Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a common illness that affects millions of Canadians, yet there are no effective therapies to treat it. Genes play a role in COPD development, and our proposal aims at identifying those genes in lung tissue that cause the disease. The Providence Airway Centre is very committed at helping COPD patients in Canada and worldwide. The proposed studies with Drs.

Canada produces about 9 billion eggs per year; of these, about 27% are processed at egg breaking plants that yield low value eggshell (ES) and eggshell membrane (ESM) waste as a byproduct. The objective of this project is to develop processes to isolate high value products from ESM waste including HA, collagens, other proteins and anti-oxidants, using green chemistry. Our starting point will be raw ESM provided by our industrial partner, Burnbrae Farms (BBF).

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a progressive condition characterized by the chronic elevation of pulmonary artery (PA) pressure leading to failure of the heart. In spite of recent advances in approved therapies, PAH remains a serious disease with significant mortality.

Upper limb physical impairments complicate the patient’s everyday tasks and possibly his ability to be independent with functional activities. Robotics technology is a promising approach for the rehabilitation of upper limb physical impairment. Indeed, the use of robotic systems helps therapists apply flexible, scheduled, and consistent therapy for long period of time, and has great flexibility in performing various training scenarios.

Osteoarthritis is a progressive joint disease that causes pain and stiffness, resulting in a decrease in quality of life for patients. Treatment include intra-articular administration of crystalline corticosteroids or hyaluronate. Intra-articular corticosteroids, due to the large doses required, short residence time in the joint, and crystalline structure, are associated with cartilage damage and a short duration of action requiring multiple injections.

Currently no regenerative therapy exists for spinal cord injury. This project aims to optimize and generate the ideal cell type for stem cells to be used to treat cervical spinal cord injury. It aims to do so by testing the transplantation potential of different derivatives of the cells responsible for formation of neurons and other supporting cells within the spinal cord and central nervous system – the neural precursor cells (NPCs). The study will be performed on rodents and will simultaneously optimize the most suitable method to deliver the cells to the site of injury.

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.