Breakthoughs in Cystic Fibrosis, with Dr. Julian Tam & Juan Ianowski
Release Date: 05/22/2022
Braaaaaaiiiiiinnnnnns, with Dr. Tyler Wenzel
Researchers Under the Scope
Miniature human brains grown in a Saskatoon lab are upending the way researchers see neurology and immunology. Neuroscientist is using brain organoids to challenge decades of rodent-based research, charting a new course for precision medicine. As a high school biology teacher, Wenzel's students learned how hearts pump blood and lungs move air. But apart from neurological electrical activity, neither Wenzel nor the textbooks had many clear answers about the brain. During his graduate studies, Wenzel realized the same experimental question tended to produce opposite results for...
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Inside the Next Chapter of Biomedical Science, with Dr. Linda Chelico
Researchers Under the Scope
As Researchers Under the Scope marks its 100th episode, we hand the microphone to Dr. Linda Chelico, who recently accepted a five-year term as Vice-Dean Research, Biomedical Sciences, at the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Medicine. Originally from Melfort, Saskatchewan, the virologist and biochemist outlines her two main priorities: upgrading research infrastructure and raising the public profile of her colleagues’ work. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, Chelico said biomedical researchers are now expected to team up producing multiple lines of...
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'Health Really Is Wealth': Dr. Holly Graham
Researchers Under the Scope
Dr. Holly Graham never planned on nursing. She wanted a police badge, then a law degree and a judge’s bench. Instead, she followed her mother’s wish and walked into nursing school as the only student from a reserve in a class of more than 200. The isolation was real. So were the health gaps she saw every shift. In this episode, Graham traces her path from being the only Cree nurse in her graduating class, to becoming a professor of psychiatry, registered doctoral psychologist, and . Her curiosity about widespread health disparities for Indigenous people pushed her back to university,...
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Inside a Drug Trial for a Rare Childhood Disease: Drs. Sarah Tehseen & Katie Felton
Researchers Under the Scope
Most childhoods don’t involve sitting at the hospital for an infusion of medication, transfusions on weekends, or worrying that classmates will comment on the colour of your skin. For one Saskatoon teen with an ultra-rare blood disease, that’s everyday life. She was diagnosed with a form of anemia so uncommon only a handful of cases have been identified globally. In this episode, & share how they’re working to change her “normal” by opening a phase 3 pharmaceutical trial and fighting for a better quality of life. We hear how Tehseen and Felton each got into...
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This Is Your Brain After Anesthetic: Dr. Peter Hedlin
Researchers Under the Scope
Peter Hedlin (PhD, MD) recalls being a ‘young, naïve medical student’ when he asked a mentor a question that’s stuck with him for years. “I remember asking how anaesthetics work on the brain,” said Hedlin. “And he said, ‘we actually don’t really know’. And I thought that was crazy.” Today, at the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Medicine. He examines what surgery and sedation do to the human body — in particular, to aging brains. Trained first as a microbiologist who earned his PhD as a vaccine researcher at , Hedlin was always drawn to medicine. He...
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Not Just Numbers: Vaidehee Lanke Tracks Opiate Use & Perinatal Health
Researchers Under the Scope
In this episode, medical student and researcher shares what large provincial datasets reveal about opioid use disorder, maternal mental health, and pregnancy. Armed with data, she hopes better support —before, during, and after birth—can change outcomes for mothers and babies. Lanke spent her summer working with epidemiologist and the Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit on a pan-Canadian project tracking opioid use in perinatal populations across five provinces. “The question we set out to answer was: What is the association between...
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Cross-Linked Clues: Jack Walther on Depression and Alzheimer's
Researchers Under the Scope
As a student, Jack Walther's friends often came to him when they needed a listening ear, or help with relationship struggles. This summer, Walther took his fascination with the brain and mood disorders to , learning to untangle some of the tiny molecular threads that might explain why depression so often shows up alongside dementia. Walther and the research team dug into the physical interactions between serotonin and the beta amyloid peptides that build up in patients with Alzheimer's disease. . He admits going from the classroom to the laboratory felt like a sharp learning curve. "It was...
