Researchers Under the Scope

Manuela Valle-Castro remembers growing up in a home where social justice was frequently part of the dinner-table conversation. She spent the first six years of her life in exile, after her family joined thousands of Chileans fleeing Augusto Pinochet's oppressive political regime. Upon her family's return to Chile, she watched her parents and their friends organize and push back, even when dissent...

Dr. Ron Geyer is the man behind the Saskatchewan Therapeutic Antibody Resource, the Advanced Diagnostics Research Laboratory, and the Centre for Biologic Imaging Research and Development. But when the biochemist and pathologist began university, he was more interested in improving his downhill race times.  "I was very into skiing," Geyer said, recalling his experiments with different waxes and tec...

"The medication that I'm taking today would not have happened if we weren't doing this research 30 years ago," said Lois Miller.   In this episode, she offers a patient's view of research, and how it can change lives. Miller is 52. Once again she's able to walk, to work, and to live a relatively normal life five years after her diagnosis with multiple sclerosis. But that didn't happen overnight, n...

As a young man finishing his biology degree, Adam Baxter-Jones (PhD) was decidedly more interested in being a punk than a professor. "I was far more interested in things like music and fashion than I ever was in academia," he said.  But Baxter-Jones needed a job, and eventually found one testing the lung function of hospital patients. Then, he found himself measuring aerobic fitness for up-and-com...

In Mozambique, the Xitswa phrase, "wa sati wa nhenha" means "strong women" or "women's strength". Jessie Forsyth and Nazeem Muhajarine are two of the University of Saskatchewan researchers learning how to build on that strength in rural and remote communities.  And they've done so during a pandemic. In this episode, hear why Covid-19 did not stop the Mozambique-Canada Maternal Health project from...

One year ago, Dr. Preston Smith remembers watching the coronavirus inch closer and closer to the University of Saskatchewan. "It felt like being in the emergency room and hearing the police and ambulances had been called to an accident. You knew something was coming," he said. By mid-March 2020, nearly every aspect of teaching and research was shutting down at the medical college he oversees. "Exp...

To crack the causes of metabolic disease, Changting Xiao (PhD) is peering into the "black box" of the human gut. As a boy, Xiao frequently ran homemade experiments, trying to figure out how systems work. Over the decades that followed, he observed an 'epidemic' increase in diabetes, obesity, strokes and heart disease. In this episode, the biomedical researcher explains why he recently moved to Sas...

"Western medicine can give you the heart of another person, but no meaningful direction on how to lead a good life with that heart," said Dr. Caroline Tait. That's the dilemma many Indigenous people face, as disproportionately early deaths and chronic disease boost the need for organ transplants.  "Our whole public education if you look at it, is all about convincing people to sign their donor car...

Respiratory disease now accounts for one in four hospital admissions, with lung cancer killing more patients than any other cancer. As both a respirologist and a health economist, Dr. Erika Penz (MD, PhD) knows Canadians spend a staggering amount of money treating lung diseases and cancer -- conditions that can be prevented. That's why, early on, Penz chose to put respiratory disease in her crossh...

Whether it's a blog, a podcast, a wiki, a tweet, or an infographic, a growing number of doctors now turn online when they need answers. For the past five years, Dr. Brent Thoma has led research supporting the use of free, open-access, and high-quality resources for medical education.  "I think we're really elevating our game in medical education, because these resources are available from such exc...

Like the "slow food" movement, Dr. Alexandra King promotes "slow research" when it comes to Indigenous people's health and wellness. As a First Nations physician, and the Cameco Chair in Indigenous Health and Wellness at the University of Saskatchewan, King wants Indigenous elders and people with lived experience to lead and shape more health research. "What does knowledge translation look like if...

Ever wonder how tumours spread? For Dr. Anand Krishnan, finding effective anti-cancer therapies means finding a way to decode the language tumours use to communicate with nerves. "What we are trying to do is cut the lines of feeding from the nerves to the tumours," Krishnan said. In this episode, he explains why applying the principles of cancer biology to neuroscience may lead to more targeted an...

