Bringing together experts from different fields is how you find true innovation to improve patient care, according to award-winning assistant professor of medicine Carrie Ye.
Ye started out as a clinical rheumatologist, seeing patients living with degenerative and inflammatory diseases that affect the joints, tendons, ligaments, bones and muscles.
In her search for better treatments, Ye wanted to look for patterns at the population level using statistics and epidemiology methods, so she learned those new skills. Crunching numbers naturally led her to understand how machine learning and artificial intelligence can help.
Ye now works with a broad team that includes rheumatologists, oncologists, immunologists, pharmacists, biochemists, engineers and computer scientists — all collaborating on research questions aimed at making life better for her patients.
“I kind of go organically where my interests lie and then I often will pick up skills to fit whatever question I want to answer,” Ye explains. “The way an engineer or a computer scientist or an immunologist approaches a problem is completely different from mine, so we get to think outside the box. It gives so much more depth to our findings.”
Ye has just been named winner of the Early Career Investigator in Cancer prize from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and has received funding for two new research projects.
Solving a serious side-effect
The first study will look for ways to stop anti-cancer immunotherapy drugs from causing arthritis as an unintended side-effect. Ye received $592,876 over four years for this investigation.
Ye says more than 40 per cent of cancer cases can now benefit from immunotherapy. Anti-cancer drugs known as “immune checkpoint inhibitors” turn off the braking system on a patient’s immune system so it can attack cancer cells and stop them from spreading. But sometimes the immune system doesn’t know when to stop and causes unintended consequences such as inflammatory arthritis, with symptoms similar to rheumatoid arthritis. It’s rare but seriously affects quality of life for patients, and when it’s really severe, the immunotherapy has to be halted.
Ye is clinical science lead for the Canadian Research Group of Rheumatology in Immuno-Oncology, which collects information on confirmed cancer-related arthritis cases from across Canada. This national database — unique to Canada — will allow Ye to use machine learning to find patterns of risk, disease progression and effective treatments.
“It’s really important that we try to find solutions to these side-effects, because these cancer treatments aren’t going to work if patients can’t stay on them,” Ye says.
Building a better bot to inform patients
Ye was also given $504,900 for a second project to create an accurate online resource to answer rheumatology patients’ questions, called ChatRheum.
Ye says with long wait times to see a rheumatologist, patients often turn to the internet for information, but what they find can be misleading or just plain wrong. Ye aims to build a chatbot that is not only as accurate as speaking directly with a specialist, but also empathetic, readable and comprehensive. In the meantime, she advises patients to check the original sources when doing internet searches so they can evaluate the reliability of the information.
Ye previously received $200,000 from CIHR, as well as funding from the Alberta Cancer Foundation, the Cancer Research Society, the University Hospital Foundation, the Department of Medicine and other organizations, to research these two clinical problems.
U of A researchers receive more than $18M from CIHR
Ye’s studies are just two of 28 projects spanning eight faculties that received nearly $20 million in new funding from CIHR in last fall’s competition:
Babita Agrawal, Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry
Studies on a broadly-protective novel lipopeptides-based intranasal vaccine for SARS-CoV2
$956,250
Todd Alexander, Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry
Altered proximal tubule calcium reabsorption: Molecular studies informing targeted kidney stone therapies
$983,025
Sean Bagshaw, Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry
LoW Dose-Intensity vs. Standard Dose-Intensity COntinuous Renal ReplaceMent Therapy in Critically Ill Patients (WISDOM): A pilot randomized trial
$329,292
Lauren Beaupre, Allyson Jones, Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine
Adapting Rehabilitation Delivery for Maximum Impact at Home-2 (ReDI-2): A pragmatic randomized trial comparing virtual individual physical therapy (IPT) and group-based PT (GPT) to each other and to usual arthritis care for rural Albertans living with hip or knee osteoarthritis
$937,126
Aminu Bello, Kailash Jindal, Gavin Oudit, Christopher Sarin, Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry
Prevent and treat diabetes for healthy living in Indigenous communities of Alberta
$734,400
Margie Davenport, Tara-Leigh McHugh, Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation
International practice and policy for pregnant and postpartum athletes
$100,000
Yinfei Duan, Carole Estabrooks, Faculty of Nursing
Lifetime and workplace traumatic events among care aides who work in long-term care homes: Influences on job burnout, mental health, and intention to leave
$350,369
Wael Elhenawy, Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry
Deciphering the role of biofilms in Crohn’s disease
$918,000
Paul Forsythe, Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry
Understanding pulmonary neuroendocrine cells as allergen sensors and immune modulators
$918,000
Casey Fowler, Faculty of Science
Deciphering the complex biological program of Salmonella typhi typhoid toxin
$665,550
Zamaneh Kassiri, Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry
Modulation of endothelial cells to reduce plaque formation, independent from plasma cholesterol levels
$699,975
Bradley Kerr, Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry
Inflammation, plasticity and pain: Examining sex differences in autoimmune related pain
$1,055,700
Manal Kleib, Faculty of Nursing
Empowering Canadian nurses to deliver the digital health future
$275,400
Afsaneh Lavasanifar, Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences
Nano-carriers of novel inhibitors of DNA repair for enhanced therapy in unresectable lung cancer
$868,275
Elaine Leslie, Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry
The influence of selenium on arsenic transport pathways in human hepatocytes and erythrocytes
$1,074,825
Patrick MacDonald, Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry
Cellular mechanisms tuning insulin secretion to meet metabolic demand
$872,100
David Olson, Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry
Sylvain Chemtob, Université de Montreal
Prolonging gestation and improving newborn outcomes with a novel IL-1 receptor modulator
$1,269,901
Spencer Proctor, Faculty of Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences
Validation and scale up of novel serum-free media variants of chP3R99 mAb against atherogenesis
$879,750
Neelam Punjani, Shannon Scott, Faculty of Nursing
Lisa Hartling, Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry
Co-creating innovative digital knowledge translation tools for parents to prevent online child sexual exploitation and abuse
$100,000
Denise Spitzer, School of Public Health
Coerced contraception and Indonesian migrant workers in Asia: Implications for reproductive justice and global health
$1,136,024
Puneeta Tandon, Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry
CarEL: A Caregiver E-health program for chronic liver disease — a multicentre randomized controlled trial to improve caregiver outcomes
$967,724
Kaitlyn Tate, Greta Cummings, Matthias Hoben, Holly Symonds-Brown, Faculty of Nursing
The Supporting Older Adults at Home (SOAH) project: Examining the association of home health service activities with the risk of transition from home to facility-based continuing care settings
$569,926
Kaitlyn Tate, Reagan Bartel, Sadie Deschenes, Faculty of Nursing
Rooted in home: Survey development and exploration of Métis perspectives on the care needs of older adults when aging in their communities
$527,850
Joseph Ting, Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry
Developing a national approach to surveillance and prevention for neonatal ventilator-associated pneumonia
$612,000
Zhixiang Wang, Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry
Novel function of Rac1 in mRNA splicing and its regulation and implication in breast cancer
$100,000
Frank Wuest, Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry
133/135La radiopharmaceuticals: Novel radiotheragnostics for PET imaging and Meitner-Auger electron (MAE) therapy in nuclear medicine
$906,525
