CIHR Projects
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Showing 3601-3648 of 3648 projects
PI: Brumme, Zabrina
With over 30 million people living with HIV/AIDS globally, the need for an HIV vaccine has never been so urgent. Yet the recent failure of a major phase 2b vaccine trial highlights the sobering reali…
The immune system protects humans against pathogens and inflammation (redness, heat, swelling...) is part of the healing process. However, the body must put an end to these reactions in order to prev…
PI: McNagny, Kelly M
All blood cells, including those that help fight infection, transport oxygen or stop bleeding by forming clots at the site of a wound are derived from a very rare stem cell in the bone marrow. These …
PI: Horwitz, Marc S
Myocarditis is a condition that results in inflammation of heart muscle. It has been suggested that myocarditis and dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) are successive stages of a progressive autoimmune dise…
PI: Magor, Katherine
Ducks survive lethal strains of avian influenza due to a robust and controlled innate immune response. In contrast, chickens die in a few days. Our goal is to understand a successful innate immune re…
PI: Parks, Robin J
Adenovirus is a common virus that causes mild illness in most patients, primarily respiratory disease, but can be lethal in immunocompromised individuals, or pediatric and geriatric populations. Curr…
PI: Elliot, Marie A
'Amyloids' are organized aggregations of proteins that are often associated with diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and rheumatoid arthritis. It had long been thought that amyloid formation was …
PI: Brumell, John H
Some bacteria have the remarkable ability to invade our cells and replicate within them during infection. Such bacteria use special toxins to alter the control systems of our cells. These toxins caus…
Specialized cells of the immune system, T lymphocytes, have been trained to discriminate between harmless proteins of our own tissues, self-proteins, and dangerous proteins from pathogen agents. This…
Genetic and functional analyses of inflammatory caspase functions in inflammation and immunity
PI: Saleh, Maya
Two of the main challenges that multicellular organisms faced during evolution were to cope with invading microorganisms and eliminate and replace dying cells. Our innate immune system evolved to han…
PI: Wasan, Kishor M
The plasma lipoprotein distribution of potential drug candidates is not commonly studied. For some hydrophobic drug candidates, attainment of similar plasma free drug levels has not been associated w…
PI: Kane, Kevin P
Natural killer (NK) cells play a vital role in virus infection to slow the spread of virus in the body and production of virus by infected cells, until other components of the immune system can becom…
PI: Lum, Julian J
During an encounter with a foreign pathogen such as a virus or bacterium, the immune system responds by generating a large number of specialized "T cells" to seek and destroy the invading pathogen. W…
PI: Dumais, Nancy
After initial entry of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), replication of the virus first occurs at the site of infection. Then the major site of replication quickly shifts to lymphoid tissues of…
PI: Rubin, Barry B
Bacterial infection of the lower respiratory tract is a common illness and is also a leading cause of death. It is estimated that 5.6 million cases of community acquired pneumonia are treated annuall…
PI: Borgeat, Pierre; Flamand, Louis
This research program is aimed at understanding how the body reacts to infection by viruses such as the Influenza virus, which is the pathological agent of flu. The Influenza virus causes a severe in…
PI: Khan, Waliul I
The enormous mucosal surface of gastrointestinal (GI) tract is continuously exposed to a large numbers of food and water-borne microbes and toxic stimuli and is clearly more susceptible to inflammati…
PI: Levings, Megan K
The immune system is designed to recognize the difference between harmful and non-harmful foreign proteins, and to not react against proteins that normally exist in an individual. Unfortunately, when…
PI: Seidah, Nabil G; Labonté, Patrick
This project will focus on studying distinct aspects of the biochemistry, physiology, genetics and clinical applications of two members of a family of human proteases known as PCSK9 and SKI-1 and the…
PI: Baldwin, Troy A
T cells are a type of white blood cell that are critical for providing protection against infections and cancer. T cells mature in an organ called the thymus. It is in the thymus where the ability of…
PI: Moghadas, Seyed M; Pizzi, Nicolino (Nick); Wu, Jianhong
Given the threat of an unprecedented spread of the highly pathogenic avian influenza strain H5N1 in humans, and considering the high degree of morbidity and mortality of previous pandemics, research …
PI: Burrows, Lori L
Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a serious opportunistic and hospital-acquired pathogen, infecting burn, cancer, HIV and cystic fibrosis patients, as well as causing eye, ear and wound infections. It is rap…
PI: Yang, Pingchang
As many as 4~8% populations have IgE-mediated hypersensitivity to food antigen. The prevalence of food allergy and related disorders increased rapidly across the world in last few decades. Research i…
PI: Zaph, Colby
An estimated two billion people worldwide are infected with soil-transmitted helminth parasitic worms. Field and experimental studies have shown that immunity in infected individuals is associated wi…
