Insulin is a hormone that is crucial for maintaining normal blood sugar levels and is produced by beta-cells in the pancreas. If the amount of beta-cells is insufficient, or beta-cells stop making insulin, blood sugar levels start to rise which can lead to diabetes. Islet transplantation can supply the necessary amount of beta-cells and achieve superior glucose control over exogenous insulin injection, but is extremely limited by its reliance on organ donations. As a result, only a small fraction of people afflicted with diabetes currently benefit from these cell replacement therapies.
Our project aims to direct pluripotent stem cells to develop into fully mature, functional human islets in vitro. The stem cell-derived islets have similar size, endocrine cell composition and functionality as primary human islets and can provide an unlimited source of islet donors, permitting widespread application of islet-cell replacement therapy to treat diabetes. Moreover, stem cell-derived islets can also be suitable models for drug screening, regenerative medicine development and understanding the pathogenesis of diabetes.
Participation in regular physical activity is associated with reduced risks of cardiovascular disease, overweight/obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus, numerous cancers, mental and reproductive health problems, and osteoporosis. Yet, only 9% of Canadian children and adolescents and 20% of Canadian adults meet physical activity guidelines. An essential component of being active involves having the skills needed to successfully participate in an activity. Skill development across time should be viewed in the context of how it leads to skillful performance and in terms of how movement skills support and maintain a lifetime of physical activity.
However, skill development across time is not well understood in relation to
- how competent adults within the general population are at various movement skills and
- how the association between movement skills and activity changes across the lifespan. To address this shortcoming, cohorts of 25 males and 25 females in 10-year increment age brackets between 5 and 75 years will be recruited for participation in this study (N = 350). Measures of motor skill competence, physical activity and enjoyment will be assessed.
Key outcomes will include:
- movement skill development trajectories across the lifespan
- determination of the strength of association between movement skills and health-enhancing physical activity across the lifespan and
- determination of the mediating effect of enjoyment on physical activity participation
Skeletal and heart muscle contraction requires calcium ions. Calcium ions enter muscle cells through 'calcium channels', which are effectively gates comprised of protein. The exact timing of the opening and closing of these gates is critical for normal muscle function, whether in maintaining a regular heartbeat or in enabling physical movement of the body as a whole. Any deviation in these calcium channels can cause calcium excess, which may result in disease. These include inherited cardiac arrhythmias or muscular disorders (e.g. Native American myopathy).
This project aims to uncover how other, ancillary proteins called 'STACs' can interact with these gates to promote their opening and how these STACs might contribute to diseases of dysregulation.
The lack of effective antibiotics in cases such as surgeries, transplantations, early-term and complicated births, sepsis etc. could merely lead to death as antibiotics are crucially needed for treatment. Sepsis for instance, annually kills ~8 million people worldwide with almost 40% of all deaths are linked to antibiotic failure. Likewise, infections caused by bacterial biofilms represent ~65% of all clinical diseases, and there are no antibiotics to treat bacterial biofilms, specifically. Here, we propose using new synthetic and biosynthetic technologies to develop novel molecules alternative to antibiotics, particularly antimicrobial peptide-like compounds, to address a wide range of hard-to-treat bacterial infections.
Starting from our previously developed immunomodulatory and antibiofilm peptides, we aim to explore the structure-activity relationships of those peptides and biosynthetically design stable and highly active mimetics. We plan to use advanced animal models, synthetic and isolated human tissues (skin and lung tissues) for testing and addressing preclinical issues such as stabilities, formulations, toxicities, and optimal therapeutic dosing. If successful the proposed study will provide the first novel therapeutic strategy to tackle bacterial infections and these newly developed compounds would have a significant impact in treating diseases and preventing deaths.
As our population ages, an increasing number of Canadians experience difficulties with their vision. Although it is well known that both normal aging and age-related eye disease can affect a person's ability to see fine detail (such as in reading), tests of visual acuity used in regular eye examinations do not provide a complete picture of a person's ability to see in everyday situations, such as exercising and driving, where moving objects are often involved. Moreover, these tests often demand verbal instructions and do not accommodate sufficiently for the multilingual population of Canada with a range of cognitive functions. We propose to develop a technology utilizing eye movements to assess visual motion processing.
Our research will gather scientific evidence to understand the relationship between motion processing and eye movements in healthy seniors and patients with ophthalmic diseases, and whether it is practical to introduce the technology into clinical practice. This quick and non-verbal method of assessing vision provides a potentially cost-effective vision assessment strategy that addresses an important population health issue.
