Dr. Sabira Valiani: Creating Connections in Critical Care
Researchers Under the Scope
Dr. Sabira Valiani was one of the frontline physicians working inside Saskatoon’s critical care units four years ago, during the initial lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic. “It was really weird,” said Valiani. Valiani said ‘a lot of light bulbs went off in my head’ amid the automated stillness of the unit, as she watched ventilators breathing for heavily sedated patients. Covered in head-to-toe personal protective equipment, staff in the intensive care unit struggled to simultaneously treat patients, communicate with family members, and enforce hospital...
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Dr. Daphne Yau on Blood Sugar & Brain Health
Researchers Under the Scope
Daphne Yau can trace her interest in endocrinology back to a beta-cell physiology experiment during her master’s degree, working with laboratory mice with Type 2 Diabetes. “It was the part of the pancreas that makes insulin,” she said. “It was fascinating. It also made me realize that maybe pure laboratory research wasn't quite for me." From there, her interest in hormones and fluctuating blood sugar levels grew. Yau is no stranger to medicine. Her mother was a pharmacist, while her father and aunt both worked as physicians. Following in their footsteps, Lou completed her...
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Dr. Sam Haddad: At the Heart of Patient Care
Researchers Under the Scope
Haissam Haddad inadvertently horrified his family when he signed up for engineering courses in his first year of university. The teenager returned the next day to change his major to medicine -- a move he's glad he made. Dr. Haddad practiced family medicine in Syria for three years, then arrived in Canada in 1986 to visit his wife's family, who urged him to stay. Haddad faced an uphill battle when he investigated the possibility of becoming a Canadian doctor. One colleague even told him he’d be better off opening a Syrian grocery store. “This gave me a lot of energy to prove him wrong,”...
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Remote Rehabilitation: Dr. Stacey Lovo's Quest for Equitable Care
Researchers Under the Scope
In this episode, we meet Dr. Stacey Love, Director of Virtual Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation at Saskatchewan's Virtual Health Hub, and an Assistant Professor at the University of Saskatchewan's School of Rehabilitation. She's also involved with the Saskatchewan Centre for Patient Oriented Research. You can see more of her recent publications , along with links to her labs: Musculoskeletal Health and Access to Care: Virtual Care and Remote Presence: Stacey Lovo remembers the bitterly cold day in December 2012, when two Indigenous women from northern Saskatchewan stepped off the...
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Dr. Angelica Lang: Shaping the Future of Shoulder Health
Researchers Under the Scope
knows most of the people she sees have to keep working, even if they have shoulder pain. As an and director of the Musculoskeletal and Ergonomics Lab at the Canadian Centre for Rural and Agricultural Health, Lang’s goal is to reduce that pain — keeping patients on the job. “A lot of daily life has to be done with your hands,” she said. “The base of that is your shoulder. It allows you to position your hand in all these different ways.” Lang knows the importance of movement. She grew up in Melfort, Sask., playing hockey, soccer, volleyball, along with track...
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Stronger Foundations: Dr. Munier Nour on Bone Development in Diabetic Youth
Researchers Under the Scope
Dr. Munier Nour said osteoporosis is often seen as a disease that affects older adults. But compared to their peers, kids with Type 1 diabetes grow into adults eight times as likely to suffer bone fractures. “Osteoporosis may actually have its origins during pediatric years,” he said. “Because Type 1 diabetes occurs so early in life ….. it influences that bone development that occurs during your peak growth.” Now, Nour is a co-lead on a national team trying to figure out why. The pediatric endocrinologist has always taken a logical approach to problem-solving....
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Thriving Against The Odds: Dr. Amanda Hall on Short Gut Syndrome
Researchers Under the Scope
In the heart of the Health Sciences Building, studies a tray of organoids under a microscope. “They do need a lot of attention and a lot of feeding,” she said, pointing to dot-like points in a gel solution. The pediatric surgeon and assistant professor of pediatric general surgery will use those dots to identify factors that help infants overcome short gut syndrome. The rare condition affects roughly 24 in every 100,000 babies born in Canada, presenting a profound challenge for infants born with insufficient intestinal length or compromised absorptive capacity. “It’s a...
