Faculty members awarded more than $27 million in fall 2019 CIHR project grants

The Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) has announced its latest CIHR project grants and 40 projects led by researchers at the UBC Faculty of Medicine were awarded more than $27 million in grants.

Funding for full project grants was awarded to a total of 50 projects led by UBC researchers and its affiliated health authority research centres. An additional eight projects at UBC were funded through priority announcement grants and bridge grants.

As CIHR’s largest funding program, the project grant competitions support multi-year grants for researchers at various stages in their careers as they conduct research projects that cover the full range of health research topics.

The UBC Faculty of Medicine recipients and their project titles are:

Laura Arbour and Leigh Anne Swayne
When Rare Becomes Common: The impact of the AnkB p.S646F variant on heart disease in a Northern BC First Nation – $1,384,650

Sean Barbour
Development of a personalized medicine approach to corticosteroid treatment in IgA nephropathy – $292,976

Ryan Brinkman and Andrew Weng
Machine Learning for Flow Cytometry Clinical Data and Trial Analysis – $317,475

Liam Brunham and John Boyd
CETP Inhibition as a novel treatment to remove pathogen lipids and improve survival in sepsis – $612,000

James Christenson and Kendall Ho
Kwiis hen niip – Change: Change for emergency care services in rural and remote Indigenous communities in British Columbia. – $1,172,436

Kathleen Deering
Longitudinal impacts of violence and stigma on HIV care continuum and broader health care access among WLWH: the SHAWNA Project – $956,250

Caigan Du and Jayachandran Kizhakkedathu
Novel hyperbranched polyglycerol-derived biliary excretable osmotic agents for peritoneal dialysis – preclinical evaluation – $474,300

Franck Duong
Development of a peptide-based membrane mimetic for solution studies in membrane protein research. – $864,450

Jan Friedman and Inanc Birol
Long-read sequencing and bioinformatics analysis to identify cryptic genetic mutations in patients with undiagnosed intellectual disability – $1,063,351

William Gibson
Functional Studies of Coding Variants in Polycomb Repressive Complex Found in Humans – $612,000

Gillian Hanley and Timothy Oberlander
A population-level linked data study of the long-term developmental impacts of prenatal antidepressant exposure – $359,552

Sarah Henderson
The Effects of In Utero and Neonatal Wildfire Smoke Exposure on Birth Outcomes and Health in Early Life – $325,124

William Honer and William Panenka
Neuropsychiatric complications of co-morbid illness in people living in homelessness or precarious housing – $1,235,475

Xiaoyan Jiang
Targeting a novel miR-185/PAK6 axis to overcome drug-resistance in human leukemia – $902,700

James Johnson
Mechanisms by which hyperinsulinemia promotes pancreatic cancer – $1,090,125

James Johnson
Mechanisms linking reduced circulating insulin to insulin sensitivity and longevity – $1,090,125

Philipp Lange
Tumour microenvironment mediated cell surface shedding creates unique targets and markers – $977,425 (includes $25,000 Priority Announcement Prize: Early Career Investigator in Cancer)

Teresa Liu-Ambrose and Liisa Galea
Sex Matters: Understanding Sex Differences in Exercise Efficacy on Brain Health in Mild Cognitive Impairment – $661,724

William Lockwood
The effects of smoking marijuana on lung cancer development: implications for screening and early detection. – $688,500

Christopher A Maxwell
Mechanisms that impact the cell division axis and phenotype for BRCA1-mutant mammary epithelial cells. – $837,675

Heather Mckay and Joan Sims-Gould
How can health benefits of an effective, scaled-up, health promotion model for older adults be sustained? – $883,576

Brad Nelson
Mechanisms of B cell-mediated immunity in human cancer – $1,193,400

Wendy Norman, Kimberlyn McGrail and Bonnie Henry
The CART Mife-Outcomes study: Relating Canada’s unique mifepristone regulations to health system events, costs and access to abortion, using linked health administrative data. – $524,024

Robert Olson and Scott Tyldesley
A phase III randomized controlled trial and economic evaluation of Stereotactic Ablative Radiotherapy (SABR) for Comprehensive treatment of OligoMETastatic (1-3 metastases) cancer: SABR-COMET-3 – $699,380

Josef Penninger
Investigating the role of the BH4 pathway in Parkinson’s Disease (PD) – $868,275

Matthew Ramer
Hypoxia mimicry for enhancing peripheral nerve regeneration – $807,075

Wendy Robinson
Genetics and epigenetics of sex differences in placental and fetal development – $604,350

Kate Shannon
Towards Equitable Sexual Health Care in BC: Centring the Voices of Cis and Trans Feminine Youth and Young Women in Policy and Practice – $960,075

Noah Silverberg
Mobilizing early management of mental health complications after mild traumatic brain injury (M4) – $749,700

Aline Talhouk and Jessica McAlpine
Pre-operative Risk Stratification in Endometrial Cancer to Inform Surgical Management – $263,925

Guy Tanentzapf
The regulation of Cell-Matrix Adhesion in mouse development and tissue homeostasis – $921,825

Decheng Yang
Role of transcription factor NFAT5 in viral myocarditis: a novel strategy for therapy – $604,350

Calvin Yip
Investigating the structure and function of the human autophagy regulator EPG5 – $856,800

Amina Zoubeidi
The role of the lineage oncogene ASCL1 in treatment-induced neuroendocrine prostate cancer – $841,500

Priority Announcement Grants

Jan Dutz
Phototherapy to modulate regulatory T cells and prevent autoimmune disease
(Priority Announcement: Nutrition, Metabolism and Diabetes) – $100,000

Nichole Fairbrother
Perinatal Anxiety Disorder Screening Study
(Priority Announcement: Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction) – $100,000

Troy Grennan
Predicting and Evaluating Anal Cancer in HIV with novel biomarkers: The PEACH Study
(Priority Announcement: HIV/AIDS) – $100,000

Ging-Yuek Hsiung and Ian Mackenzie
Diagnostic and predictive biomarkers for Frontotemporal Dementia with TDP-43 pathology
(Priority Announcement: Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction) – $100,000

Andrea Krüsi
Criminalization, Public Health and Incarceration – A participatory qualitative and digital storytelling investigation of the experiences of cis and trans women living with HIV
(Priority Announcement: Patient-Oriented Research: Early-Career Investigator) – $100,000

Cheryl Wellington
Using bioengineered human vessels to understand how brain and peripheral apoE affect cerebrovascular functions relevant to Alzheimer’s Disease
(Priority Announcement: Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction) – $100,000