Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre
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The RIMUHC and McGill are pleased to announce $1 million in funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) to equip their respective Containment Level 3 (CL3) platforms to increase their research capacity with live SARS Cov-2. With this funding, we will be able to furnish our CL3 labs with essential equipment that will enable cutting-edge research for the development of new tools to combat the pandemic, in Canada and beyond, says Dr. Marcel Behr, senior scientist ...and Director of the CL3 Platform at the RI-MUHC. This will allow dozens of investigators who have already secured funding to do research on live SARS-CoV-2 to safely conduct studies on the virus. The contribution of the Fondation CUSM - MUHC Foundation to the McGill Interdisciplinary Initiative in Infection and Immunity (#MI4) was a key in jumpstarting this project. Read the full article on our website: https://bit.ly/3peaMUf

A new study published today in Cell! Congratulations to the team led by Maziar Divangahi, PhD, pulmonary immunologist at the RI-MUHC, who found that not only can stem cells be targeted for protective vaccination but they can also be hijacked by a pathogen to increase TB virulence. In photo: Maziar Divangahi, Principal Investigator, Nargis Khan, Postdoctoral Fellow and first author of the study, Jeff Downey, PhD candidate and co-first author of the study. Read the full story ...on our website: https://bit.ly/31U7kEl Read the paper in Cell: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)31303-9 See more

Driving Personalized Medicine: The 2020 RI-MUHC Annual Report is now online! https://bit.ly/35OK9O8

Congratulations to Wajih Jawhar of the Cancer Research Program! A research assistant and former trainee at the RI-MUHC, he has been named a member of the newly launched Youth Advisory Council of The Institute of Human Development, Child and Youth Health, one of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The council is a group of diverse young Canadians who are passionate about health and health research, and they bring the voice of the youth directly into conversations about priority development, policies and issues that impact Canadian communities. Read about the 12 outstanding young council members from across Canada on the CIHR website. https://cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/51876.html

In a recent publication in the journal CHEST, researchers led by RI-MUHC scientist Sushmita Pamidi, MD and first author Raphieal Newbold, M.Sc., found elevated nighttime glucose levels linked to increasing severity of sleep apnea in pregnant women with gestational diabetes. Their results may help prioritize the treatment of sleep disorders in pregnant women with gestational diabetes, leading to better health for mother and baby. Read more on our website: https://bit.ly/36xh0pM #WorldDiabetesDay #November14

Lest we forget.

Dozens of young patients will be among the first in Canada to benefit from new gene therapy treatment to restore sight, which improves vision and slows the prog...ressive loss of #vision. Restoring vision to people with inherited retinal dystrophies through a new gene therapy surgery will soon be possible thanks to the long-term work of Dr. Robert K. Koenekoop, Director of Pediatric Ophthalmology at the Hôpital de Montréal pour enfants - Montréal Children's Hospital. Health Canada has approved the Luxturna treatment, the first gene therapy in Canada for the treatment of patients with inherited retinal dystrophies caused by the RPE65 gene mutation, such as Leber congenital amaurosis and retinitis pigmentosa. This is the first treatment for these devastating conditions; it represents a giant step forward in the field of personalized medicine. It will not only allow these individuals to regain some of their vision, but also to recover their autonomy. Press release: bit.ly/33ZKufE #Blindness #research #ophtalmology #pediatrics #healthcanada

A new RI-MUHC study uses sleep-deprived fruit flies to study regulation of rebound sleep. Published in the journal eLife, the work was led by PhD student Sejal Davla and senior scientist Dr. Don van Meyel, in collaboration with researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Proteomics Platform of the RI-MUHC. The study advances our understanding of the mechanisms of sleep homeostasis and could have important implications for the scie...nce of sleep. Read more on our website: https://bit.ly/2J43Icl Read the original article: https://elifesciences.org/articles/53994 Find out what the Clinical Proteomics Platform at the RI-MUHC can do for you: https://bit.ly/31Bo0jK

Congratulations to Catherine Argyriou, PhD! She has earned the prestigious Mitacs Elevate Postdoctoral Fellowship. This fellowship allows her to participate in a research management training program while working with Dr. Nancy Braverman and venture capital fund AmorChem Therapeutics to advance gene therapy for PEX1-mediated Zellweger Spectrum Disorder (ZSD). Catherine is a trainee in the Child Health and Human Development #CHHD Program at the #RIMUHC.

