In the Trenches: Dr. James Stempien on Emergency Medicine
Researchers Under the Scope
James Stempien (MD) has navigated some of the most challenging corners of emergency medicine, from the frigid isolation of Inuvik to the bustling corridors of Saskatoon’s emergency departments. His experience in low-tech outposts has shaped his approach to modern emergency care. “When things aren’t going well you see it in the emergency department first,” Stempien said. “We’re the front door. We’re always open.” As provincial department head of emergency medicine, Stempien sees patients on their worst days in hospitals bursting at the seams, struggling to...
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All’s Not Lost: A Roadmap to Treating Hepatitis C on the Prairies
Researchers Under the Scope
As the world aims to eradicate hepatitis C (HCV) by 2030, Carrielynn Lund and Dr. Alexandra King’s team created a how-to guide. is a step-by-step guide to tackling a spike of new infections across the three Canadian prairie provinces. Hepatitis C (HCV) causes severe liver disease, and was notoriously difficult to treat until the introduction of direct-acting antivirals a decade ago — antivirals which boast a remarkable 95% success rate. Despite this advancement, Lund and Dr. King say Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba need to know why HCV cases keep rising, particularly in...
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Exercise Your Right to Breathe: Dr. Brianne Philipenko & Asthma
Researchers Under the Scope
Brianne Philipenko (MD) was midway through her respirology fellowship in Calgary when the Covid-19 pandemic shut down the city. She started interval workouts at home using Nike’s fitness app — when inspiration struck. “Coming up with a creative, innovative way to allow people to access an exercise program outside of the typical organized pulmonary rehabilitation in a gym setting was something that I became really interested in,” said Philipenko.. As a respirologist, Philipenko was already frustrated by the lack of ‘mainstay’ guidelines on incorporating exercise...
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Dr. Sarah Forgie: Why the New Dean of Medicine Taught Herself the Ukelele
Researchers Under the Scope
In this episode, we gain insight into Dr. Sarah Forgie, the new Dean of the College of Medicine. She discusses her innovative teaching methods, her career as a pediatric infectious disease specialist, and her vision for advancing Saskatchewan’s College of Medicine. Dr. Forgie also shares the story behind her decision to learn the ukulele. Born to family physicians, Dr. Forgie grew up in Lynn Lake, Manitoba, a remote fly-in mining community. Her family later relocated to Winnipeg, where Dr. Forgie credits much of her motivation to her mother, who encouraged her to pursue both medicine and...
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Grey Area: Dr. John Howland on Cannabis & Budding Brains
Researchers Under the Scope
A behavioural neuroscientist in Saskatoon is uncovering marijuana’s effects on fetal brain development. After recently winning a five-year CIHR grant of $960,076 in the spring of 2024, Dr. John Howland’s lab at the University of Saskatchewan is expanding its work examining prenatal exposure to cannabis smoke. Howland’s teams will assess the way cannabis exposure alters higher brain functions like memory and learning in both rats and mice. Compared to cannabis injections in the past, the professor of Anatomy, Physiology and Pharmacology at the College of Medicine said exposing...
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Innovating and Bridging Gaps in IBD Care: Dr. Juan-Nicolás Peňa-Sánchez
Researchers Under the Scope
Growing up in Columbia had a profound impact on Dr. Juan-Nicolas Pẽna-Sànchez. In this episode, hear why the former family physician pivoted, becoming Saskatchewan's lead in finding the best ways to treat Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis in rural and Indigenous patients. Even as a teenager, Juan-Nicolás Peña-Sánchez could see stark differences in health for those who had medical coverage — and those without, thanks to his stepfather, an emergency department physician. “I used to go with him sometimes on shifts to learn and shadow him,” said Peña-Sánchez said. “The...
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Cuts Like a NanoKnife: Dr. Mike Moser
Researchers Under the Scope
"When I got into medical school, the last thing in the world I wanted to be was a surgeon because I couldn't stand the sight of blood," said Dr. Mike Moser. Fast-forward to the present day, where Moser is now one of Saskatchewan's top kidney transplant surgeons, winning last year's Golden Scalpel Award for Pre-clerkship Education, the 2022 Logan Boulet Humanitarian of the Year Award, and numerous teaching awards. In this episode, the professor of general surgery at the University of Saskatchewan's College of Medicine takes us back to one pivotal day where everything changed, propelling...
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Walking the Talk: Dr. Daniel Fuller on Urban Health and Mobility
Researchers Under the Scope
As an undergrad, Daniel Fuller didn’t have a car, nor was he keen on taking the bus. “I rode my bike to university every day in the fall and then just kept on going and never stopped,” said Fuller, a former national and international canoe/kayak athlete. As he pedaled, Fuller watched the way people used trails, sidewalks and roads. “I really started to get into active transportation, how people move around cities and how we can get people active -- outside of the sport environment,” said Fuller, now an associate professor in Community Health and...
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Anatomy of Success: Three Researchers, Three Grants, One Goal
Researchers Under the Scope
From the laboratory to saving lives, this episode brings together three outstanding researchers from the University of Saskatchewan’s Department of Anatomy, Physiology, and Pharmacology (APP) as they discuss their work and its implications for cardiac care. Dr. Michelle Collins, Dr. Scott Widenmaier, and Dr. Changting Xiao are all recent recipients of research grants from Heart & Stroke (formerly the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada). In Canada, one per cent of newborns have congenital heart defects. Thanks to advances in cardiac care, up to 85 per cent of these...
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Dr. Jacob Alhassan and the Politics of Expendability
Researchers Under the Scope
"Pushing politicians to do what is good for the health of the people, there's no way around it," said Dr Jacob Alhassan. Born and raised in a rural Ghanaian village, Alhassan grew up without electricty and paved roads. He watched women die in childbirth. He grew resentful of health systems that left the poorest people to fend for themselves, while the rich thrived. Alhassan decided to take action. At first, he thought he would study hard to become a local hospital administrator. Partway through his university years, Alhassan began to dream even bigger. In this episode, he looks back at his...
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.”