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EEEV-ident Passion: Eve Simpson on Doubt, Persistence and Viral Spread
Researchers Under the Scope
Eve Simpson knows from experience scientific research doesn’t always follow a linear path. In the first of three student research episodes, the fourth-year biochemistry, microbiology and immunology student looks back at a summer spent decoding Eastern Equine Encephalitis Virus (EEEV) in ’s lab. Simpson said she loved doing bench research, but felt frustrated in the moments where she hit setbacks and moments of doubt. “I felt like I was letting everyone down,” she said. “But everyone I spoke to said they'd been through that. It's part of being a researcher. That's what drives us to do...
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That’s So Metal: Dr. Jessica Sheldon Targets Acinetobacter Baumannii
Researchers Under the Scope
Jessica Sheldon (PhD) is on a mission to starve out Acinetobacter baumannii —one of the world’s most virulent hospital-borne pathogens. Notorious for its speedy evolution and multi-drug resistance, the hospital-borne bacteria lingers on dry surfaces and infects critically-ill patients, leading to sepsis, pneumonia and high mortality rates. In this episode, delves into the real-life events that drove her to investigate histamine, and its role in bacterial survival and immune response. In 2022, Sheldon joined the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Medicine as an assistant professor...
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Fluid Endeavour: Kirk Haan's Medical Balancing Act
Researchers Under the Scope
Kirk Haan graduated from high school, thinking he’d study pharmacy at the University of Saskatchewan, and walk out five years later. After one summer at a pharmacy, Haan realized he was after a more ‘hands-on’ career in medicine. “I’ve kind of worked with my hands my whole life, just between rummaging around on a farm and always kind of building things,” he said. “Now it’s using them to help people in a direct way.” Then, Haan found his passion — inside the laboratory. In 2018, Haan landed a summer position in , studying osmoregulation — the mechanisms that govern...
info_outlineFrom insects and birds, to the underwater world, Juan Ianowski's fascination with the natural world began early.
As a biologist, he was drawn to physiological processes, later scrutinizing the kidneys of insects, whose epithelial cells behave in similar ways to those in human lungs.
By 2015, Ianowski's research was focused on the pathophysiology of lung cells, and the nerve channels controlling them. He and his collaborators were working with the Canadian Light Source, to get a more accurate picture of the tiny cells involved.
But Ianowski had a nagging feeling he was missing the bigger picture.
"I had a very large gap in my life," said Ianowski. "I had never seen a patient."
That summer, he fired off an e-mail to Dr. Julian Tam, who'd just moved into a new position as the director of Saskatchewan's adult Cystic Fibrosis clinic.
They agreed to go for coffee.
Tam already knew Saskatoon, after spending his residency in internal medicine here, followed by a fellowship in Respirology.
"I liked that I could reason out, based on various principles, how things worked in our lungs," said Tam. "There were a few patients that I looked after with CF fairly early on in my training, and I think they really left a mark on me.”
When they met, Tam found Ianowski's work interesting, but saw 'a bit of a disconnect' between the research and his day-to-day practice.
Within months, the respirologist asked Ianowski to shadow him during patient visits.
Most CF patients take dozens of pills each day, as well inhaling nebulized saline solutions designed to loosen mucous, and reduce infections.
“It can be very time-consuming and we would love for their treatments to be as efficacious as possible,” said Tam.
To figure out how, and why the saline solution worked — and what could make it more potent, Tam and Ianowski became collaborators on numerous projects supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Information, the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation, and Cystic Fibrosis Canada.
With the help of colleagues at the Canadian Light Source and the Canadian Centre for Health and Safety in Agriculture, they started finding answers by doing mass spectrometry in real time, in a herd of pigs genetically modified to carry the gene for Cystic Fibrosis.
“This is pretty hard because the amount of fluid that we are looking for is very small. So it's about the width of a human hair,” said Ianowski.
That work led to numerous publications, and to the University of Saskatchewan’s application for a patent for a better inhaled treatment to treat CF lung disease.
Now, Tam and Ianowski also looking at gastrointestinal disease in CF patients, and TRIKAFTA — an innovative class of drugs that’s effective for most — but not all — people with the disease.
Today, they’re testing those drugs in the lab to gain a detailed understanding of the effects they produce. A recent CIHR grant will help them better understand the basic epithelia of the lungs. They’re also looking for ways to better treat CF patients who cannot tolerate TRIKAFTA treatments.
“Our hope is that some of our work gives us a better understanding of the disease process,” said Tam, as he and Ianowski aim for better treatments, by figuring out which lung cells to target, and where.