Retinal degenerative disorders are inherited diseases that affect tens of thousands of Canadians. The effects are devastating; severe vision loss or complete blindness occurs early in life, resulting in the loss of livelihood, mobility, and independence. There is no cure, and present treatments focus on easing the symptoms of blindness instead of preventing vision loss in the first place.
My research is focused on the prevention of vision loss by understanding how specialized structures in the light-sensing cells in the eye, called photoreceptor outer segments (OS), are made, and how defects in OS assembly result in photoreceptor death and blindness. Using genetically-modified frogs, I have replicated human disease caused by mutations in two genes, prominin-1 (prom1) and photoreceptor cadherin (prCAD). I have determined that these genes are necessary for OS organization, and am now working towards identifying their specific functions.
Identifying the roles of prom1 and prCAD will benefit scientists and patients. It will further our understanding of how OS are built, a topic of great interest to visual scientists, and aid in the identification of novel therapies for some of the most common human retinal degenerative disorders.
In our aging society, degenerative complications of chronic diseases are on the rise and account for a significant percentage of deaths. Among these, fibrosis is the most common, and yet no therapy capable of mitigating its effects is available. Investigating and understanding the signaling pathways that influence fibrogenic progenitor (FAP) fate will not only elucidate a key component of the regenerative process but may reveal pathways that could be targeted therapeutically to prevent inflammation, fibrosis, and enhance regeneration or maintain muscle homeostasis.
Here, we will focus on the ability of these progenitors to attract to damaged tissues specific inflammatory cells (eosinophils) that have been linked to fibrosis, with the goal of learning how to prevent their excessive accumulation and thus prevent this prevalent complication of muscular dystrophies and other chronic diseases.
Chronic diseases consume 67% of direct healthcare costs in Canada. Regenerative medicine (RM) is a powerful strategy to address chronic diseases. The next generation of RM therapeutics targets development of living cells and tissues to treat specific indications. Availability of stable progenitor stem cell bio-banks that can be differentiated to desired phenotypes is a crucial pre-requisite. My overarching goal is to understand how complex tissues emerge from pluripotent stem cells and use that knowledge to develop protocols to generate blood progenitor-forming tissues at clinical scales.
My approach rests on three complementary thrusts.
First, I will develop a computational model connecting the genetic code of the cells to their microenvironment to understand how interactions between the two govern cell fate.
Second, I will make pluripotent organoids to validate key parameters influencing earliest stages of stem-cell based blood development.
Finally, promising findings regarding parameters governing emergence of blood forming tissue will be tested in vitro via assays developed by the host lab, yielding pre-clinical data suitable for further technology development.
My work will reveal fundamental rules that govern the emergence of blood-forming tissues and generate new strategies for RM application. My computational approach will yield a new drug design & optimisation paradigm. The proposal will, thus, add to and reinforce BC's position as a leader in Regenerative Medicine.
The emergence of novel technologies in health care is associated with promising opportunities to improve patient health outcomes. Advances in health technologies also come at a substantial cost. New gene therapies have been estimated to cost between $300,000-$4,000,000 per patient. These new therapies offer promise, but do not offer certainty; decision-makers have to choose whether to reimburse the therapy with little evidence for how it might work in the real-world.
Health economics can be used to assess the value of a new therapy compared to current therapies. While the use of health economics seems to be supported, the extent to which it impacts decisions seems to be limited. The proposed research will improve health economics analyses to support decision-makers at BC Cancer. The approach will incorporate real-world evidence, expert and patient opinion, and effective communication with decision-makers. Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy will serve as a case study as it is promising, but is associated with high costs and uncertainty about long-term effectiveness.
This project will bridge the gap between the type of evidence that is provided by standard health economics analyses and that required by decision-makers.
Falls cause up to 80% of traumatic brain injuries (TBI) in older adults. Any fall from standing may cause TBI if head impact occurs. Humans use movement strategies to avoid head impact during falls, such as 'arresting' the fall with the arms. Through video capture of real-life falls, we found that these strategies persist but become less effective for older adults in long-term care, with over 1/3 of falls resulting in head impact in this setting. This project continues our work with Debbie Cheong (Osteofit Provincial Coordinator at BC Women's Health Centre) to design and evaluate novel exercise programs for enhancing protective responses for avoiding head impact in falls. We will identify the strength and flexibility demands of common safe landing strategies observed in falls in older adults, and design and evaluate feasible approaches to enhance those capacities for older adults of varying physical and cognitive status.
This project will lead to new evidence on the strategies that older adults use to avoid head impact during falls, and the musculoskeletal demands of those strategies; new exercise-based approaches for targeting and enhancing the effectiveness of fall protective responses in older adults; and evidence of the feasibility and effectiveness of our exercise program for older adults.
