A drug originally designed to prevent osteoporosis is now expected to save and improve the lives of millions of people with breast cancer, thanks in part to decades of foundational research by Dr. Josef Penninger, a professor in UBC’s Faculty of Medicine and director of the Life Sciences Institute. The achievement highlights how UBC scientists are developing effective new treatments…
The LSI’s Dr. Tim Kieffer was recently awarded funding for a project, “Designing stem cell-derived islets for diabetes therapy” through the JDRF-CIHR Partnership to Defeat Diabetes, a joint investment by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Diabetes Canada, and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) Canada. The funding for Dr. Kieffer’s project, along with a second funded project by…
A breakthrough paper from the Zandstra lab has scientists excited about the potential impacts of their findings on personalized medicine. The research in the Stem Cell Reports publication showcases a new computational modelling technique that helps understand the relationship between genes, cells and their microenvironments (molecules, cells and structures that surround and support other cells and tissues). The team designed computer models to make predictions about cell…
Steven Jiang is a 2nd year Masters of Science student at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in the department of biochemistry and molecular biology and the Centre for Blood Research (CBR), under the supervision of Dr. Hugh Kim. Steven’s research focuses on the effect of platelets on rheumatoid arthritis, an inflammatory disease that causes joint pain in more than…
Researchers with the SFU Nanodevice Fabrication Group are developing a new biosensor that can be used to screen for Alzheimer’s disease and other diseases. An overview of their work has been recently published in the journal Nature Communications. Their sensor works by detecting a particular type of small protein, in this case a cytokine known as Tumour Necrosis Factor alpha (TNF…
“Fly me to the moon, let me play among the stars” – while this is the start of a Frank Sinatra song, it’s also how University of British Columbia pharmaceutical sciences professor Dr. Corey Nislow may be feeling as he begins to analyze baker’s yeast and algae samples, which returned to Earth on December 11 after travelling around the moon…
Alpha-9 Theranostics, a UBC spin-off company founded by three university researchers, has raised $75 million to develop next-generation radiopharmaceuticals that promise to meaningfully improve treatment for people with cancer. Based on more than a decade of ground-breaking research at UBC and BC Cancer, the cancer drugs act like a homing device — seeking out tumours to deliver targeted radiation treatment,…
The primary focus of Dr. Shernaz Bamji's lab at present is to determine how the addition and removal of a fatty acid lipid molecule, in a process known as ‘protein palmitoylation’, alters the function of key proteins that are involved in signaling at the synapse. They hope to better understand the critical role of palmitoylation in synaptic remodeling, and how disrupted palmitoylation contributes to numerous brain disorders, including Schizophrenia and X-linked intellectual disability.
January is Alzheimer Awareness Month. Alzheimer disease (AD) is a progressive, chronic neurodegenerative disease that destroys brain cells, causing thinking ability and memory to deteriorate over time. As the brain ages, it is more susceptible to Alzheimer disease and related dementia. The process by which AD develops begins decades before even the first signs of disease are present. Interventions that…
For people with mental health conditions, finding a medication that works without causing severe side effects is often a matter of trial-and-error. This difficult process can cause people to abandon their treatment, lead to poorer health and increases costs for BC’s health care system. Pharmacogenomics (PGx) can improve a person’s health by helping them know whether a drug is likely…
