Researchers Under the Scope (University of Saskatchewan, OVDR, College of Medicine)

A behavioural neuroscientist in Saskatoon is uncovering marijuana’s effects on fetal brain development. 

After recently winning a five-year CIHR grant of $960,076 in the spring of 2024, Dr. John Howland’s lab at the University of Saskatchewan is expanding its work examining prenatal exposure to cannabis smoke. Howland’s teams will assess the way cannabis exposure alters higher brain functions like memory and learning in both rats and mice.

Compared to cannabis injections in the past, the professor of Anatomy, Physiology and Pharmacology at the College of Medicine said exposing rodents to high-potency smoke for up to 15 minutes at a time provides a more realistic picture of marijuana's effects on fetal brain development. 

Over their lives, Howland will measure changes in cortical limbic circuitruity, for both rodent mothers and their offspring. 

“The cortex is definitely involved, but we also look at other areas like the hippocampus and the amygdala,” said Howland. “There’s pretty good evidence that they are at least subtly affected after gestational exposure to cannabis.”

Now, it’s a matter of quantifying which circuits cannabis affects in the rodent brain — under circumstances as close to real-life human exposure as Howland's laboratory can create. 

"It's not simple," said Howland. He notes a wide variety of phenotypes of THC and CBD strains are now available at retailers, each with its own characteristics and potential interactions with neurons. 

“These receptors are involved in many discrete events during brain development,” he said. "We're hoping to be more controlled and more specific." 

"It turns out a lot of things that are legal like alcohol and tobacco aren't that safe during pregnancy either," said Howland.

"I think more knowledge has to be helpful as women make these decisions for themselves.”

Colour-changing reactions and small explosions punctuated life at Dr. Oleg Dmitriev's home, when he was a boy. He loved trying out chemical reactions, and experimenting. As a teenager, he was fascinated by the science fiction novels his father brought home. 

"It's all about strange worlds and unusual, strange forms of life," said Dmitriev, a protein biochemist. "I started wondering, why is the life on our planet is the way it is? And what is the chemistry of life?"

After earning his PhD at Moscow State University, Dmitriev went on to post-doctoral studies at the University of Osnabrück, followed by years of bench research at the University of Wisconsin. That's where he discovered the potential of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy-- something he uses today to piece together the way copper moves through human cells.

"It still fascinates me," said Dmitriev, who moved to the University of Saskatchewan in 2005 to open his own laboratory. "It's a very, very important technical component of my research."

Today, as a professor of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Immunology at the U of S College of Medicine, Dmitriev has honed in on ATP7B, the protein that transports and regulates copper in human tissuess. 

"Copper is a very important bioelement that is needed for supplying our cells with energy, but at the same time it also has a dark side," Dmitriev said. "If it escapes, it can start a cascade of damaging runaway reactions."

The Canadian Liver Foundation estimates one in 30,000 Canadians inherit a defective version of the protein, causing Wilson Disease. Without treatment, they suffer liver damage and a host of neurological symptoms from an over-accumulation of copper.

"There are many entry points for copper," said Dmitriev. "Where does it go from the point where it enters the protein? How does it go across the cell membrane? How is that activity regulated?"

Together with Dr. Scott O'Leary, a cell biologist, Dmitriev was successful in securing a $761,176 grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research in 2021 to explore those questions. He said understanding the 'cogs and wheels' of copper transport in the body may also help clarify the way other metals, such as platinum, move through human tissue.

Platinum compounds are frequently used in chemotherapy treatments for breast, colon, lung, and ovarian cancer. 

"They're quite effective, but they're incredibly toxic," said Dmitriev. "They have a lot of really serious side effects."

Because platinum uses the same transportation mechanisms as copper, Dmitriev wants to know how to make its journey through the body less harmful.

"Can we manipulate those transfer pathways to make sure that platinum chemotherapy drugs get to their target, but do not go astray and poison the patient?" he said. 

Looking back, Dmitriev said he's glad he landed at the University of Saskatchewan, as it gave him the chance to explore the areas he feels most passionate about.

"I would do it all over," he said. "Science is fun. Science is exciting. It's a good life."

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 faces to get it right.

As a high school student growing up in Melfort, Sask.. Linda Chelico knew she wanted to work in health sciences.

She enjoyed biology class, and took an interest in watching nature heal itself. She wanted to find environmentally friendly solutions to health problems.