Dr. Madhukar Pai, Director of the McGill International TB Centre and senior scientist at the RI-MUHC, has been advocating for a damage control plan to help mitigate the disruptive effects of the pandemic on essential TB services in low- and middle-income countries.

The Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging ( #CLSA) launches a national study to understand coronavirus immunity in aging adults.

Félicitations au Dr Sharma pour cette collaboration avec Amazon Web Services. Est-ce que 'Alexa' peut aider avec le dépistage de la COVID-19 ? Dr Sharma est un chercheur avec le Programme de recherche en santé cardiovasculaire au long de la vie #SCLV, et membre du Centre de recherche évaluative en santé #CORE

Interesting work! Dr. Sharma is a scientist in the RI-MUHC's Cardiovascular Health Across the Lifespan #CHAL Program at the Centre for Outcomes Research and Evaluation #CORE.

A great story, and a great pic featuring some of the hard working team from McGill's Centre de recherche en biologie structurale #CRBS and the #RIMUHC.

#RIMUHC researchers published a new study on novel treatments for metastatic #melanoma in the journal Scientific Reports. Led by postdoc Marina Machado, PhD, and senior scientist Dr. Sasha Bernatsky, this work analyses the discontinuation of immune checkpoint inhibitors, a drug class representing the best hope for many. Read more on our website : https://rimuhc.ca/-/new-study-of-therapy-options-in-metasta Read the original article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-71788-z

#Treating mild cases of COVID-19 : Inspired by promising laboratory studies, a team of researchers at the RI-MUHC has started testing the efficiency of cicleson...ide, an inhaled and nasal steroid drug currently used for asthma and nasal rhinitis. This study will confirm whether this treatment can reduce the severity of respiratory symptoms and potentially avoid the need for hospitalization and oxygen. We know the COVID-19 virus starts by multiplying in the nose and progresses downwards to the lower parts of the airways and lungs. We hope that targeting the site of viral replication with inhaled and nasal ciclesonide will reduce early viral replication and decrease severity of COVID-19 illness, says the principal investigator in this study, Dr. Nicole Ezer. If you have COVID-19 and live in the province of Quebec, you may be eligible to register for this clinical trial. The treatment is done entirely at home. Please visit https://www.contain-covid19.com/ For more on this study: https://bit.ly/35SbEX8 Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre Fondation CUSM - MUHC Foundation

Systematic testing of groups at increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 is an affordable and reasonable approach according to a new cost-analysis study. Researchers recommend widespread testing of priority groups, including healthcare workers, school students and staff, and essential services employees. Read the details on our website: https://bit.ly/35F71jn The study was conducted by Dr. Dick Menzies, a senior scientist in the #RESP Program and Jonathon Campbell, PhD, a postdoctoral f...ellow at the #RIMUHC, as well as coauthors from McGill University and other institutions. This work was supported by the McGill Interdisciplinary Initiative in Infection and Immunity ( #MI4) with seed funding from the Fondation CUSM - MUHC Foundation.

Maziar Divangahi, PhD, a scientist at the #RIMUHC, is one of 50 new members of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists named by the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) this September. This honour recognizes his major contributions to our understanding of both innate and adaptive immunity to pulmonary infectious diseases. Congratulations!

Congratulations to all, and in particular, to #RIMUHC scientist Maziar Divangahi on this terrific honour! #RESPProgram Meakins-Christie Laboratories #RIMUHC