CIHR Projects
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PI: Kao, Dina H
Primary Clostridioides difficile infection (pCDI) is a gastrointestinal infection that presents with diarrhea, fever and abdominal pain and is often resistant to antibiotic therapy. pCDI is often a c…
Canadian ADAptive Platform Trial of COVID-19 Therapeutics in Community Settings (Can-ADAPT COVID)
PI: Pinto, Andrew D; Keynan, Yoav; Greiver, Michelle; Jüni, Peter; Lee, Todd C; McDonald, Emily G; Murthy, Srinivas; Selby, Peter L
While public health measures and vaccines have reduced the spread of SARS-CoV-2, most scientists predict this virus will be endemic and new variants will emerge. Effective and affordable medications …
PI: Daneman, Nick; Murthy, Srinivas; Yamamura, Deborah L; Fowler, Robert A; Johnstone, Jennie; Lee, Todd C; MacFadden, Derek R; McDonald, Emily G; Paterson, David L; Rogers, Benjamin A; Yahav, Dafna
Bloodstream infections are a leading cause of death in Canada and worldwide, yet remain understudied, such that we do not know the best treatment strategies to be sure to cure the infection while min…
PI: Coburn, Bryan A; Hota, Susy S; Kain, Kevin C; MacFadden, Derek R; Walmsley, Sharon L
Antimicrobial resistant organism are a growing global threat to health. As the number and abundance of antimicrobial resistant organisms increases, both common infections (such as urinary tract infec…
PI: Hawkes, Michael T; Meier-Stephenson, Vanessa; Pandey, Manisha; Tyrrell, D. Lorne J; Tyrrell, Gregory J
Group A streptococcus (Strep A) is a germ that causes several diseases, ranging from sore throat to devastating flesh-eating disease and rheumatic fever (heart disease). We have come up with new vacc…
PI: Smaill, Fiona M; Comeau, Jeannette L; Gauvreau, Gail M; Halperin, Scott A; Langley, Joanne M; Loeb, Mark B; Miller, Matthew S; Satia, Imran; Wang, Jun; Xing, Zhou
Despite the benefit of current COVID vaccines in preventing severe disease and death, these vaccines are relatively poor at preventing infection with new variants like Omicron and work less well in t…
PI: Cheung, Angela M; Ahmed, Sofia B; Allen, Upton D; Bhat, Mamatha; Boyd, Steven K; Crawley, Angela M; Dolatabadi, Elham; Fahim, Christine; Farkouh, Michael E; Feld, Jordan J; Fox, Susan; Furlan, Andrea D; Goligher, Ewan C; Hodgson, David C; Inman, Robert D; Juando Prats, Clara; Lamontagne, Francois; Langlois, Marc-Andre; Levin, Adeera; Mansfield, Avril; Manske, Sarah L; McMaster, W. Robert; Mylopoulos, Maria; Oza, Amit M; Papaioannou, Alexandra; Pinto, Andrew D; Quinn, Kieran L; Rahman, Proton; Razak, Fahad; Richard, Nicolas; Richardson, Harriet; Sander, Beate H; Sellmann, Susanna; Stelfox, Henry T; Straus, Sharon E; Tartaglia, Maria Carmela; Tobe, Sheldon W; Tomlinson, George A; Verma, Amol; Walmsley, Sharon L; Wu, Robert; Xu, Wei
Clinical trials are used to evaluate how safe and effective medications, devices or approaches to treatment are for patients. They are the highest form of evidence and a driver of evidence-based medi…
Canadian ADAptive Platform Trial of COVID-19 Therapeutics in Community Settings (Can-ADAPT COVID)
PI: Pinto, Andrew D; Keynan, Yoav; Greiver, Michelle; Jüni, Peter; Lee, Todd C; McDonald, Emily G; Murthy, Srinivas; Selby, Peter L
While public health measures and vaccines have reduced the spread of SARS-CoV-2, most scientists predict this virus will be endemic and new variants will emerge. Effective and affordable medications …
Betacoronavirus (beta-CoV) is one of four genera of coronaviruses (CoVs) that includes severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (M…
PI: Khan, Omar F
Donated organs infected with incurable cytomegalovirus (CMV) are unsafe for transplant recipients. The goal of this project is to clear CMV from harvested organs. Clearance is achieved using a smart …
Characterization of the antiviral mechanisms of cyclophilin inhibitors against coronavirus infection
PI: Colpitts, Che C
The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the severe threat posed by emerging coronaviruses. In the absence of effective broadly-acting antiviral therapies against coronaviruses, we are vulnerable to cor…
PI: Grant, Michael D
Antiretroviral drugs prolong the life and health of persons living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), but since these drugs do not eliminate HIV, treatment needs to continue for life. In additi…
