We will validate TATOM (Tumor-on-a-chip assembly to observe metastasis), a miniature human-on-a-chip platform mimicking cancer metastasis for drug testing. Through customer discovery and market analysis by initially interviewing critical parties in the sector. Through these interviews, we will assess commercial viability, identify user needs, and finally refine the business model to accelerate translation to clinic […]

Development of novel pharmaceutical agents typically starts from an initial “hit” compound. These initial hits are then optimized using chemical synthesis and then tested for activity. Many active agents are designed based on known starting compounds. These previously identified compounds serve as a starting scaffold on which to make modifications that will improve activity. In […]

Surfactant Protein B (SPB) deficiency is a rare genetic disease where surfactant B is not produced in the lung, proper breathing fails and lungs collapse. The disease usually presents early in life, and unless lung transplantation is performed, no other approaches have provided long-term cure. Yet, lung transplantation is not an ideal approach either, as […]

Les poissons ressentent la douleur mais cette perception n’a été reconnue que très récemment. Pour cette raison, l’étude des traitements analgésiques en est encore à ses débuts chez les poissons. Pourtant, de nombreuses situations impliquent de la douleur chez ces espèces, comme des plaies traumatiques, des fractures, ou des chirurgies réalisées dans un contexte de […]

Kane Biotech Inc. is a Manitoba based company that provides innovative technologies that breakdown and disperse microbial biofilms. Dispersin B is an enzyme that both inhibits and disperses bacterial biofilms. Kane Biotech Inc. has expressed this enzyme protein in E. coli, with the goal of developing Dispersin B based products. Dispersin B yield and cost […]

Many therapeutic targets are proteins embedded in the membrane that surrounds the cell. Traditionally, such targets present major challenges, because they required the use of detergents to extract them from the membrane and to purify them. Such detergents can cause artefacts, hampering the development of novel therapeutics. Here we will test new methods that get […]

Heterogeneity of cell populations is a common occurrence in bioreactor operations (Lara et al., 2006) and is typically caused by processing of cell cultures in vessels of varying sizes and process conditions and by deficient mixing. Most bioreactor research deals with average conditions of the cell population with respect to quantities such as dissolved oxygen […]

Ginseng is a medicinal plant widely used for the treatment of various conditions, and there are two major species: Panax ginseng (Asian ginseng) and Panax quinquefolius (American ginseng). The medicinal properties of ginseng have been attributed to two main classes of chemical compounds: ginsenosides and polysaccharides (PS). We have recently developed an encapsulated PS nanoparticles […]

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a disease with unknown etiology that is characterized by uncontrolled intestinal inflammation and microbial dysbiosis. Qu Biologics’ Site Specific Immunomodulators (SSI) are a platform technology shown to improve the status of people living with IBD (Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis), with most of those patients showing clinical improvement also going […]

This project aims at evaluating whether recent results in deep learning models, trained to exploit weak labels (Hwang, 2016) can serve to extract meaningful lesion localizations from image-level labels, either from individual scans or given a (longitudinal) sequence thereof. To this end, we will scale up existing models that have been shown to work on […]

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 […]

University of British Columbia and Amgen British Columbia (ABC) will collaborate to develop a safe and efficient lipid-based vaccine delivery system that can be used in laboratory animals to enhance the production of specific antibodies against difficult targets. These antibodies can be further screened and characterized for treating various diseases in humans.