Complementing the patient care and teaching mandates of the University Health Network is a research program addressing disease prevention, cause and cure. Research is carried out in research institutes attached to our three hospitals: Toronto Western Research Institute, Toronto General Research Institute and the Princess Margaret Hospital-affiliated Ontario Cancer Institute. In these institutes, approximately 1,500 scientists, technical staff, students and trainees work together to solve fundamental and applied research problems in a variety of biomedical fields.

At UHN, fundamental research into basic physiological and pathological mechanisms is carried out alongside more clinically-relevant research into the prevention and treatment of disease. All parties benefit from this close relationship, and UHN researchers have made discoveries which have yielded immediate and long-term returns. This list includes:

• development and use of insulin in the treatment of diabetes (1922)
• discovery of the hematopoietic stem cell (1961)
• discovery of P-glycoprotein (1974)
• discovery of the T cell receptor (1989)

The research program incorporates fundamental investigations at the cellular, biochemical and molecular levels, applied programs in disease-specific research, psychosocial and behavioural research, prevention studies, clinical trials and clinical outcome research. Research within each institute is organized along divisional lines, but researchers who share an interest in particular clinical problems also assemble into multi-disciplinary Clinical Research Programs.