Health

Rare genetic diseases are individually rare but collectively quite common, affecting approximately 3 million Canadians. Unlike common diseases, genetic causes for rare diseases must often be hypothesized from plausibility criteria and identified through progressive exclusion of candidate variants in a single case or a small number of heterogeneous cases. Few integrated software systems exist to […]

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a global medical and economic crisis. Laboratory testing capacity has played pivotal role in our national response to this emergency. The shift from targeted, clinically oriented testing to widespread high-throughput community testing may dramatically increase the need for affordable COVID19 tests. Although many new assays are coming online, most of

Working in concert with Alberta Health Services Public Health Officers, leading clinicians and Alberta Public Laboratories, the team will recruit the Alberta Childhood COVID-19 Cohort (ABCCC), consisting of all children under the age of 18 who undergo testing for the SARS-COV2 virus. Specifically, the project will: 1) assess the role of children’s immune response as

Mutations are common and expected in coronaviruses genomes. Scientists can take advantage of these mutations to track the spread of the viruses in the community, providing vital public health information on the movement and potential sources of disease. To improve on the speed in generating this genetic information, this team will rapidly generate genetic sequences

Since 2007, over 1200 residents of Indigenous communities in the Northwest Territories (NWT) and Yukon (YT) have participated in research to learn more about Helicobacter pylori infection. A working group formed that included Indigenous community members, their healthcare providers, territorial health authorities, and academic researchers demonstrated that the community concerns were well founded. They estimated

Currently, it takes 2-5 days to identify bloodstream infection (BSI) pathogens and perform antibiotic susceptibility testing. Patients who receive the wrong antibiotic over this time are ten times more likely to die. To address this, the project has manufactured a new microscale metabolomics device that integrates all the steps of the microbiology testing pipeline into

Living with arthritis severely affects a child’s ability to enjoy regular activities with friends and family and participate in school. Recently, effective drugs called “biologics” have become available for children with arthritis. They are expensive, however, causing a burden on public and private health care systems. In this project, they will allow doctors and families

The project will develop computational tools based on recent developments in advanced statistical algorithms, referred to as “deep learning,” to handle the “big data” generated by metabolomics. The first tool, DeepMet, will increase the number of molecules that can be identified in metabolomic experiments. The second, MetUnknown, will help assign chemical structures to molecules that

Clinicians in Canada are faced with a lack of tools needed to appropriately stratify patients that present with thyroid nodules. Thus, many patients undergoing screening for suspicion of thyroid cancer are exposed to invasive and often unnecessary diagnostic procedures. The project team has developed the ThyroSPEC™ assay, a highly accurate, cost-efficient mass spectrometry-based mutation detection