Dr. Genelle Lunken started running at age three. She leapt into track and field, kickball, as well as rugby — even though it was considered a “boy’s sport” in her native New Zealand — tennis, volleyball, cricket, golf — even lawn bowling. She also rolled into gymnastics, “But I was terrible at that. I was too tall and lanky to be…
The generation of functional β-cells from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) for cell replacement therapy and disease modeling of diabetes is being investigated by many groups. We have developed a protocol to harvest and aggregate hPSC-derived pancreatic progenitors generated using a commercially available kit into near uniform spheroids and to further differentiate the cells toward an endocrine cell fate in…
Genetic and epigenetic events have been implicated in the downregulation of the cellular antigen processing and presentation machinery (APM), which in turn, has been associated with cancer evasion of the immune system. When these essential components are lacking, cancers develop the ability to subvert host immune surveillance allowing cancer cells to become invisible to the immune system and, in turn,…
Renaissance BioScience Corp., a leader in bioengineering for the global agriculture and food industries, is pleased to announce that the Government of Canada’s Pest Management Research Agency (PMRA) has approved the company’s field study application for its sustainable and eco-friendly RNA interference (RNAi) biopesticide delivery technology. Authorization from the PMRA, following a thorough review of the company’s extensive data dossier,…
Congratulations to Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Sofia Graham, for receiving the prestigious Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship Award. Sofia works with Dr. Govind Kaigala on bioanalytical tools and methods for precise and quantitative interrogation of biological systems. Before coming to UBC, Sofia completed her PhD in Biotechnology Engineering from the Technion Israel Institute of Technology and achieved a doctoral degree in Technical Chemistry…
Long-read sequencing technologies have improved significantly since their emergence. Their read lengths, potentially spanning entire transcripts, is advantageous for reconstructing transcriptomes. Existing long-read transcriptome assembly methods are primarily reference-based and to date, there is little focus on reference-free transcriptome assembly. We introduce “RNA-Bloom2 [https://github.com/bcgsc/RNA-Bloom]”, a reference-free assembly method for long-read transcriptome sequencing data. Using simulated datasets and spike-in control data,…
We are pleased to announce CIFAR Fellow James Kronstad’s appointment as the Power Corporation Fellow. The Power Corporation of Canada, an international management and financial services company, has been a valued donor to CIFAR since 1987, contributing over $3 million to support research. One of their key charitable pillars is supporting the protection of ecosystems and biodiversity. “Power Corporation has…
When UBC mechanical engineering student Yi Yi Du came out of a two-month-long coma after being struck by a car in the fall of 2021, no one knew what the next stage of his life would look like. People who experience traumatic brain injuries, like Du did, often either don’t live very long, or they face a significantly reduced quality…
Applications are now open for Innovate BC’s Ignite program, which awards up to $300,000 to fund B.C.-based research and development projects that are creating game-changing innovations in the areas of natural resources, engineering and applied sciences. The funding is awarded to teams of academia and industry who come together to solve a significant challenge that British Columbians face.