PI: Deziel, Eric
Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a prevalent opportunistic human pathogen. Individuals who are immunocompromised or have breaches in normal barriers are especially susceptible to infections. «Quorum sensing…
PI: Parkins, Michael D; Conly, John M; Hubert, Casey
When bacteria evolve, they can resist antibiotics, making infections harder to treat. As well, their risk of spreading, and causing severe illness and death increases. These antibiotic-resistant orga…
Yeast species of the Candida genus are the primary cause of opportunistic infections that represent a major public health problem. The spectrum of diseases caused by Candida species ranges from vagin…
Helicobacter pylori (HP) colonizes chronically ~50% of the world's population, causing gastric tissue inflammation and gastric ulcers or cancers. In light of rising antibiotic resistance, curtailing …
PI: Tremblay, Marie-Ève; Ben-Azu, Benneth; Frenkel, Dan
Discoveries spanning the last decade have provided essential insights into Alzheimer's disease by identifying, as an important risk factor, immune challenges that affect microglia, the brain's immune…
PI: Victoria Ansalem, Anil Kumar
Coronavirus disease-19 (Covid-19) pandemic is the biggest global health crisis in recent history, resulting in over 4.5 million deaths worldwide. Covid-19 is caused by SARS-Coronavirus-2, a novel cor…
PI: Cestari, Igor; Alonso, Guillermo D; Qvit, Nir
Chagas disease (ChD) is a global health threat affecting over 8 million people and caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi). ChD is found primarily in South and Central America but has spr…
PI: Richard, Dave; Abdel Hamid, Muzamil M; Florentin, Anat
Malaria is one of the world's most common infectious diseases, with approximately 241 million cases each year and 627 000 deaths, and thus represents one of the most devastating global public health …
Novel adjuvants for vaccines are highly desirable, especially if they can be synthesized instead of being derived from natural products. Additionally, the adjuvant should be capable of inducing a gre…
PI: Zarychanski, Ryan; Lawler, Patrick R; Turgeon, Alexis F
Community acquired pneumonia (CAP) is an acute infection of the lungs acquired outside of a hospital setting. CAP is one of the most common causes of mortality in the world and results in critical il…
PI: Harrison, Joe J
Biofilms are slime-covered groups of microbes that stick to each other and to surfaces. Biofilms are responsible for many chronic infections that defeat the immune system and are highly resistant to …
PI: Brown, Eric D
There have been no truly new antibiotics antibiotics discovered in more than thirty years. During the same time we have seen an alarming increase in reports of "superbugs" with resistance to existing…
PI: Hoa, Sabrina A
Scleroderma (or systemic sclerosis) is a rare but life-threatening disease in which the immune system attacks its own tissues, leading to excessive scarring (fibrosis) of the skin and internal organs…
PI: Ohashi, Pamela S
Immunotherapy for cancer involves using the immune system to fight cancer. One key cell type is a T cell, which is a type of white blood cell that has the potential to kill tumor cells. Another way t…
PI: Ohashi, Pamela S
One population of white blood cells, called T cells, is known to have the ability to kill tumor cells. Clinical studies have shown that augmenting the function of these T cells using a particular ant…
Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) is the infectious cause of Kaposi's sarcoma (KS), an unusual skin cancer with a bruise-like appearance which develops from the unrestricted growth of ce…
Understanding the cellular mechanisms that drive clonal T cell expansion of the HIV reservoir
Antiretroviral therapy (ART) blocks HIV replication and extends the life of people living with HIV (PLHIV). However, it does not eliminate the virus from the body, requiring ART lifelong. Therefore, …
The gastrointestinal tract is home to a complex community of microorganisms, called the microbiota. The microbiota benefits the host by digesting complex fibers, regulating inflammatory responses, an…
PI: King, Irah L
It is becoming increasingly appreciated that the environment we are exposed to immediately after birth can have long-term consequences on our health. Nowhere in the body is this more relevant than th…
