Winnipeg Structure Development Fund awards varied Rady Professors jobs
2 interdisciplinary research groups at the University of Manitoba’s Rady Faculty of Health Sciences have received 1 year grants from The Winnipeg Structure Innovation Fund for cutting-edge projects that will advance research study in the areas of brain disease and mother-infant health.
“I believe these two tasks illustrate the diversity of the kinds of projects The Winnipeg Foundation supports, which expand the spectrum of research with high-risk, high-reward initiatives,” states Dr. Peter Nickerson, Vice-Dean (Research) and Distinguished Teacher, Rady Professors of Health Sciences.
Role of endothelial NMDA receptors in glutamate-induced glioma development
Dr. Chris Anderson, pharmacology and rehabs teacher, Max Rady College of Medicine, and director, Neuroscience Research Program, Kleysen Institute for Advanced Medication, leads a team that will even more research into glioblastomas, a fatal kind of brain cancer with couple of treatment alternatives and a typical survival time of less than 15 months.
Together with co-leads Dr. Tanveer Sharif, department of pathology, and Dr. Ji Hyun Ko, department of human anatomy and cell science, Anderson will study whether a specific cell protein in the lining of brain blood vessels called an NMDA receptor, represents a viable new target for comprehensive therapeutic investigation.
“Dr. Sharif’s partnership with McMaster University provides us access to client glioblastoma samples, which we can study in Manitoba,” Anderson says. “We will culture the glioblastoma cells with brain endothelial cells to study the nature of molecular interactions in between them, in information, consisting of the role of NMDA receptors. It’s kind of an easy technique, however it will be effective in permitting us to determine the function NMDA receptors play in glioblastoma cell movement and tumour expansion.”
The 2nd part of the job will include studying the development of tumours after transplanting patient-derived glioblastoma samples into live mice.
“Using MRI and PET imaging, along with other cutting edge methods, we will look at patterns of glioblastoma cell seepage, in addition to tumour size, blood flow and metabolic process. Carrying out these experiments in mice genetically engineered to get rid of NMDA receptors in endothelial cells will allow us to straight check the role of this interesting host target,” says Anderson.
Huge information in mother-infant health research study
Dr. Sherif Eltonsy, assistant teacher in the College of Drug store, was also awarded $100,000 grant, for a multi-site project that will develop a national database on the effects of medications on moms and their offspring.
“The concept is to utilize real-world data to inform moms, policymakers and physicians on the effects of medications; which are the best to utilize and which present a risk to mom or baby health,” Eltonsy stated. “Pregnant ladies are excluded from randomized trials, so typically this becomes the only way to assess the security of many medications in the market on moms and babies.”
Eltonsy, a pharmacoepidemiologist with a scholastic focus on drug safety, leads the project with two researchers from the Max Rady College of Medicine, Dr. Marcus Ng and Dr. Chelsea Ruth, who focus on neurology and neonatology respectively. The team is collaborating with researchers in Quebec, Saskatchewan and Alberta.
“The task lines up perfectly with The Winnipeg Structure Innovation Fund as an interdisciplinary ingenious task with short-term concrete results– responses to questions mothers have about how best to keep themselves and their babies safe– in addition to a sustainable long-term platform that can be utilized routinely for huge information analyses in mother-infant health,” Eltonsy said.
Throughout the next year, Eltonsy’s team will concentrate on producing the infrastructure of the project and developing a pilot demonstration using epilepsy medications information. “We prepare to produce a national epilepsy and mother-infant health group covering over 1.5 million pregnancies and 20 years of follow-up,” he stated.
The 2 grants are part of The Winnipeg Structure’s $1-million dedication, over five years, to support advanced medical research tasks through the Rady Professors of Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba.