The Canadian Mental Health Association states that all Canadians will indirectly be affected by mental health at some time in their lives through a family member, friend, or colleague and that 20% of Canadians will be affected personally. Most conditions are treated with pharmaceuticals that often come with unwanted side effects. Many patients have starting looking for alternatives from “big pharma” medications and in this search have found medical marijuana to be helpful.

Zinc deficiency during the post-weaning period is known to cause adverse health outcomes such as impairment of growth and diarrhea. Zinc supplement seems to critical in achieving positive growth responses, but a high dose of zinc is concerned to be toxic and cause a large amount of zinc excretion, resulting in environmental pollution. Thus, the purpose of this project is to investigate the effects of a lower dose of zinc supplement, coated zinc oxide, on growth performance and gut health in weanling animals.

For the management of neuromuscular disorders (NMD), subcutaneous immunoglobulin (SCIg) administration has become an alternate option, being a home-based alternative to conventional intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg), with a comparable efficacy, minimum adverse effects and significant improvement to the quality of life. With the increased cost of healthcare management, it has become more challenging for clinicians and other healthcare decision makers to come up with a better alternative while considering economics factors, though as a secondary.

AVID200 is a TGF-? trap that specifically sequesters TGF-?I and TGF-?III to enhance antitumour immunity to inhibit tumor growth. AVID200 also avoids adverse side effect of depleted of TGF-?II. AVID200 is relatively short-lived in circulation, decreasing its capacity to exert desirable enhancement of anti-tumour immunity. To increase the effectiveness of TGF-? traps, a panel of candidate molecules that retain TGF-? isoform specificity and inactivating capacity, but with projected increased stability, have been generated by Formation Biologics.

Preterm neonates ill-adapted to the extra uterine environment are prone to increased inflammation in multiple organs and the proinflammatory interleukine IL-1b has been closely implicated in brain injury associated with preterm birth (PTB). One major adverse neuronal outcome for PTB survivors is the greater propensity to develop ischemic brain lesions long after birth. Here, we hypothesize that the neural vasculature of premature infants becomes maladapted to appropriately respond to hypoxic-ischemic stress.

The proposed project will use classical animal models to investigate the therapeutic effects and associated side effects of extracts from the whole plant of different strains of cannabis. The targeted medical conditions include pain and chemotherapy induced nausea and vomiting (CINV). Our data and results will play a key role in pre-screening of cultivars to obtain best candidates suited for particular medical conditions, or that have lower side-effect liability.

Manufacturing of consistently high quality products is the commitment of the pharmaceutical industry. To achieve this, new products must be thoroughly tested and the results must meet government-approved product specifications. Improving existing and adopting improved analytical technologies for product testing ensure the production of safe and effective products. This is particularly critical for the manufacturing of vaccines and biologics which, relative to small molecular drugs, are more susceptible to contamination by viral or microbial adventitious agents.

Medical leeching can be traced back to the beginning of civilization. Ancient Egyptians, Indians, and Greek physicians used leeching as a treatment for a variety of diseases. In the past few decades, comprehensive studies have investigated the therapeutic applications of leech products and especially leech saliva. Recent studies completed by our lab have determined a therapeutic potential of a leech saliva extract component (BPS-001), with demonstrated strong anticancer properties.

Interstitial cystitis is an inflammatory disease of the urinary bladder and is recognized as a serious medical condition associated with a profoundly negative impact on patients’ quality of life. Currently, there are no widely acknowledged causes of this disorder and no effective treatments available. Panag is a Halifax based drug company which focuses on development of novel therapeutic treatments which can be used to alleviate both pain and inflammation associated with IC. The goal of our research is to provide IC patients with symptom and pain relief, as well as to improve outcome.

Medicago, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, has the potential to rapidly develop a vaccine in response to a newly sequenced influenza strain, allowing for large-scale vaccination of the population very early during a pandemic. The company would like to know how many doses of vaccine is required and what distribution strategies should be used to maximize population-wide benefits of vaccination in the event of an influenza pandemic.