On Apr. 5, 2007, Dr. Philippe Gros and his team of McGill University researchers identified a gene that causes spina bifida.

The research builds on what fellow researchers and care-givers in McGill’s Faculty of Medicine and at the McGill University Health Centre refer to as the “continuity” of the institutions’ efforts to effectively treat and one day eradicate a defect that occurs in as many as two births per 1,000—the second most common birth defect after cardiac abnormalities.  The study results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.