Then, she read a National Geographic magazine about landfills filling up.

Chelico began thinking about the environmental footprint of garbage, and about the organisms that could help break down piles of refuse. The idea turned into her Grade 11 science project, where she showed ways micro-organisms could degrade some of the waste people produce.

“That's when I decided I wanted to be a microbiologist,” said Chelico. Watching evolving life forms had her hooked.

She moved a two-hour drive west to Saskatoon, and enrolled as a microbiology student at the University of Saskatchewan. Within a year, she switched to an honours degree through the College of Agriculture’s Applied Microbiology program. She earned her PhD in Saskatoon studying insecticidal fungal strains, with varied results.

“You could kill the insects without putting chemicals in the environment,” said Chelico.

As she tested the fungus on arid prairie fields, the effects of its prolonged exposure to sunlight and irradiation intrigued her.

“Some of these fungal spores would survive a lot of UV damage,” she said. “It would dry out, it would acquire mutations. And I was trying to formulate it with sunscreens and then in the lab irradiate it with UV radiation, like if you're going to a tanning bed.”

Although mutations were generally seen as negative for cell health in her course work, Chelico realized they deserved a closer look.

“There's extreme stress on the organisms. They've acquired a lot of DNA damage from this UV irradiation,” she said. “So how do they survive?”

In this episode, we hear how Chelico’s interest in damaged, mutant cells morphed into a scientific Hollywood story, after she met Myron F. Goodman, at the University of Southern California’s Los Angeles laboratories.

Chelico spent five years of post-doctoral work studying microcellular activity and biological responses to stress in Goodman’s lab.

“Everything was unified by the benefit of mutations,” she said.

By 2009, Chelico put Hollywood Boulevard in the rear-view mirror, returning to Saskatoon to accept a faculty position at the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Medicine. Working as a virologist, microbiologist and biochemist, Chelico and her teams have landed more than $1.6 million dollars in three years, with continuing grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Information.

Her laboratory is focused on what key enzyme mutations in viruses mean, particularly for patients with HIV-AIDS, other viruses, and cancer.

“In humans, when these mutations happen, usually we see it come out as a cancer,” said Chelico. “It doesn't exist in all of our cells. It exists in the type of [immune] cells that react to environmental stress.”

Some had cardiovascular damage. Some had gastrointestinal issues.

But it wasn't because of Covid-19.

Instead, she kept seeing children and adolescents hospitalized with eating disorders.

"They were so sick, so medically unwell," said Kurji. "We started to track it."

As familiar routines evaporated and face-to-face interactions vanished after school cancelations, Kurji said across Canada, outpatient referrals for eating disorders shot up 60 per cent, largely driven by an increase in anorexia nervosa.

Kurji is one of the only paediatricians in Saskatchewan who specializes in treating children and teens with eating disorders.

During the pandemic, she said inpatient hospitalizations for eating disorders tripled.

The phenomenon is not isolated, with doctors in Canada and internationally observing the same spike, Kurji said.

"In the pandemic where we've seen school closures and things like that, we've also seen more kids with depression, more kids with anxiety, and this eating disorder trend is huge," she said.

Kurji shared red flags for eating disorders, and emphasized the need for parents to keep an eye on children and teens who develop new habits around food and exercise.

"As a pediatrician, as a mom, we need to be putting our kids first," said Kurji.

In this episode, she talks about her path to pediatrics, one that included a bachelor's degree in psychology before she entered medical school at the University of Calgary. 

Kurji completed her residency in Saskatchewan, and is now an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Saskatchewan's College of Medicine.

Almost two years into the pandemic, she's now compiling her observations on the spike in eating disorders into an article for peer review. 

As Omicron infects a growing number of people, she said it's important to learn from the early days of the pandemic.

"I think we need to be really careful how we approach things like school closures and delays," she said.

"Sometimes they might be needed, but we need to keep in mind that that's going to have an effect on our kids and we need to be prepared."

Kurji also said popular culture and social media sites also tend bombard young people with questionable messages about food, body image, and beauty.

"When you're watching together, or if you see something like that, it's a good idea that you say 'let's pause this and let's talk about it," Kurji said. 

She said parents need to actively reframe discussions around outward appearances, in favour of talking about active living, and what a person's body can do.

