Dr. Peter Schubert is a Principal Investigator with the UBC Centre for Blood Research (CBR) and a Clinical Associate Professor at the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. As the principal manager of the Blood4Research Facility, a part of the Centre for Innovation of the Canadian Blood Services, he is also responsible for facilitating the provision of blood to researchers, in order to advance the fields of transfusion and…
As UBC begins consultation on its 2030 Climate Action Plan, Moritz Koch, a new postdoctoral fellow in the LSI, is working to propel a bacteria-based biodegradable alternative to petroleum-based plastics to market. During his PhD at Tübingen University in Germany, Dr. Koch developed a “living plastic ball,” out of cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae. These microscopic organisms are found…
AbCellera has announced agreements to expand its collaboration with Gilead Sciences, Inc. (Gilead) including a multi-year, multi-target antibody discovery collaboration and access to AbCellera’s humanized mouse technology, the Trianni Mouse®. Under the financial terms of the agreements, AbCellera will receive an upfront payment and is eligible for milestone payments and royalties based on the development and commercialization of antibodies generated…
When a mysterious neurological disease was recently discovered in New Brunswick, Dr. Neil Cashman, a clinician-scientist in the Faculty of Medicine’s Department of Neurology and member of the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, was called into action. Because of his expertise in neurodegenerative diseases, in particular protein misfolding diseases, Dr. Cashman was asked by Dr. Michael Coulthart, Head of the…
There is a critical need to monitor for the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern. The virus replicates, with the potential for mutation, not only within the human population, but also within some animal populations that encounter humans. Farmed mink is of particular interest since they are highly susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 and, in Europe, have also been shown to transmit…
New research in Nature Communications details the painstaking unraveling and reconstruction of a key protein in a single-celled, photosynthetic organism called a cryptophyte, a type of algae that evolved over a billion years ago. Up until now, how cryptophytes acquired the proteins used to capture and funnel sunlight to be used by the cell had molecular biologists scratching their heads.…
The Ready to Rocket List by Rocket Builders, is an annual list celebrating BC’s Leading Growth Tech companies. These companies are identified as Emerging Rockets (companies poised for growth) or Ready-to-Rocket (companies already scaling revenue) in several categories: Agri-food, ICT, CleanTech, Digital Health, and Life Sciences. It’s no secret that companies of all kinds felt the impact of COVID-19. Yet, despite the turbulence…
Before COVID-19, tuberculosis was the most devastating infectious disease, affecting more than 10 million people in 2019 alone, and killing more than 1.5 million people annually. Today, on World TB Day 2021, the World Health Organization is calling on the global health community to honour promises made to accelerate the End TB Response, and its flagship initiative, “Find. Treat. All.”…
Widespread efforts to combat COVID-19 have underscored a need for a personalized medicine approach in research. A greater understanding of how COVID-19 affects people individually has researchers calling for a more targeted and cross-disciplinary approach to medical research and patient care. “There can be a tendency in the health care field to operate in silos,” says Dr. Mypinder Sekhon, a…
Entrepreneurship@UBC, a leading university incubator and accelerator, today announced the launch of its Human Health Venture (H²V) Studio, designed to leverage the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) deep pool of research by transforming human health innovations to impact through venture creation. This launch marks the program’s own evolution as an academic incubator/accelerator, creating specialized verticals to work with innovators across…