Health

More than 100 autoimmune diseases have complex immune responses to autoantigens. Nanoparticles coated with autoimmune-disease-relevant peptide-major histocompatibility complexes (Navacims) have the potential to halt and cure autoimmune disease by restoring immune tolerance without compromising normal immunity to infections and cancer. They are currently the only technology that can activate internal generation of disease-specific regulatory T …

Transcriptional and epigenetic events underpinning Navacim-Induced TR1 cell formation and expansion Read More »

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the urgent need for early warning surveillance systems that can provide information to public health authorities on emerging COVID-19 variants and other infectious diseases. Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is a non-invasive, comprehensive, and cost-effective early warning system that enables population-level monitoring independent of clinical testing. The research team has already developed …

Genomic testing of wastewater to promote public health and safeguard economic performance Read More »

Currently, non-urgent patients may routinely wait 1-2 years to see a metabolic geneticist, an additional 3-4 months to get approval for next generation sequencing (NGS), and an additional 4-6 months to obtain results and counseling. The project aims to establish a Canadian Prairie Metabolic Network (CPMN) and describes a unique, combined clinical and laboratory approach …

Canadian Prairie Metabolomic Network Read More »

Alberta patients with or suspected of having rare genetic diseases continue to face lengthy diagnostic odysseys, and clinical genome wide sequencing has emerged as a rapid and cost-effective approach to diagnosis. Large scale clinical genomics are not available in Alberta, and Alberta Precision Laboratories (APL) has relied primarily on US commercial labs to provide clinical …

TIGeR: Translational implementation of genomics for rare diseases Read More »

Asthma is now the most common chronic disease of childhood, affecting 1 in 7 Canadian children. It is also expensive with a total cost to treat estimated at over $2B per year in Canada. This research project focusses on studying the composition of microorganisms living in our intestines (gut microbiome). Using new genomic technologies to …

Childhood Asthma and the Microbiome – Precision Health for Life: The Canadian Health Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) Study Read More »

Non-invasive prenatal screening (NIPS) genomics analysis of cell free DNA in maternal blood has the potential to perform well as a first-tier screening test for aneuploidies. NIPS use as a first-tier screening test would simplify, streamline, and enhance the safety of prenatal screening for fetal aneuploidies and could potentially detect other important fetal abnormalities. However, …

Pegasus 2 – Personalized genomics for prenatal abnormalities screening using maternal blood: Towards first tier screening and beyond Read More »

Chronic kidney disease affects 1 in 10 Canadians with estimated costs of over $2 billion/year. This project will employ genetic technologies to: 1) reduce the risk of rejection through better donor-patient matching, 2) monitor the immune response after transplant to predict AMR, 3) enable personalized treatment with powerful drugs to prevent rejection while avoiding infection …

Precision medicine CanPREVENT AMR: Applying precision medicine technologies in Canada to prevent antibody mediated rejection and premature kidney transplant loss Read More »

There are about 7,000 rare genetic diseases (RDs) that affect more than one million Canadians. RDs have a devastating impact on Canadians: two-thirds cause significant disability, three-quarters affect children, more than half lead to early death, and almost all have no treatment. The cause of more than one-third of the 7000 RDs is currently unknown. …

Harnessing multi-omics to deliver innovative diagnostic care for rare genetic diseases in Canada (C4R-SOLVE) Read More »

The global rise in the prevalence of antibiotic resistant bacteria is a serious problem, threatening all modern medicine. A primary reason is the one-size-fits-all approach to treating infections, which encourages overuse of drugs and results in unnecessary sickness and death. To address this problem, this project is using metabolomics to create an automated analytical system …

Reducing the global burden of infectious diseases through precision population health Read More »