Aequus Pharmaceuticals Inc., a specialty life sciences company focused on providing patients with differentiated and enhanced delivery systems for existing and approved drugs, and Scientus Pharma Inc., a biopharmaceutical company focused on R&D and product commercialization for extracts and formulations related to medical cannabinoids and their derivatives, announced today that they have signed a non-binding term sheet on a collaboration…
Oral sucrose is administered routinely to reduce pain of minor procedures in premature infants and is recommended as standard care in international guidelines. No human or animal studies on effects of early repeated sucrose exposure on long-term brain development have been done in the context of pain. We evaluated the effects of repeated neonatal sucrose treatment before an intervention on…
Yes, you read that right: Getting dirty may reduce your risk of depression. But before you start rolling in the mud or even worse, eating it, let’s take a step back. The hygiene hypothesis has been bandied about for ages. In a nutshell, it suggests that we are too clean, which is why we get sick. Early childhood is the time when…
The past decade has brought tremendous progress in unraveling the pathophysiology of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). While increasingly sophisticated immunotherapy targeting soluble and aggregated brain amyloid-beta (Aβ) continues to dominate clinical research in AD, a deeper understanding of Aβ physiology has led to the recognition of distinct neuronal signaling pathways linking Aβ to synaptotoxicity and neurodegeneration and to new targets for…
Continuing their longstanding tradition of partnering to fund high quality Canadian prostate cancer research, Prostate Cancer Canada (PCC) and The Movember Foundation today announced two new projects with very real potential to make a tangible difference in the lives of men living with aggressive forms of prostate cancer. Dr. Amina Zoubeidi is one of the recipients, for a project to…
Prioritizing molecular alterations that act as drivers of cancer remains a crucial bottleneck in therapeutic development. Here we introduce HIT’nDRIVE, a computational method that integrates genomic and transcriptomic data to identify a set of patient-specific, sequence-altered genes, with sufficient collective influence over dysregulated transcripts. HIT’nDRIVE aims to solve the “random walk facility location” (RWFL) problem in a gene (or protein)…
The use of medication in modern medicine has revolutionized healthcare and made a significant impact on patient longevity and quality of life. Unfortunately, many medications can also cause unintended side effects – also known as adverse drug reactions (ADRs). In an effort to reduce severe ADRs in Canada, researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and the BC Children’s…
CHÉOS Scientist Dr. Mark Harrison was among the 20 B.C.-based health researchers that received 2017 Scholar Awards from the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research (MSFHR). The MSFHR Scholar Program supports the development of B.C.’s research talent by providing salary support to scientists who are building strong research programs and training new scientists. “With this award I will be studying ways to provide better…
In brief, this publication describes the detailed gene-level execution of zygote development in the first two hours after the fusion of two sexual gametes via RNA-seq transcriptome analysis. Two major conclusions are: 1) the majority of differentially regulated genes during zygote development is under the control of the GSM1/GSP1 heterodimeric homeobox transcription factors; and 2) the transition from gamete to zygote is executed by transcriptional activation of zygote-specific genes and post-transcriptional inhibition of vegetative/gamete-specific transcripts.
Dr. Carles Vilarino-Guell of the Centre for Brain Health at the University of British Columbia is one of twenty principal investigators from Vancouver to be the recipients of MSFHR Scholar Awards. Find out who else in Vancouver won grants, awards, fellowships, and scholarships in the month of July!
