Lynne Postovit, co-director of CRINA, is one of the CIHR Project Grant recipients.
Congratulations to our faculty members who received 2016 Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Project Grants from the March 2016 competition. The Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry received 21 Project Grants for over $12 million in new funding.
According to CIHR, the Project Grant is designed to capture ideas with the greatest potential to advance health-related fundamental or applied knowledge, health research, health care, health systems, and/or health outcomes. They support projects with a specific purpose and a defined endpoint.
The researchers receiving these grants are already doing amazing work. Read below to see what some of them have already accomplished and what they'll be tackling thanks to CIHR funding.
- Michael Hendzel from the Department of Oncology will be studying the role of DNA-damage-induced RNA. It has recently been found that when our DNA is damaged by the formation of a DNA double-strand break (which happens about 10 times a day in each of our cells) small RNAs are generated from the damaged site. He believes that these newly discovered RNAs play a critical role in the repair of this type of damage. Hendzel published a study last year exploring a previously unknown secret to DNA repair.
- Department of Cell Biology's Tom Hobman was recently featured for his work on the Zika virus. His grant will allow him to continue his work to develop the necessary reagents and models to study the Zika virus. These tools will be used to screen for and design therapeutic molecules that block the transmission of the virus.
Tom Hobman's research on the Zika virus has drawn public attention.
- Richard Lehner from the Division of Pediatrics will continue his work on the metabolic role of the lipase arylacetamide deacetylase. Lehner recently published a study showing that reducing production of bad cholesterol may inhibit the growth of cancerous tumours.
- The Division of Nephrology's Neesh Pannu has received a grant that will allow her team to evaluate the use of a tool they developed to identify patients at a high risk for developing chronic kidney disease following an acute kidney injury during their hospitalization (which is a frequent occurrence). They will also evaluate several strategies to determine how to best care for these patients once they have left the hospital. Pannu is currently one of two nephrologists that serve as medical directors of Alberta Health Services' new Glomerulonephritis (GN) Clinic at the University of Alberta Hospital.
- Lynne Postovit is the co-director of the Cancer Research Institute of Northern Alberta (CRINA) and an associate professor in the Division of Experimental Oncology. Her recruitment to the U of A was an exciting step forward for researching new treatments for women's cancers. The grant will allow Postovit to continue her work to improve outcomes of women with metastatic breast cancer, which currently has a survival rate of only two per cent.
This is just a small sample of FoMD researchers who received funding. The results of these project will have the potential to impact the health and wellness of many Canadians.
Stay tuned for an upcoming story on the new CIHR Foundation Grant recipients.
Meet our funding partners
The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) is the Government of Canada's agency that invests in health research through its four pillars: biomedical, clinical, health systems services, and population health.
Its mandate is to "excel, according to internationally accepted standards of scientific excellence, in the creation of new knowledge and its translation into improved health for Canadians, more effective health services and products and a strengthened Canadian health care system."