You can’t study for them, and they won’t affect your GPA, but disease tests are vital to fighting infections. They certainly caught the interest of Dr. Camilo Duque Velasquez, who started his education with a Bachelor of Science degree focused on biology at the University of Antioquia in his hometown of Medellín, Colombia. He soon became intrigued by the idea that proteins could be infectious when they take the form of prions (abnormal pathogenic proteins…

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                              On March 18, the 2020 Canada-Wide Science Fair was cancelled. Following a month of hard work behind the scenes, Youth Science Canada (YSC) has now announced that a STEM fair is going online. In the words of Reni Barlow, executive director of YSC: “The physical events may have been cancelled, but the work of this country’s curious and talented youth continues”. Regional science fair committees were especially concerned with how…

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Responding to a pandemic does not just involve protective equipment, drugs, ventilators, and laboratories.   It involves people and how they react to what is happening around them. Context and culture come into play in our communities and in clinical responses to situations such as the one we are experiencing now.   Myles Leslie is a researcher in the University of Calgary Cumming School of Medicine, Department of Community Health Sciences, and an assistant professor…

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This is a guest post from former Genome Alberta staffer Adam Kirkby. You can contact him by email anytime.   In the age of social distancing, one brain teaser that’s plaguing physicians is how do you test a large number of people for COVID-19 without gathering our vulnerable population in a central location? Traditionally for lab tests, patients come into a healthcare centre where skilled personnel take a sample which goes to a lab technician…

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People who want to work with animals share some common career paths: veterinarian, pet shop owner, “zombie deer disease” researcher. Okay, the last one is a bit less common, but that didn’t deter Dr. Alicia Otero Garcia from taking the road less travelled in pursuit of her passion. Born in Spain, Otero Garcia studied veterinary medicine in her home country and completed her Master’s in Veterinary Science. As she enjoyed the research element, she applied…

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Virologists around the world have always suspected that pandemics such as the one we are experiencing right now were going to happen. Lorne Tyrrell is founder and head of the Li Ka Shing Institute of Virology at the University of Alberta, and he says even though he knew a pandemic would happen, he didn’t expect it to be a coronavirus.   His institute has numerous COVID-19 research projects underway, and 3 of those were in…

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David Kelvin is a professor at Dalhousie University and he also holds adjunct professor positions at institutions in China and Italy specializing in infectious diseases. A top Canadian researcher perfectly suited to work on the COVID-19 pandemic who was studying emerging infectious diseases that lead to lower lung infections and pneumonia before the COVID-19 outbreak.    In March he received funding through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research rapid response program which to date has…

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  To apply through Genome Alberta, please download the program guidelines and registration information and contact Niall Kerrigan.   Media release, April 2, 2020, Ottawa   Genome Canada has launched another rapid response funding opportunity to invest in research with real potential to address near-term challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic.   The funding opportunity is a response to the urgent need for further research on COVID-19 and represents a total Genome Canada investment of…

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  To apply through Genome Alberta, please download the program guidelines and registration information and contact Niall Kerrigan.   Media release, April 2, 2020, Ottawa   Genome Canada has launched another rapid response funding opportunity to invest in research with real potential to address near-term challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic.   The funding opportunity is a response to the urgent need for further research on COVID-19 and represents a total Genome Canada investment of…

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The hunt is on to find a treatment, and eventually a vaccine, to be used against the COVID-19 virus. Canada was able to fast-track research funding to meet the challenge and many labs already looking at the underlying biology of viruses were able to modify their work.   One of those labs is led by virologist Matthias Götte at the University of Alberta. His research team was studying ways to attack the enzymes that play…

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