DoM's Drs. Michael Stickland and Stephanie Thompson receive funding for U of A's new Precision Human Health Lab
29 August 2023
Dr. Michael Stickland (Professor, Division of Pulmonary Medicine) and Dr. Stephanie Thompson (Associate Professor, Division of Nephrology)
By Oumar Salifou, Folio
As a clinician scientist and nurse practitioner, Edith Pituskin runs a busy clinic, caring for cancer patients while learning how to relieve the symptoms people face that can lead to poor quality of life after treatment.
“People are commonly suffering with the effects of necessary anti-cancer treatments for the remainder of their life,” says Pituskin, associate professor and Canada Research Chair in the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Nursing and member of the Cancer Research Institute of Northern Alberta. “These effects can include difficult chronic fatigue and poor exercise tolerance leading to a cycle of depression and poor quality of life.”
To better understand how such effects happen and how to help people cope, a new U of A Precision Human Health Laboratory will help researchers investigate techniques to improve patients’ exercise tolerance and cardiovascular health, and expand the use of exercise as a clinical tool.
Pituskin and co-principal investigators Stephanie Thompson, associate professor in the Division of Nephrology, and Michael Stickland, professor in the Division of Pulmonary Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, have just received $507,115 in infrastructure funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s John R. Evans Leaders Fund to equip the lab.
The new funding is part of more than $960 million in federal funding announced at the U of A today, supporting innovative work by more than 4,700 researchers across Canada.