"Eating disorders really speak to me as my special thing where I feel like I can make a difference," she said. 

Left untreated, she said patients who suffer from anorexia and purging often go on to struggle with food as adults, increasing their risk of death by five per cent each decade.

"Catching things early makes a huge difference," said Kurji

Further resources are available at The National Eating Disorder Information Centre (NEDIC) and at the Kelty Mental Health resource centre. 

In this episode, we gain insight into Dr. Sarah Forgie, the new Dean of the College of Medicine. She discusses her innovative teaching methods, her career as a pediatric infectious disease specialist, and her vision for advancing Saskatchewan’s College of Medicine.

Dr. Forgie also shares the story behind her decision to learn the ukulele.

Born to family physicians, Dr. Forgie grew up in Lynn Lake, Manitoba, a remote fly-in mining community. Her family later relocated to Winnipeg, where Dr. Forgie credits much of her motivation to her mother, who encouraged her to pursue both medicine and leadership roles.

As a pediatrician and professor at the University of Alberta, Dr. Forgie’s journey into university leadership can be traced back to her willingness to deploy creative teaching methods. Faced with the challenge of teaching infectious diseases to first-year medical students, she re-wrote the Talking Heads hit “Psycho Killer” to reinforce best practices in treating Streptococcal pharyngitis -- with ukulele accompaniment.

It worked. Those who attended her “Take Five” bacteriology lectures at the University of Alberta retained 98% of the key concepts, compared to a 50-60% retention rate among students in standard classes.

Dr. Forgie strived to instill strong clinical reasoning, and challenged her students to present key concepts in their own creative ways.

“With every session, I would do something, they would do something, and it just made it a fun environment,” she said.

Following her appointment as Saskatchewan’s first full-time female Dean of Medicine on July 1, 2024, Dr. Forgie returned to clinical service this fall as a pediatrician at the Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital in Saskatoon.

In her role as Dean, she aims to strengthen connections between the College of Medicine and Saskatchewan’s medical practitioners.

“What I would love to see in Saskatchewan is that every physician approaches their work with an academic lens,” Dr. Forgie said. This 'lens' may encompass participating in clinical trials, exploring ways to alleviate physician workloads, or collaborating with learners, she said.

Engagement with Indigenous communities remains a critical component of Dr. Forgie’s vision for wellness.

“I am all about collaboration... with First Nation, Inuit, and Métis communities to better prepare our trainees to work within these communities,” she stated, affirming her commitment to cultural sensitivity in healthcare.

As a lifelong resident of the prairies, Dr. Forgie understands the isolation often experienced in rural medicine. She aims to foster connectivity among healthcare providers and new learners.

“How can we help and how can we reduce some of those feelings that you're having around burnout and frustration?” she asked. “Helping with that leads to a virtuous cycle of how do we make things better in Saskatchewan?”

As a young man finishing his biology degree, Adam Baxter-Jones 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-coming teenage swimmers, gymnasts, soccer players and tennis players.

As he earned his PhD in medical sciences, he observed growth variations in teen athletes that led to gaps of up to five years between a child's chronological and maturational age. 

"In professional sports like hockey and soccer, most players are born between January and May," he said, noting coaches often choose the tallest, most mature children for elite teams.

But fast-growing teens often lose that advantage as the rest of their cohort catches up, said Baxter-Jones.

In this episode, he explains his formula for predicting a child's adult height, why coaches and parents should think twice before writing off late-bloomers, and why elite sport training for teens leads to "bone in the bank" -- especially for gymnasts.

“If you get strong bones during your growing years, those strong bones stay with you as long as you keep active throughout your life," said Baxter-Jones. 

By the end of her Grade Eight year in Saskatoon, Wendie Marks was sure about one thing: she knew she wanted to study health and the way early-life development affected the human body.

“I spent a lot of time in the library reading books,” Marks said. “I was always kind of the nerdy type.”

Marks enrolled at the University of Saskatchewan and thrived, earning her PhD in psychology. Her interests evolved towards behavioural neuroscience, focusing on the mechanisms behind behaviour, stress, and their effects on mental and physical health.

“I wanted to make new knowledge. I wanted to be on the cutting edge of finding new pathways that might be involved in anxiety, or depression,” she said.

