Researchers have obtained an unprecedented view of the ‘ballistic’ weaponry of planktonic microbes, including one that can fire projectiles as if wielding a Gatling gun. “We think of plankton as the tiny alphabet soup of the ocean, floating around passively while larger organisms eat it,” says biologist Gregory Gavelis, who lead the study while a researcher at the University of…
Hundreds of people are expected to march in Vancouver this Saturday to celebrate the role of science in our lives and support evidence-based government policy. Communications officer Kristina Charania says the idea for the march started in January in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration deleting nearly all mentions of climate change off the White House website. Climate change received fairly high…
Zymeworks Inc. (“Zymeworks”), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the discovery, development and commercialization of next-generation multifunctional biotherapeutics, initially focused on the treatment of cancer, today announced that it has filed a registration statement on Form F-1 (the “Registration Statement”) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) and a preliminary prospectus with the securities regulatory authorities in each…
Cellular Dynamics International (CDI), a FUJIFILM company and a leading developer and manufacturer of induced pluripotent stem cell-derived products, today announced it has signed a distribution agreement with STEMCELL Technologies, a world leader in iPS cell culture media. “This joint agreement with STEMCELL Technologies will make iPSC technology widely available to researchers worldwide, helping advance biological research leading to cellular…
Less than a year after publishing research identifying a single genetic mutation that caused multiple sclerosis (MS) in two Canadian families, scientists at the University of British Columbia have found a combination of two other mutations in another family that made them highly susceptible to the disease. The “double gene” mutation was identified in a large Canadian family with five…
Aiden Gibbons was three days old when doctors noticed he was missing something most people take for granted: the coloured ring-shaped membrane behind the cornea of the eye known as the iris. It’s a genetic condition called aniridia that impacts about 5,000 people in North America at birth. Those living with the defect wear dark contact lenses to limit exposure…
The power of environmental DNA (eDNA) is just being tapped. Field surveys to determine if species are present or absent can be labour intensive, expensive and subject to uncertainties especially where species distribution is poorly understood or unknown. eDNA has the potential to become a tool for supporting decisions regarding environmental management, monitoring and impacts. To validate eDNA as an…
SFU researchers have created a patent-pending, optical diagnostic probe capable of more safely and non-invasively detect early stage breast cancer. Recent testing of their diffuse optical breast-scanning (DOB-Scan) probe during an initial clinical study at Surrey’s Jim Pattison Outpatient Care and Surgery Centre found that it can conclusively confirm cancer, while also providing more detail about “suspicious tissue” than conventional…
By the time a person with Parkinson’s disease (PD) receives a diagnosis, they have already lost a substantial amount of their brain dopamine and a lesser extent of brain serotonin. A new international study looked at people with an inherited gene mutation linked to PD prior to or at the earliest stages of disease onset to determine if a reduction…
A record amount of money is spent developing new drugs, but drug approval rates are declining and many fatal diseases are left untreated. A big reason behind this is often times current drug testing methods including animal testing don’t accurately predict the human response to drugs. What if we can 3D print living human tissue to test new drugs and…