Like many LGBT+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community organizations, Reelout Arts Project Inc.
provides resources to people who experience social or geographic isolation – particularly through their
annual film festival and community film library. For these resources to reach broad audiences, however, they
must be able to connect with those who are searching for relevant material. The success of search results
has much to do with the organization of information online: the ways in which resources are described,
compiled, and presented to users.

The University of Toronto’s Translational Research Program (TRP) is a graduate program that developed the Co-Translational Framework (CTF) to systematically mobilize research towards innovations to improve health outcomes.
The Translational Research for Innovation initiative is the research mechanism to help validate the CTF to facilitate meaningful collaboration between industry and academia.

Degenerative brain diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease remain incurable despite intense research over decades. Progranulin, a protein that was identified and characterized in our laboratories and it has been shown to inhibit the development of Parkinson’s-like and Alzheimer’s-like symptoms in experimental models in mice by the partner organization Neurodyn. We believe that it has similar potential to forestall brain diseases in humans. A roadblock towards this goal is the complexity of the progranulin molecule.

Focused Ultrasound (FUS) is a therapeutic modality that can concentrate non-invasively mechanical energy far from its source in just a few cubic millimeters. FUS is used, by example, to treat brain disorders such as essential tremor. At research level, very diverse approaches are being explored.

Life on the planet has evolved in constant presence of radiation, some of which comes from space, and some of which comes from natural sources in the Earth. This natural background radiation (NBR) is a normal component of biological life. One way we can study the role of NBR in life is to see what the effects are when we take it away. This is difficult to do at the surface of the planet and requires that we go deep underground to shield out some of these parts of NBR.

Cannabis has been known to treat ailments for thousands of years, including conditions such as pain, cancer, arthritis, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis (MS) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Despite an increase in research dedicated to molecular and behavioural effects of cannabinoids, there has been no direct evidence to elucidate the effect of cannabis on pain-related areas in the human central nervous system.

Muscle wasting is a common complication of many diseases such as cancer, chronic heart and lung disease and results in weakness, impaired quality of life and shortened survival. There are no drugs for the treatment of muscle wasting. We have identified a gene, USP19, in the ubiquitin pathway which is the major pathway of protein breakdown in cells. USP19 is activated in rodents in skeletal muscle wasting from many catabolic conditions. Mice lacking USP19 lose less muscle mass and strength in several conditions of muscle wasting.

Approximately 5% of the population has a Spondylolisthesis (one of the lower vertebrae slips forward onto the bone directly beneath it). Non-invasive image-based assessment of this spinal structure is an increasing demand in healthcare service. However, the massive information embedded in the increasing large imaging scans has made manual inspection a lengthy and tedious task and observer dependent. The proposed research aims at a computer-aided spinal-scan assessment software toolkit facilitating the diagnosis of Spondylolisthesis.