Under the direction of Dr. Lisa Kalanchuk, Marks looked at stress and depression, during her graduate studies at the University of Saskatchewan. From there, her post-doctoral research veered into epilepsy models at the University of Calgary. Still, Marks’ passion for understanding stress and its intergenerational effects never wavered.

When she returned to the University of Saskatchewan last year as an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics, Marks steered her research toward investigating stress's effects on health and chronic disease.

This summer, she was appointed as a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Developmental Origins of Health and Disease in Indigenous People. Over the next five years, she plans to study the way life experiences, particularly stress and nutrition during pregnancy and early years, can have long-term effects on an individual's health and well-being. 

This research isn't just academic for Dr. Marks; it's deeply personal. 

Marks is a member of the Asnishinabe of Wauzhushk Onigum First Nation, near Lake of the Woods, Ontario, but she was born and raised in Saskatoon. Her mother and her siblings survived both residential school and the “60s Scoop”.

“The whole family was split up. There are aunts and uncles I’ve never even met,” said Marks.  "I've seen within my family firsthand the effects that those stressors have played on people, and the effects those things can have on families.”

Today, Marks credits her academic and research career to her mother’s unwavering support, encouragement and resilience.

 "She's one of the strongest people I know,” said Marks.

In this episode, Marks explained she’ll study stress in two different ways. First, she plans to use a multi-generational rat model to study the consequences of early-life stress by separating mothers from their pups. She’ll also model malnutrition by reducing the mother’s protein intake. 

Her goal is to measure each set of stressors separately, then assess whether they have a deeper effect combined. 

“Being hungry or exposed to stress when you're younger, chronically, it's possible that it can rewire your stress circuitry,” said Marks, who noted that is the case in numerous animal models. 

Her team will investigate how these factors can lead to physiological and cognitive changes, particularly in obesity and brain circuitry. 

In the second stage of her research, Marks will observe health conditions in those rats’ descendants, and propose potential treatments.

‘There's a lot of compelling evidence to suggest that stress and the gut microbiome are linked together and affect our health later on in life,” Marks said. 

Ultimately, Marks hopes to apply the findings from animal studies to real-world situations within Indigenous communities, and help them come up with preventive strategies.

She hopes to bridge the gap between knowledge and action, ultimately improving the health and well-being of Indigenous communities for generations to come.

"Knowledge itself is powerful," Marks said. “The hope is that with this research we begin to find some of the answers and some of the solutions to decolonize Indigenous communities.”

Her work is a testament to resilience, hope, and the profound impact of science in healing intergenerational trauma.

“It’s a significant motivator for my research,” Marks said. “What can I contribute to try to make our world a better place?”This summer, she was appointed as a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Developmental Origins of Health and Disease in Indigenous People. Over the next five years, she plans to study the way life experiences, particularly stress and nutrition during pregnancy and early years, can have long-term effects on an individual's health and well-being. 

This research isn't just academic for Dr. Marks; it's deeply personal. 

Marks is a member of the Asnishinabe of Wauzhushk Onigum First Nation, near Lake of the Woods, Ontario, but she was born and raised in Saskatoon. Her mother and her siblings survived both residential school and the “60s Scoop”.

“The whole family was split up. There are aunts and uncles I’ve never even met,” said Marks.  "I've seen within my family firsthand the effects that those stressors have played on people, and the effects those things can have on families.”

Today, Marks credits her academic and research career to her mother’s unwavering support, encouragement and resilience.

 "She's one of the strongest people I know,” said Marks.

In this episode, Marks explained she’ll study stress in two different ways. First, she plans to use a multi-generational rat model to study the consequences of early-life stress by separating mothers from their pups. She’ll also model malnutrition by reducing the mother’s protein intake. 

Her goal is to measure each set of stressors separately, then assess whether they have a deeper effect combined. 

“Being hungry or exposed to stress when you're younger, chronically, it's possible that it can rewire your stress circuitry,” said Marks, who noted that is the case in numerous animal models. 

Her team will investigate how these factors can lead to physiological and cognitive changes, particularly in obesity and brain circuitry. 

In the second stage of her research, Marks will observe health conditions in those rats’ descendants, and propose potential treatments.

‘There's a lot of compelling evidence to suggest that stress and the gut microbiome are linked together and affect our health later on in life,” Marks said. 

Ultimately, Marks hopes to apply the findings from animal studies to real-world situations within Indigenous communities, and help them come up with preventive strategies.