PI: Liu, Lixin
When there is an infection or injury in the body, neutrophils, the most abundant white blood cells, will move from blood, across the blood vessel wall and toward the site of infection or injury. Norm…
Herpesviruses are a large family of pathogens that infect and cause disease in diverse animals ranging from oysters to elephants. My laboratory studies the alphaherpesvirus subgroup that includes the…
The immune system is critical to human health. In order to develop vaccines and treatments for diseases where the immune system malfunctions (such as immunodeficiency, autoimmunity, allergy and asthm…
PI: Tremblay, CĂ©cile L; Bernard, Nicole F
A certain number of patients, very few, infected with HIV are able to control the virus with no anti-HIV medication. This group of rare patients has been identified as «long term non-progressors» and…
PI: Giembycz, Mark A
Phosphodiesterase (PDE) 4 inhibitors are a new class of drugs being developed for the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which is more commonly referred to as bronchitis and/o…
PI: Choy, Jonathan C
Organ transplantation is a life-saving procedure for many individuals. Unfortunately, rejection of transplanted organs by the recipient immune system is a major hurdle to the long-term success of thi…
PI: Choy, Jonathan C
Organ transplantation is a life-saving procedure for many individuals. Unfortunately, rejection of transplanted organs by the recipient immune system is a major hurdle to the long-term success of thi…
This project focuses on understanding the ways in which deadly fungal pathogens attack people with weakened immune systems. In particular, the project will study the fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neof…
Islet transplantation alleviates the need for daily insulin injections in Type-1 Diabetes. However, continuous immunosuppressive therapy to prevent the recipient's immune system from rejecting the is…
One of the greatest mysteries of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 (HIV-1) infection has been to understand why the normal immune system is unable to eradicate or control this virus infection as op…
PI: Finlay, Barton B
Enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC) are a leading cause of bacterial diarrhea, causing much morbidity and mortality in children worldwide. Enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC; E. coli O157) is a close relati…
Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is an important human pathogen implicated in a wide range of clinical manifestations, ranging from cirrhosis, liver cancer and hepatic failure to seemingly asymptomatic and un…
PI: Damha, Masad J
RNA interference (RNAi) is a natural cellular mechanism for selectively silencing the expression of genes via targeted mRNA degradation, preventing gene-coded protein production. Synthetic oligonucle…
Highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has drastically reduced the morbidity and mortality associated with HIV infection, and transformed HIV from an invariably fatal disease into a manageable,…
PI: Kim, Sung O
Macrophages are key immune cells for detecting and eliminating microbial pathogens. Many pathogens induce macrophage death as a virulence tactic to survive and disseminate within the host. Recent stu…
Pathogenic E.coli infections are a serious global health concern. During their disease processes, these organisms remain outside of host cells and inject a multitude of pathogenic proteins to command…
PI: Wither, Joan E
The immune system plays an important role in discriminating between proteins that are foreign to the body, such as those in the bacteria and viruses that cause infections, and proteins that are norma…
PI: Collins, Stephen M; Bercik, Premysl
The gastrointestinal (GI) tract and the brain are intimately connected and behavioral factors are important in the expression of common GI diseases such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). IBS is the …
The surfaces of bacteria are typically composed of a complex and dynamic array of carbohydrate-containing macromolecules. An extensive layer of polysaccharide known as the capsule covers the surfaces…
PI: Muruve, Daniel A
Kidney diseases are common in the general population. Many types of kidney disease are caused by toxins, poor circulation, diabetes and other insults. Invariably, these types of kidney injury result …
Immune responses and regulation in hepatitis C virus infection: Implications for immunotherapy
PI: Agrawal, Babita
Hepatitis C virus (HCV), leads to serious and permanent liver damage. Late stage disease due to HCV is the leading cause of liver transplantation in North America. The disease afflicts 175 million pe…
It is generally thought that dendritic cells are playing a pivotal role in HIV-1 transmission as they serve as the first potential targets for virus infection. The central objective of our work is to…
The threat posed by the emergence of the highly pathogenic strain of influenza A has been met with an abundance of preemptive scientific research to prepare for a pandemic. However, it is equally imp…
National network for characterization of influenza virus evolution and antiviral drug susceptibility
PI: Boivin, Guy
Influenza A viruses evolve constantly and rapidly leading to seasonal flu epidemics and occasional but devastating flu pandemics. There is thus a need to rapidly identify new emerging influenza strai…