Alison McAfee is a PhD candidate working under the supervision of Dr. Leonard Foster at the University of British Columbia. Not satisfied with investigating the molecular nature of bacteria, yeast, or mammalian cells, Alison is attempting to deduce the molecular mechanism behind a type of social immunity in honey bees. We sat down with Alison to discuss her work, and…
Congratulations to Dr. Dina Panagiotopoulos, Clinical Professor with UBC’s Faculty of Medicine, who has received a 2017 Women of Distinction Award presented by YWCA Metro Vancouver. Dr. Panagiotopoulos was recognized in the Health & Wellness category, which celebrates women who deliver, promote and advocate for healthy lives and communities. As a nationally-recognized leader in pediatric diabetes, Dr. Panagiotopoulos is also the founder and director of the Type 2…
AbCellera has entered into a collaborative research effort with Sanofi Pasteur, a global leader in the development and sale of vaccines for seasonal influenza. The project will use AbCellera’s single-cell screening platform to profile vaccine-specific human antibodies elicited by seasonal influenza vaccination and to generate large panels of human monoclonal antibodies with desired binding profiles to various influenza strains. Carl…
Every day, 43 children are diagnosed with cancer in North America. Although there have been clear improvements in the treatment of many forms of childhood cancer, the outcome for patients with recurrent or metastatic disease remains dismal and almost unchanged for decades. Moreover, current therapies have very serious side effects on the developing child. This is particularly the case for aggressive childhood cancers such as neuroblastoma, where it is essential to discover targetable alterations typical of cancer cells but which spare normal cells.
On May 15, the Faculty of Medicine celebrated the academic achievements and distinguished careers of 62 faculty members during its annual Academic Gowns and Emeriti Recognition Ceremony. From the Departments of Medicine, Physical Therapy and beyond, recipients from across the Faculty wore black gowns to mark their recent promotions to Professor, Clinical Professor or Professor of Teaching. Special recognition was…
Prof. Jim Kronstad was honoured on Thursday May 4th in a celebration commemorating his 9 years as the MSL Director. In the words of his predecessor, Prof. Phil Hieter, the event was for a man “with a lot of honour and integrity”. These heartfelt sentiments resonated throughout the afternoon as Prof. Kronstad received praise for his creativity, wisdom, strength, hard-working…
Copaxone is an efficacious and safe therapy that has demonstrated clinical benefit for over two decades in patients with relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis (MS). On an individual level, patients show variability in their response to Copaxone, with some achieving significantly higher response levels. The involvement of genes (e.g., HLA-DRB1*1501) with high inter-individual variability in Copaxone’s mechanism of action (MoA)…
“In theory, cerebral edema is a very simple issue; it’s the movement of water from the blood into the brain by osmosis, causing brain swelling. When water is drawn into nerve cells, the brain expands in the skull and that’s where you see severe complications from stroke or traumatic brain injury,” explains Dr. Nick Weilinger. “My work in the MacVicar…
A professor at the University of British Columbia, where he is director of the Centre for Microbial Diseases and Immunity Research, Hancock is considered a world leader in his field. In an interview, he points out that he’s fortunate to get a lot of funding, which gives him the freedom to work on whatever he finds interesting. However, there was…
Congratulations to HLI Principal Investigator Dr. John Boyd for winning the 2017 Providence Health Care Research Institute Innovative and Translational Research Award. This award supports clinical research projects to improve patient care. The award will fund Dr. Boyd’s project, Ex vivo Heart Perfusion: Doubling the Number of Heart Transplants performed in British Columbia. Many patients with end-stage heart failure die due…
