Dr. Scott Widenmaier: Connecting Cholesterol, Obesity and Immunometabolism
Release Date: 12/11/2022
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_outlineWhen Scott Widenmaier left high school, he wasn't sure what career path he wanted to pursue.
He grew up in Alameda, Saskatchewan, and soon found work on oil rigs. But by the time he was in his early twenties, he knew it was time for a change.
"I realized that winters are just too cold to continue doing that," said Widenmaier. "I wasn't sure what I was going to do with my life, but I was interested in biology and human physiology."
In his third year as a science major at the University of Regina, he became fascinated by a lab experiment examining how neurotransmitters control heart rates. He then moved west, to graduate studies at the University of British Columbia, studying endocrinology and its role in diabetes.
"I really like the elegance of the feedback circuits," said Widenmaier, who went on to land a post-doctoral position with Dr. Gökhan Hotamisligil at Harvard University's School of Public Health.
As he discovered the emerging field of immunometabolism, Widenmaier began to see links between the way the gut and the human immune system talk to each other, especially around obesity.
"That communication to the immune systems and the metabolic systems is dysfunctional and contributes to a lot of the diseases that we see linked to obesity," said Widenmaier, who studies the way the body manages cholesterol.
That's the focus of his work at the University of Saskatchewan as an assistant professor in the College of Medicine's department of Anatomy, Physiology and Pharmacology.
"There's this transcription factor that sits in a part of the cell and it recognizes when cholesterol's too high," he said. "It changes where it goes in the cell and it regulates a response by the cell to try to prevent the cholesterol from causing damage and stress."
Widenmaier has now landed a number of awards, including the Heart and Stroke Foundation's National New Investigator Award in 2020/21. Widenmaier was also named that year's McDonald Scholar.
"We've made a lot of progress with understanding the role of NRF1 and NRF2 in the liver," he said. "We've identified some molecules that may be important for protecting cells from too much cholesterol."
In this episode, hear how this work has implications for patients with heart and stroke disease, obesity, liver disease, degenerative brain conditions, as well as various forms of cancer.
"The issue with cholesterol is that we absolutely need it, but we also need it to be exactly the right amount," said Widenmaier. "There's lots of times where that that capacity gets stretched, especially under conditions of obesity."
"What are those natural adaptive systems? If we can find out what they are, can we make them work better?"