Elizabeth Rideout, one of the CFI grant recipients, examines some of her fruit flies. Photo by Brian Kladko
UBC research into pancreatic cancer and disease disparities between sexes received a boost with new funding announced today from the Canada Foundation for Innovation.
The university received $1.55 million from the John R. Evans Leaders Fund for 14 research programs across UBC’s Vancouver and Okanagan campuses.
“This funding provides our researchers with new tools and equipment they need to examine issues like disease and wildfire,” said John Hepburn, UBC vice-president, research and international. “We are grateful to the Canada Foundation for Innovation for their continued support.”
Janel Kopp, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cellular and Physiological sciences, will use the funding for equipment to look at how cancer develops in the cells of the pancreas. Pancreatic cancer has low survival rates; it is the fourth leading cause of death from cancer in Canada.
Elizabeth Rideout, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cellular and Physiological sciences, studies the differences between men and women in the development of disease like diabetes. She is using the funding for equipment that measures gene expression.
The Honourable Minister Harjit Sajjan, Minister of National Defence, was on campus to announce the funding. He toured Kopp’s and Rideout’s laboratories in the Life Sciences Institute.
Other Faculty of Medicine recipients are:
- François Bénard, Professor in the Department of Radiology, the B.C.Leadership Chair in Functional Cancer Imaging and Scientific Director of Functional Imaging at the B.C. Cancer Agency, for acquisition of a flexible radiochemistry system for novel radiopharmaceuticals
Francois Benard observes the manufacture of medical isotopes. Photo courtesy of NSERC
- Liam Brunham, Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine and the Centre for Heart and Lung Innovation, for harnessing advances in genomics to improve the care of patients with dyslipidemias
- Pamela Hoodless, Professor in the Department of Medical Genetics and the Terry Fox Research Laboratory, for analysis of high precision genetically engineered mouse models for cancer
- Bruce McManus, Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and the Centre for Heart and Lung Innovation, to develop a Frontiers in Molecular Laboratory Medicine at St. Paul’s Hospital
- Paul Pavlidis, Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Centre for High-Throughput Biology, for a laboratory for neuroinformatics
- Calvin Yip, Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, for a research platform for advanced structure-function analyses of human autophagic degradation machinery.