairieGen’s partners also include Research Manitoba, the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba, Shared Health, University of Saskatchewan and Oxford Nanopore.
Precision health using genomics means using a person’s unique genetic information to better understand their health and create more personalized care. Instead of using a “one-size-fits-all” approach, health professionals can look at a person’s DNA to see what disorders they might be at risk for, how their body might respond to certain treatments, or which medicines will work best for them. Precision health helps identify and treat diseases such as cancer, heart conditions, and inherited conditions more effectively, often before symptoms appear.
It’s a smarter, more tailored way to keep people healthier and treat illnesses more successfully.
“In Phase One of this project, PrairieGen will first be generating genomic information of people living in Manitoba and Saskatchewan that will shed more light on the genetic makeup of our populations,” said Dr. Greenberg. “The project has more than 5,000 participants, and we’re aiming to sequence at least 3,600 at the start of the project. Hopefully, we’re going to be able to leverage additional funds and maybe increase its numbers.”
A key component of PrairieGen will be gathering data to map genetic diversity in both provinces, which Greenberg said is critical to understanding why only some individuals are affected by particular disorders.
Dr. Zovoilis noted that “As an example, let’s take Alzheimer’s Disease or cancer. We have people who develop these debilitating diseases in their 50s, 60s or even earlier. In comparison, others in their 90s show few signs of them. So there could be something genetic that makes this distinction.”
Zovoilis, who is also an Associate Professor of Bioinformatics at the Department of Biochemistry and Medical Genetics at the University of Manitoba and was a research fellow at Harvard Medical School, said that understanding diversity could lead to a breakthrough in the development of individualized treatments for patients.
“The diversity in developing disease and responding to treatments is rooted, at least partially, in our individual genetic diversity. PrairieGen will examine how genetic diversity is connected to disease and why this connection exists.
Until the project wraps up in 2029, PrairieGen will examine a broad spectrum of diseases, including genetic, metabolic and monogenic conditions.
“The project will study a very wide range of disorders tested within our population. It could include immunological disorders like asthma, which commonly affect children. Or genetic disorders that can result from only one letter change in our DNA makeup. Or a multifactorial disease, which involve multiple factors, both environmental and genetic, that you see associated with, for example, inflammatory bowel diseases. Or other chronic diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, which are associated with aging. This project covers a wide spectrum of disorders,” said Greenberg.
Zovoilis said that thanks to the generous support of the CancerCare Manitoba Foundation, which has supported the CCMB sequencing and bioinformatics facilities, the PrairieGen team will leverage Next Generation Sequencing, or NextGen sequencing, a powerful method for reading all the DNA or RNA in a sample, as well as complex computer algorithms to analyze these data. NextGen sequencing works by breaking the genetic material into small pieces and reading millions of the fragments simultaneously, making it much quicker and cheaper than previous methods. This technology helps scientists see the complete picture of a person’s genes, identify tiny changes that may cause disease, and discover how illnesses like cancer or rare genetic disorders occur.
“The sequencing data will be deposited into the pan-Canadian Genome Library, which is a huge Canadian initiative that aims to develop a library of 100,000 participants. With this library, the anonymously gathered information from PrairieGen will be accessible to other researchers in other projects to identify new genetic tools, new diagnostic tools for diseases, and potentially lead to new customized treatments for individual patients, which will be the focus of Phase Two.”
Amassing and sharing data could help researchers make future discoveries about diseases that, in some cases, are more prevalent in certain Canadian regions.
“For example, in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, it is known that their population has a higher prevalence of multiple sclerosis (MS),” said Zovoilis. It might mean that MS-causing genetic variants are more common in this population. We might not find the same data if, for example, we only looked at populations in Atlantic Canada.
“Mapping diversity at the provincial level will be very important in the future. It will help to better inform policymakers and healthcare providers about the most effective treatments
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Tony Bassett
Director of Communications
Genome Prairie
text/voice: 306.881.0255
email: tbassett@genomeprairie.ca