Cell surface carbohydrates, referred to as glycans, cover all cells and play many important physiological roles. On immune cells, immunomodulatory glycan-binding proteins (GBPs) integrate signals fro…
PI: Mortha, Arthur
The development of our immune system depends on the microbiota, the collection of all microorganisms living on our body's surfaces. The impact of prokaryotic member in our microbiota on the host immu…
PI: Philpott, Dana J
Intestinal inflammation due to infection or diseases like inflammatory bowel disease causes great deal of morbidity and mortality. Our recent work has uncovered a novel pathway in the intestine that …
PI: McGeer, Allison J; Kus, Julianne V
As antimicrobial resistance worsens, and hospital care becomes more and more capable of treating complex diseases, fungal infections are emerging worldwide. As they do, antifungal agents (antibiotics…
PI: Ashkar, Ali A
Successful host defense requires tight control of inflammation to mount an effective immune response while limiting damage to the host. Loss of such inflammatory control can result in "cytokine storm…
PI: Jean, François; Boudreault, Pierre-Luc; Leduc, Richard
Respiratory viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 (the virus causing COVID-19) and Influenza A virus, have inarguably had an enormous impact on human health. Although vaccines have greatly limited COVID-19 and …
Oncolytic or "cancer-killing viruses" are a new and exciting class of anti-cancer therapeutic agents not only due to their specific predilection to infect and kill cancer cells but also because these…
Outer epidermis contains several proteases which collectively orchestrate vital skin functions, such as skin renewal, barrier function and innate immunity. Amongst them, evidence from genetic and bio…
PI: Moraes, Trevor F
Multidrug resistant Acinetobacter is a Gram-negative pathogen that is considered to be an "urgent threat" by the CDC as it causes 12000 infections/yr (7300 MDR with no cure) and 500 deaths in the US …
PI: Veillette, André
Accumulating evidence indicates that SLAMF7, a molecule expressed at the surface of "innate" immune cells known as macrophages and NK cells, is a useful target for new anticancer immunotherapies. Amo…
PI: Frappier, Lori D
Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infects most people worldwide, persists for a life-time and is a causative agent in several types of lymphoma, gastric carcinoma and nasopharyngeal carcinoma, accounting for …
PI: Wright, Gerard D
Antibiotic resistance is a process where disease-causing bacteria acquire or evolve strategies to evade the drug's killing activity. Interventions ranging from the treatment of pneumonia to cancer ch…
PI: Manges, Amee R; Javer, Amin R
Chronic sinusitis (CRS) is a common inflammatory condition of the sinuses that affects up to 2.5% of the Canadian population, and is thought to be caused by bacterial infection, resistant biofilms, c…
HIV continues to be a worldwide pandemic, with approximately 37 million people living with the disease and roughly one million deaths annually. AIDS results from a progressive impairment of the immun…
PI: Brooks, David
Central to immune alterations in the tumor microenvironment (TME) that facilitate tumor growth is the functional attenuation (exhaustion) of CD8 T cells. As a result, restoring function to CD8 T cell…
Macrophages are a diverse group of immune cells that play a major role in eliminating dangerous particles like bacteria, pollutants, and even tumour and dead cells. Macrophages do this by recognizing…
PI: Anderson, Colin C; Baldwin, Troy A
It is being increasingly found that factors that occur very early in life can promote the generation of disease later in life, and this is also true for autoimmune diseases. Our research focuses on t…
PI: Money, Deborah M
There are very little data on human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination among the 18 million women living with HIV (WLWH) globally, who constitute a population most vulnerable to HPV and the resultant c…
PI: Poon, Arthur F
One of the positive outcomes of the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has been the rapid collection and sharing of virus genomc data. Today, there are over 9 million SARS-CoV-2 genomes from around the worl…