Dr. Andrew Freywald: Tumours Meet Their Match
Researchers Under the Scope
How can oncologists predict which cancer treatment is most likely to work for a given patient? explores that question by growing tiny, living models of real-life patient tumours — organoids— then watching how each one responds to existing cancer drugs. Freywald, a and professor in the at the University of Saskatchewan's College of Medicine, said establishing an organoid development protocol took a “lot of trial and error.” “This is a complex process. It requires a lot of factors and also requires a lot of technical expertise,” said , crediting his laboratory team....
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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...
info_outlineHow can oncologists predict which cancer treatment is most likely to work for a given patient? Dr. Andrew Freywald explores that question by growing tiny, living models of real-life patient tumours — organoids— then watching how each one responds to existing cancer drugs.
Freywald, a longtime cancer researcher and professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan's College of Medicine, said establishing an organoid development protocol took a “lot of trial and error.”
“This is a complex process. It requires a lot of factors and also requires a lot of technical expertise,” said Freywald, crediting his laboratory team. He said it took several years to create the right conditions to grow miniature pancreatic and ovarian tumours.
Freywald and his team deliberately chose two of the most difficult cancers to treat. Only 13 per cent of patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer survive five years.
In women, ovarian cancer causes more deaths than any other cancer.
“Both cancers need serious improvements in treatment protocols,” said Freywald.
He said when first-line cancer therapies don’t work, modeling tumours in organoids will allow researchers to narrow down the most efficient drugs.
“It was amazing for me how really closely these models represent the regional tumors in terms of their genomic organization and in terms of their morphology,” Freywald said.
He said the challenge lies in the tumours themselves. Each one is slightly different from the next.
“This uniqueness makes it very hard for oncologists to predict which tumor, which treatments would or would not work.”
Over the coming months, Freywald and his team will test organoids derived from 100 individual tumour samples, assessing them against thousands of approved drugs. Their research is still in the proof-of-principle stage; it isn’t yet a routine way to choose a patient’s treatment.
But if Freywald and his team succeed, this could help pave the way for clinical trials and more personalised cancer care.
“Our analysis would probably provide these options to them and that would obviously improve their chances for survival,” Freywald said.
His research is supported by donations to Saskatoon’s Bruce Gordon Memorial Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund, along with Genome Prairie, CIHI, the University of Saskatchewan, the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation, and health start-up OncoForma.
“Our hope is that when we pass these through initial stages, including clinical trials, we will be able to convince Health Canada to accept it as a standard of care, at least for some cancers,” said Freywald.
“It’s really exciting."