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...
info_outline
'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,...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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_outline
Dr. Sébastien Gauvrit: Fishing for Answers in Vascular Development
Researchers Under the Scope
Sébastien Gauvrit (PhD) was only ten when his family let him have his first tank of guppies. Within weeks, he was hooked. “I actually had to understand genetics directly by mixing these different fish together to get the colour or fin shape I was interested in,” said the vascular biologist and genetic modelling pioneer. From his home in France, to post-doctoral work pioneering new models for vascular disease in Germany, to his current position as an assistant professor of Anatomy, Physiology and Pharmacology at the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Medicine — tropical fish...
info_outlineValerie 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 readily available commercially or affordable.
“That was huge back then,” she said. “It came in very, very handy because we were able to integrate images on our microscope with computers and quantitatively analyze them.”
As her allergies gradually lessened, Verge stayed in the lab and earned her Ph.D. in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill in 1990, then moved to the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm for post-doctoral studies. By 1992, she followed her heart to the prairies, and found ‘wonderful opportunities’ for research at University of Saskatchewan’s College of Medicine and soon after in a new UofS MS focussed research centre in Saskatoon City Hospital.
Today, she’s a professor of anatomy, physiology and pharmacology, and the director of the Cameco MS Neuroscience Research Centre, with expertise converging on a singular goal — finding innovative ways to repair the nervous system.
Her recent peripheral nerve repair collaboration with Dr. Ming Chan from the University of Alberta Department of Medicine and Dr. Gillian Muir, Dean of the UofS Western College of Veterinary Medicine explores acute intermittent hypoxia (AIH) This non-invasive therapy involves breathing controlled alternating cycles of regular air and air with reduced oxygen levels.
"It sounds horrible! But it’s not like having a stroke, where you can have zero oxygen,” said Verge. “This is more like just taking it down by a percentage to a level that induces a beneficial stress response.”
The rationale behind AIH lies in its ability to trigger repair responses. By subjecting the body to a mild, controlled stressor, the therapy aims to activate repair mechanisms that can be beneficial for nervous system repair. Dr. Verge's work involves investigating the impact of AIH on repairing peripheral nerves, outside of the brain and spinal cord and more recently, extending this therapy to investigate repair and neuroprotection in a model of multiple sclerosis.
In a female mouse model of progressive multiple sclerosis, Verge said graduate student Nataliya Tokarska observed an 80 per cent reduction in inflammation levels after just once daily treatment with the AIH protocol for one week
“They’re supposed to only get worse. Even two weeks after ending treatment, they’re still showing improvement,” said Dr. Verge, noting regions with lesions transitioned to a state of ‘advanced’ myelin repair; axons were being remyelinated and the immune response was dramatically decreased and shifted to a pro-repair state .
“It’s an extremely robust repair response like I’ve never seen in my 43 years of doing research.”
Verge said the technique has already helped patients with spinal cord injuries. In humans it does not raise their blood pressure or heart rate or induce memory loss.
Unlike invasive procedures, such as electrical nerve stimulation (ES), the entire body is exposed to AIH. Verge and her team are now building on previous ES findings, showing intermittent low oxygen therapy behaves in a similar favourable manner repairing damaged and severed nerves in animal models.
Grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and MS Canada allow the research team to transition from pre-clinical rat work to human trials in carpal tunnel syndrome, and one day even multiple sclerosis patients. This marks a crucial step toward validating the efficacy of AIH in repairing the nervous system.
“It’s a pleasure to see things come full circle,” said Verge, who said her role now is to inspire and share insight with the next generation of neuroscientists.
“We’re very, very hopeful for the future.”