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Inhale, Exhale, Repair: Dr. Valerie Verge
Researchers Under the Scope
Valerie Verge was in her early twenties when she landed her first job, doing neuroscience research and she loved it. But 43 years ago, her research journey began to take a twist. "I developed an allergy to rats and mice,” she said. “I was using a box of Kleenex a day.” She reluctantly had to admit that this may not be her career path, and spent her evenings earning a ‘back-up plan’ degree in computer programming at McGill. She refused to give up laboratory work, and went on with her colleagues to code and create an in house computerized image analysis system that was not...
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Fighting Treatment-Resistant Depression with Ketamine: Dr. Evyn Peters
Researchers Under the Scope
Dr. Evyn Peters has created pivotal changes for patients arriving at Royal University Hospital's mental health short stay unit, and its emergency department. With 33 publications and interests spanning , Peters is often one of the first physicians patients see when they’re experiencing a mental health crisis. Peters was finishing his residency at RUH and the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Medicine in 2017, when he and his colleagues first proposed ketamine for short-stay patients who had tried multiple antidepressants without success. After studying best practices in...
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Dr. Wendie Marks: Researching Complex Connections Between Stress, Nutrition & Health
Researchers Under the Scope
By the end of her Grade Eight year in Saskatoon, Wendie Marks was sure about one thing: she knew she wanted to study health and the way early-life development affected the human body. “I spent a lot of time in the library reading books,” Marks said. “I was always kind of the nerdy type.” Marks enrolled at the University of Saskatchewan and thrived, earning her PhD in psychology. Her interests evolved towards behavioural neuroscience, focusing on the mechanisms behind behaviour, stress, and their effects on mental and physical health. “I wanted to make new...
info_outlineAs a high school student growing up in Melfort, Sask.. Linda Chelico knew she wanted to work in health sciences.
She enjoyed biology class, and took an interest in watching nature heal itself. She wanted to find environmentally friendly solutions to health problems.
Then, she read a National Geographic magazine about landfills filling up.
Chelico began thinking about the environmental footprint of garbage, and about the organisms that could help break down piles of refuse. The idea turned into her Grade 11 science project, where she showed ways micro-organisms could degrade some of the waste people produce.
“That's when I decided I wanted to be a microbiologist,” said Chelico. Watching evolving life forms had her hooked.
She moved a two-hour drive west to Saskatoon, and enrolled as a microbiology student at the University of Saskatchewan. Within a year, she switched to an honours degree through the College of Agriculture’s Applied Microbiology program. She earned her PhD in Saskatoon studying insecticidal fungal strains, with varied results.
“You could kill the insects without putting chemicals in the environment,” said Chelico.
As she tested the fungus on arid prairie fields, the effects of its prolonged exposure to sunlight and irradiation intrigued her.
“Some of these fungal spores would survive a lot of UV damage,” she said. “It would dry out, it would acquire mutations. And I was trying to formulate it with sunscreens and then in the lab irradiate it with UV radiation, like if you're going to a tanning bed.”
Although mutations were generally seen as negative for cell health in her course work, Chelico realized they deserved a closer look.
“There's extreme stress on the organisms. They've acquired a lot of DNA damage from this UV irradiation,” she said. “So how do they survive?”
In this episode, we hear how Chelico’s interest in damaged, mutant cells morphed into a scientific Hollywood story, after she met Myron F. Goodman, at the University of Southern California’s Los Angeles laboratories.
Chelico spent five years of post-doctoral work studying microcellular activity and biological responses to stress in Goodman’s lab.
“Everything was unified by the benefit of mutations,” she said.
By 2009, Chelico put Hollywood Boulevard in the rear-view mirror, returning to Saskatoon to accept a faculty position at the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Medicine. Working as a virologist, microbiologist and biochemist, Chelico and her teams have landed more than $1.6 million dollars in three years, with continuing grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Information.
Her laboratory is focused on what key enzyme mutations in viruses mean, particularly for patients with HIV-AIDS, other viruses, and cancer.
“In humans, when these mutations happen, usually we see it come out as a cancer,” said Chelico. “It doesn't exist in all of our cells. It exists in the type of [immune] cells that react to environmental stress.”