Congratulations to the following grant recipients!
Irah King (Nominated Principal Investigator)
Team Members: Corrine Maurice, Ali Ahmadi
Funding Agency: New Frontiers in Research Fund – Exploration (2023 Competition)
Application Title: Integrating parasitology and bioengineering to improve gut health
Summary: Intestinal helminths remain one of the most prevalent causes of infectious disease in the world that secrete a multitude of factors that alter the microbiota and regulate the immune response to prevent their expulsion, but also promote tissue healing to ensure the survival of their hosts. This project will explore the secretions from helminths as potential new anti-inflammatory treatments. The plan is to develop smart, ingestible capsules that can precisely release these helminth-derived products to targeted parts of the intestine. These capsules will also collect detailed information on the local microbial and metabolic environment. This innovative approach could lead to a non-invasive, compact, and highly specific system for drug delivery and monitoring.
Dao Nguyen (Co-Investigator)
Director: Yves Brun (Université de Montréal).
Funding Agency: Canada Biomedical Research Fund and Biosciences Research Infrastructure Fund.
Application Title: PandemicStop-AI: for an accelerated response to pandemics.
Summary: This project will use artificial intelligence to discover new antibiotics and develop new technologies to manufacture these novel antibiotics in Canada.
Dao Nguyen and Maziar Divangahi (Co-Investigators)
Lead: Lyle Whyte
Funding Agency: Canadian Space Agency FAST 2023 Program
Application Title: Development and application of an integrated surface melt probe in Icy Moon and Mars analogue sites for biosignature detection and Mars sample return planetary protection risk assessment
Summary: Concerns have been raised about the potential biohazard risk of returning samples from space missions that might contain biological entities capable of replicating and causing disease in humans. The team will analyze the pathogenicity risk of samples collected from extreme environments on Earth (i.e glaciers and arctic sea ice) to ensure the development of instruments and detection protocols. This work will help ensure the safety of samples returned from future missions to icy moons and Mars.
Gregory Fonseca (Co-Investigator)
Team Members: Greg Dekaban, Marco Prado, Vania Prado, Jane Rylett (Schulich Medicine & Dentistry, Western University)
Funding Agency: Krembil Foundation
Application Title: Determining Why Immune Regulation Fails to Control Neuroinflammation in Alzheimer’s Disease.
Summary: This project will understand the impact of the aging process in the development of Alzheimer’s and use spatial data to show the location of inflammation in the brain, along with machine learning models to analyze the inflammation.