Quarterly Highlights: October to December 2020
Celebrations & Successes
Rick Austin was recently awarded a 5 year project grant from CIHR – Retention of PCSK9 in the endoplasmic reticulum acts as a co-chaperone to protect against liver injury/dysfunction.
Congratulations to Brian Timmons on his CIHR Spring Project Grant Success for his project The Concussion, Exercise, and Brain Networks (ConExNet) study.
Congratulations to Sonia Anand who has been awarded the SAHF 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award for her outstanding work related to better understanding of diabetes in South Asians.
Vladimir Ljubicic’s laboratory in the Department of Kinesiology was recently successful acquiring a grant from Muscular Dystrophy Canada to test the effectiveness of a new compound on reducing the severity of muscular dystrophy.
Congratulations to Rahul Chanchlani who is one of 14 candidates from 12 countries selected to participate in the International Society of Nephrology Emerging Leaders Program! The program provides early-career professionals in integrated kidney care the opportunity to work with international experts in the field preparing them for leadership roles in the advancement of global kidney care.
Nikhil Pai was recently invited to serve on the Canadian Malnutrition Task Force Pediatric Working Group. This national committee operates under the Canadian Nutrition Society, and develops initiatives focused on preventing, detecting and treating malnutrition in pediatric centres across Canada.
MODR Trainee Genevieve Perono (supervised by Alison Holloway) received an Ontario Graduate Scholarship to support her MSc project exploring the impact of petroleum-derived compounds on female reproductive health.
MODR Trainee Laiba Jamshed from Alison Holloway‘s lab, received The Endocrine Society’s 2020 Summer Research Fellowship to study the effects of petroleum-derived polycyclic aromatic compounds on fatty liver disease & the Alexander Graham Bell – Canada Graduate Scholarship.
In the News
Andrew MacArthur – spoke to Canadian Healthcare Technology about his research on the genetic makeup of superbugs, which requires researchers to work quickly while using enormous data sets
Joyce Obeid was interviewed by CBC radio – Even with a return to school are children and teens getting enough exercise during the pandemic?
Greg Steinberg in the London Free Press – Flame of Hope also a reminder of Banting’s spark of genius.
Sarah McDonald in Medscape, Reuters Health – Guidelines promote deferred cord clamping for uncompromised preterm infants.
Stuart Phillips and colleagues have found new answers through a novel experiment in which subjects worked out one leg and immobilized the other. Why some people gain muscle and others don’t.
Katherine Morrison and fellow CANPWR investigators, spoke to Healthing – highlighting the role & important of pediatric weight management clinics & the need to “think about the health and well-being of these children as children Obesity: Most kids don’t choose what’s for dinner
Publications
Jennifer Stearns, Katherine Morrison, Eileen Hutton and colleagues recently published “Persistence of Suspected Probiotic Organisms in Preterm Infant Gut Microbiota Weeks After Probiotic Supplementation in the NICU”
Nikhil Pai and Lara Hartin collaboration with colleagues from the Department of Chemistry recently published “Lyophilized fecal short-chain fatty acid and electrolyte determination by capillary electrophoresis with indirect UV detection for assessment of pediatric inflammatory bowel disease” in the Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis.
Nikhil Pai and colleagues recently published, “Pediatric patient and parent perceptions of fecal microbiota transplantation for the treatment of Ulcerative Colitis” in the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition.
Rahul Chanchlani and colleagues recently published “Post?transplant malignancies in pediatric organ transplant recipients” in Pediatric Transplantation.
Katherine Morrison and colleagues published Adiposity in Survivors of Cancer in Childhood: How is it Measured and Why Does it Matter? in the Journal of Pediatric Hematology/oncology.
Guillaume Paré & Dr. Marie Pigeyre recently published “Plasma ACE2 and risk of death or cardiometabolic diseases: a case-cohort analysis” in The Lancet.
Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky and colleagues recently published three new papers:
-
“A five-ingredient nutritional supplement and home-based resistance exercise improve lean mass and strength in free-living elderly” in the journal Nutrients
-
“Assessing non-Mendelian inheritance in inherited axonopathies” in Genetics in Medicine
-
“Bone marrow-derived mitochondrial DNA has limited capacity for inter-tissue transfer in vivo” in FASEB Journal
Presentations
MODR Co-Director Katherine Morrison and her trainees (Efrah Yousuf & Basma Ahmed) recently presented their work at the 8th Conference On Recent Advances In The Prevention & Treatment Of Childhood & Adolescent Obesity
Katherine Morrison – Does Virtual Care Change the Health Outcomes we are interested in measuring in children enrolled in weight management programs
Efrah Yousuf – Growth and Body Composition Trajectories from 6 Wks to 5 Mos in Healthy, Breast-Fed, Term-Born Infants!
Basma Ahmed – Prepubertal Boys With Obesity Have Lower BAT Activity Measured via MRI