Over half a million Canadians are currently living with Alzheimer’s disease or a related form of dementia, and with a rapidly aging population, that number is projected to double by 2031. Now, a new test will help patients find the answers they are seeking and assist their families in planning in the face of an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. “This is an…
Variational AI, developer of state-of-the-art generative AI technology to redefine the economics of drug development by accelerating the discovery of novel and optimized small molecule therapeutics, today announced the company has generated and ordered compounds for validation in partnership with the University of British Columbia (UBC) and adMare BioInnovations to develop a novel SARS-CoV-2 Main Protease (3CLpro) inhibitor. The therapeutic is intended to be…
Lack of matrix deposition is one of the main factors that complicates the healing process of wounds. The aim of this study was to test the efficacy and safety of a liquid dermal scaffold, referred to as MeshFill (MF) that can fill the complex network of tunnels and cavities which are usually found in chronic wounds and hence improve the…
Dr. Connie Eaves is investigating two different organ systems. In both cases, they want to understand how the cells within them are normally produced throughout life and the nature of the changes they undergo to become malignant. One is the system that makes blood cells and leukemia. The other is the mammary gland that is located inside the breast and…
The majority of genetic variants detected in genome wide association studies (GWAS) exert their effects on phenotypes through gene regulation. Motivated by this observation, we propose a multi-omic integration method that models the cascading effects of genetic variants from epigenome to transcriptome and eventually to the phenome in identifying target genes influenced by risk alleles. This cascading epigenomic analysis for…
GenXys Healthcare Systems Inc. (GenXys) is adding a new value dimension to Precision Genetics and the personalized health marketplace. Precision prescribing has become a leading method to bring pharmacogenetics (PGx) closer to the standard of care for certain conditions that often carry a high cost and a lower rate of medication effectiveness. Precision Genetics will use GenXys’s award-winning suite of…
For difficult-to-treat cancers, like androgen receptor-positive prostate cancer that does not respond to anti-androgen therapy, combination therapy is required. A new study from Drs. Sadar and Tien at the Genome Sciences Centre examined the in vivo response to treatment with both a cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor and a drug that binds to the N-terminal domain of androgen receptors. Together, palbociclib and…
Now in its fifth year, the Health Professional-Investigator (HP-I) award is dedicated to support health professionals who are actively involved in patient care to conduct and apply research relevant to health and/or the health system to ultimately improve health outcomes in BC and beyond. The 2021 award competition invited a broad range of health professionals, and this year recipients included…
Each year, the American Society of Hematology (ASH) offers the merit-based awards to support select trainees with high-achieving annual meeting abstracts who are chosen to present their work at the ASH annual meeting. Trainees include those who fall within one of the following categories: undergraduate student, medical student, graduate student, resident physician, and postdoctoral fellow (MD or PhD). Sammy Zheng (Jiang Lab) was…
Cardiac muscle uses multiple sources of energy including glucose and fatty acid (FA). The heart cannot synthesize FA and relies on obtaining it from other sources, with lipoprotein lipase (LPL) breakdown of lipoproteins suggested to be a key source of FA for cardiac use. Recent work has indicated that cardiac vascular endothelial growth factor B (VEGFB) overexpression expands the coronary…
