Vaccines are one of the most important medical breakthroughs, proactively saving millions of lifes and reducing human morbidity. Yet there remains a need to make current vaccine formulations more effective and affordable, which requires testing and optimizing new formulations. In addition, there remains diseases for which there are no efficient vaccine. To develop and test new vaccines or vaccine formulations, Sanofi Pasteur and other manufacturers often rely on animal testing.

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.

Powdery mildew is a foliar fungal disease that attacks all Cannabis sativa varieties. The majority of license producers (LP) producers have witnessed evidence of this problem firsthand. Plant yields and ultimate profitability can be severely undermined by pathogen infections. This pathogen is challenging to deal with, and early detection of fungus and pests eliminate these crop losses and boost overall yields. The proposed research will apply novel molecular breeding approaches to obtain durable and broad –spectrum resistance to Powdery mildew.

Many patients who initially respond well to highly efficacious chemotherapy eventually develop resistance and relapse despite continued treatment. These cancers acquire drug resistance to current therapies through various mechanisms such as the acquisition of mutations for example. Furthermore, some promising targets that play a crucial role in the progression of cancer have been deemed undruggable using current methods.

Fungal pathogens of agriculturally significant crops pose a serious threat against global food security. This is exacerbated by the limited classes of fungicides that are commercially available for the farmers and the rapid emergence of resistance against the existing fungicides. Furthermore, resistance against agricultural fungicides can poses serious threat to human health as it can provide cross-resistance to the antifungal drugs that are used in the clinics world-wide.

Sensors that track human movement are becoming more and more popular in all kinds of applications including healthcare, sport and general human movement. However, traditional sensors generally have problems tracking individuals indoors and they are not very accurate when measuring subtle movements. Using innovative technology, new wearable sensors have been developed to track human movement that have solved the problems associated with previous sensors.

Xpan Inc. is developing a patent-pending expandable laparoscopic access port device. Xpan needs to develop its proof of concept prototype into a high-fidelity prototype through a series of iterative design, prototyping and benchtop testing.
Research must be performed to select appropriate biocompatible material that achieve user requirements. Research must also be performed to evaluate the performance and efficacy of several different designs that Xpan is contemplating to develop.

Plastics are the prime contributor to the global litter crisis. Every second, a quarter tonne of non-degradable plastics enter the world’s oceans. Despite this, petroleum-based plastic production continues to increase, with more than 300 billion kilograms of virgin plastic produced annually. Our team is slightly altering the metabolism of a strain of bacteria to efficiently mass produce biodegradable plastic from hemp substrate. Unlike other biodegradable plastics, ours has excellent strength and flex characteristics.

ImmunoPrecise antibodies is a company that specialized in the production of custom antibodies, the Y-shaped molecules produced by living things to defend itself from infection. Their ability to recognize and bind to specific targets allows for their use in diverse scientific analyses where their specificity of binding is manipulated to allow for localization and/or isolation of specific targets.