UBC Faculty of Medicine researchers were awarded more than $30 million in combined funding through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Project Grant: Fall 2025 competition.
The funding supports 40 projects led by Faculty of Medicine researchers. Covering a wide range of fundamental and applied research areas, the projects will address some of the most pressing health challenges facing Canadians including breast cancer, diabetes and medication access in rural, remote, and Indigenous communities.
Across the university a total of 47 projects led by UBC researchers were awarded $35 million including 38 Project Grants and nine Priority Announcement Grants.
On a national level, CIHR approved a total of 421 research grants, for a total investment of approximately $413 million. In addition, 83 priority announcement grants were funded for a total amount of $9.7 million and 17 supplemental prizes were awarded for a total of $450,000.
Faculty of Medicine-Led Project Grants
- Brittany Bingham, Social Medicine
Investing in Matriarchal Power, Access, Care and Traditional Wellness (IMPACT) - Anna Blakney, School of Biomedical Engineering
Engineering Longer-Lasting RNA Therapeutics for Treatment of Blood Disorders - Jeffrey Brubacher, Emergency Medicine
Circumstances of Active Transport Injuries - Jeffrey Brubacher, Emergency Medicine
The Toxic Drug Study: Clinical and toxicological profiles of people with unregulated drug poisoning - Kristin Campbell, Physical Therapy
Does tailored referral support increase the reach of the Breast Cancer Endocrine Fitness (BE-FIT) program - Danya Fast, Medicine
Adapting, Producing, and Testing a Youth Overdose Prevention Toolkit Through Community-Based Participatory Methods - Gillian Hanley, Obstetrics & Gynaecology; Scott Cowie and Heather Stuart, Surgery
Expanding opportunistic bilateral salpingectomy to laparoscopic cholecystectomy to prevent ovarian cancer: A feasibility and safety trial - Sarah Hedtrich, School of Biomedical Engineering
In Situ Gene Editing to Rescue Genetic Skin Diseases - Femke Hoekstra, Medicine; John Pawlovich, Family Practice; Sonya Cressman, Digital Emergency Medicine
Transforming access to medications in rural, remote, and Indigenous communities: Implementing and evaluating virtual pharmacist care and drone delivery services - Eric Jan, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Translation initiation via factorless internal ribosome entry site mechanisms - Diane Lacaille, Medicine
Emulating randomized controlled trials to assess the effectiveness and safety of semaglutide in inflammatory arthritis and type 2 diabetes - Janice Leung, Medicine
MAPping Lung DiseasE Through Social Epigenetics, Exposures, and Disparities (MAPLE-SEED) Study - Heather Mckay, Family Practice
Alleviating waitlist woes: Implementing and evaluating a health-promoting program for people awaiting hip and knee replacement surgery for osteoarthritis - Brad Nelson, Medical Genetics
Supercharging cancer immunotherapy using clinician-controlled cytokine receptors - Wendy V. Norman, Family Practice
Trauma-Informed Care Guidelines for Virtual Abortion Services (TICG-VAS) - Paul Pavlidis, Psychiatry
Large-scale multimodal genomics meta-analysis to gain insight into brain gene regulation - Sarah Purcell, Medicine
Characterizing the role of combined hormonal contraceptives on appetite and energy balance in the context of weight loss and maintenance - Wendy Robinson, Medical Genetics
Placental genetic and epigenetic changes linked to congenital heart defects - Fabio Rossi, School of Biomedical Engineering / Medical Genetics
Investigating the role of muscle stromal cells in pancreatic cancer cachexia and associated myosteatosis - Fabio Rossi, School of Biomedical Engineering / Medical Genetics
Setting the homeostatic inflammatory environment: role of the Tak1-NFkb pathway in mesenchymal stromal cells. - Kirk Schultz, Pediatrics
Chronic Graft-versus-Host Disease Polyomic Profiling as Predictive Biomarker Patterns to Guide Therapy - Mypinder Sekhon, Medicine; Mark Cembrowski, Cellular & Physiological Sciences; Donald Griesdale, Medicine; George Isac, Anesthesiology, Pharmacology & Therapeutics
Multimodal Neuromonitoring during Normothermic Regional Perfusion in Organ Donors Determined Dead by Circulatory Criteria following withdrawal of life sustaining measures. - Amanda Slaunwhite, School of Population and Public Health
“You can’t teach what I know” – Building best practices and capacity for engagement of people with lived experience of incarceration in health research - Eugenia Socías and Lianping Ti, Medicine
Characterizing the uptake and the health and economic impacts of evidence-based pharmacotherapy practices for alcohol use disorder - Peter Stirling, Medical Genetics
Identification of novel DNA nuclease inhibition strategies - Silvia Stringhini, School of Population and Public Health
Unequal Ageing Trajectories Across the Life Course: Environmental Pathways, Protective Factors, and Actionable Levers - Scott Tebbutt, Medicine
Multi-omics plasma biomarkers for early detection of cardiac allograft vasculopathy in adult heart transplant recipients - Nobuhiko Tokuriki, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Molecular and Evolutionary Mechanisms of Carbapenemases in Class A beta-Lactamase Family - Olivia Tseng, Family Practice
The feasibility and costs of pharmacy models supporting rural and remote communities: A simulation study - Yuzhuo Wang, Urologic Sciences
PROX1 Drives Cell Lineage Reprogramming in Neuroendocrine Prostate Cancer - Hilla Weidberg, Cellular & Physiological Sciences
Understanding the role of Mge1’s targeting sequence in mitochondrial stress signaling - Alexander Wyatt, Urologic Sciences; Kim NguyenChi, Medicine
Defining circulating tumor DNA kinetics as a treatment response biomarker in metastatic prostate cancer
Faculty of Medicine-Led Priority Announcements
- Nicholas Bansback, School of Population and Public Health
How Does Home Care Services Use Impact Downstream Healthcare Utilization and System Costs for Canada’s Aging Population? A Cross-Provincial Longitudinal Cohort Study
Priority Announcement Area: Patient-Oriented Research - Michael Hunt, Physical Therapy
Cartilage, biomechanical, and clinical responses to a start to run program in masters aged individuals: Implications for long-term knee joint health
Priority Announcement Area: Female Athlete Health - Elisabeth McClymont, Obstetrics and Gynaecology; Deborah Money, Obstetrics & Gynaecology
Long-Term Follow-Up Study of NOVA-HIV: Nonavalent HPV Vaccination in Women Living with HIV
Priority Announcement Area: HIV/AIDS and STBBI - Heather Palis, School of Population and Public Health; Skye Barbic, Occupational Science & Occupational Therapy; Naveed Janjua, School of Population and Public Health; Kirsten Marchand, School of Population and Public Health; Steve Mathias, Psychiatry
Identifying service pathways to reduce overdose risk among youth: a multi-method, population-based, and co-design study
Priority Announcement Area: Human Development Child and Youth Health – Early Career Support - Stuart Turvey, Pediatrics; Catherine Biggs, Pediatrics
Discovering new human inborn errors of immunity
Priority Announcement Area: Genetics - Bruce Vallance, Pediatrics
Mid-Colon Goblet Cells: Primary Source of the Protective Colonic Mucus Barrier
Priority Announcement Area: Nutrition, Metabolism and Diabetes - Yuzhuo Wang, Urologic Sciences
CHD7 as a key upstream chromatin regulator driving NEPC development and aggressiveness
Priority Announcement Area: Prevention and/or Early Detection of Cancer - Lyndia Wu, School of Biomedical Engineering
Sex-specific biomechanical thresholds and cumulative risk models for sports-related brain injury
Priority Announcement Area: Female Athlete Health