A self-described computer nerd, Dave Cooper was always fascinated by the way technology could push fundamental science research forward.    After bone density scans became commonplace in the 1980s, Cooper watched imaging technology and forensic science begin to advance.   Today, his laboratory uses the Canadian Light Source to take detailed snapshots of bones evolving and changing in real time, ho...

Emma Linsley managed to power through fatigue and weight loss, but when her joints started to swell, she and her family knew something was wrong. "I thought I would have to quit all my sports, and that I wouldn't be able to do all the things I loved," she said. "This is something that's going to play a role in the rest of my life." In this episode, we look at research from her perspective, as a te...

Rupeena Purewal (MD) says when the coronavirus infects children, their bodies react differently than those of adults. She's leading the only Saskatchewan-based clinical trials of human convalescent plasma on children sick enough to be admitted to hospital. So far, there aren't many children with Covid-19 in hospital, but with the cold weather come higher infection rates, and the risk of other seri...

After raising five children of his own, Ron Siemens (MD) brings an empathetic, pragmatic approach to pediatrics. Whether it's in Saskatoon or in Mozambique, his goal is to make life better for infants, children and their families. "You see all the obstacles parents have," said Siemens. From road-testing motorcycle trailers for expectant mothers in Mozambique to creating self-sustaining chicken far...

The way people perceive threats in a pandemic affects the spread of Covid-19, according to social epidemiologist Nazeem Muhajarine (PhD).    Since he was a boy, he's studied the way government interventions really work, from the perspective of citizens who have to live with them.   In this episode, Muhajarine explains why he left medical school for a career in public health research, why politicia...

Sarah Donkers is a physiotherapist and specialist in neurology who had to rethink everything when the Covid-19 lockdown slammed doors shut this spring. Donkers couldn't stop thinking about her patients, and the care they were now missing. As she tells host Jen Quesnel, her team went on to design online movement and expert masterclasses for more than 800 Saskatchewan people with MS, with spinal cor...

They're two millionths of a metre, and they can be found outside, as well as on your skin, even inside your nose, throat, and gut. The World Health Organization calls Klebsiella pneumoniae a major concern, because this tiny bacteria can cause deadly infections. Molecular microbiologist Jenny-Lee Thomassin recently arrived at the University of Saskatchewan to study one of the most drug-resistant st...

They look like ordinary black mice with pink whiskers -- and small furry water-wings. To test coronavirus therapies, viral immunologist Kerry Lavender is using a grant of $267,500 to create designer laboratory mice. She's one of the only people in the world who can give each mouse a human immune system, and its own pair of human lungs. 

After winning grants of just over $240,000, Dr. Cory Neudorf is sharpening the blurry picture Canadians currently have of public health spending during the Covid-19 pandemic. He calls this an "unprecedented" crisis for both the medical system and politicians, one that lays bare cracks and divisions across Canadian society.

Joyce Wilson leads the team of virologists and geneticists searching for antiviral drugs we can repurpose to stop COVID-19 infections from spreading. Using a $449,000 grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Wilson and her team use genomic tools to identify pathways the virus uses as it hijacks cells in the human body. As she tells host Jen Quesnel, from there her team will narrow do...

At first, Darryl Falzarano was unenthusiastic about COVID-19. He had hoped it would be contained early on. But... it wasn't. And now Falzarano's work days are dedicated to COVID-19 as he leads a research team at the University of Saskatchewan's Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization-International Vaccine Centre. Chelsea Laskowski interviews Falzarano about his mental pivot, and what happens i...

While the world has been in what can sometimes feel like chaos, a few people out there are bringing order into our lives. Dr. Gary Groot is bringing order into healthcare, and he's adapting as the COVID-19 pandemic evolves in the prairie province of Saskatchewan. Interviewer Chelsea Laskowski speaks with Groot about measuring what's happening, what needs to happen, and the level of pressure he fac...

Emergency room visits plummeted in Saskatchewan when COVID-19 hit. Why? That's what Donna Goodridge wants to find out. She is doing a study that is crucial to understanding what's happening to groups of people who we haven't heard much from during the COVID-19 pandemic -- people living in lower income housing. In a physical distancing interview with Chelsea Laskowski, Goodridge shares her insights...