She hopes to bridge the gap between knowledge and action, ultimately improving the health and well-being of Indigenous communities for generations to come.

"Knowledge itself is powerful," Marks said. “The hope is that with this research we begin to find some of the answers and some of the solutions to decolonize Indigenous communities.”

Her work is a testament to resilience, hope, and the profound impact of science in healing intergenerational trauma.

“It’s a significant motivator for my research,” Marks said. “What can I contribute to try to make our world a better place?”

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.

"Experiments were interrupted. There was an enormous loss to our research," said Smith.

Crediting 'amazing teamwork' for moving coursework online and getting biomedical researchers back into their laboratories, Smith  makes it clear -- science is the only way out of this pandemic.

In this episode, he discusses the pandemic, the need for research and dollars to support it, and his recruiting drive to fill 15-20 faculty positions over the coming years, as a cohort of senior researchers in Saskatoon retire.

“It is a fabulous time to be trying to recruit doctoral and post-doctoral biomedical scientists," said Smith, who is now in his second term as dean.  

And he's unequivocal: provinces that spend tax dollars on biomedical research see fewer preventable illnesses and deaths.

“Our researchers are incredibly creative,” Smith said, noting his faculty punch well above their weight in securing grants.

“We need more local funding that will equip our researchers to be competitive nationally.”

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 could lead to jail time, torture, or death.

"It wasn't a very conventional way of growing up," said Valle-Castro, who watched her loved ones document human rights violations, and rally against injustice.

"I had a voice I wanted to use for things I felt passionate about," she said.

Valle-Castro eventually moved to Canada, where she trained as a community psychologist, completing her PhD in Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia.

"I looked up to Canada," said Valle-Castro. "But what I did not know was how much of Canada's identity has been created over a layer of colonialism that is very violent."

In 2020, she was hired as the Director of the College of Medicine's Division of Social Accountability. 

In medical training and biomedical research, Valle-Castro's job is to tackle and dismantle bias and unconscious discrimination.

In this episode, she discusses the 'extreme politeness' ingrained in Canadian culture, and why it often tends to oppress and silence marginalized people.

"It's not necessarily about racist slurs and impolite words," she said. "[Oppression] can come in a very benevolent and polite shape too."

She said the key to health equity is to listen, promote, and act on advice from racialized people, immigrants, those with disabilities and different lived experiences. 

"Research needs to not be redundant," she said. "How many times do we need to study bad housing or bad water before those issues are addressed?"

"I see a need for this shift all over the College of Medicine," she said, noting indigenous academic leaders have already taken the lead in changing Saskatchewan's dominant narrative.

Medical trainees, researchers and faculty all need to become more outspoken about their work, Valle-Castro said, pushing governments and decision-makers to take action.

"There's no research that happens in a void," she said. "Make those decisions transparent and have people be accountable for those decisions."

Valle-Castro said the end goal for the College of Medicine is better health for all people in Saskatchewan, not just the able-bodied white population.

"Community engagement and health equity need to be absolutely at the forefront," she said.

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.

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 on long-term care homes, palliative care and what scares her about the residents' experience during COVID-19. 

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. 

When Bruce Gordon's relatives descend on Saskatoon this month, his wife will put them to work.

Bruce Gordon was a police officer and a lawyer, who competed as a triathlete and in the Crossfit Games. He was a fierce competitor until he was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer at age 54.

Hear his story in Episode 43.

After Bruce died in 2017, Chris Gordon became one of the chief organizers of the 'Be Like Bruce' fitness festival -- an athletics-driven fundraiser for pancreatic cancer research that's now raised more than $60,000 dollars in his memory.

"A lot of Bruce's family are coming this year to help out. I will have a house full of wonderful guests and I have jobs for them," said Gordon. "I even have a niece that lives in Vancouver who just started triathlon and she's coming to do it."

The festival is also recruiting dozens more volunteers, to keep athletes safe during each event. 

The action begins on June 16, 17 and 18 with events at both Crossfit 306, and Riversdale Pool in Saskatoon. There's also a raffle, and merchandise available online. 

In this episode, Chris explains why she chose to funnel donations from the fitness festival to the University of Saskatchewan's College of Medicine.

"100% of our donations go to the research," said Gordon. "There's no administration costs, and that to me was a deciding factor."

Earlier this year, Dr. Andrew Freywald and Dr. Franco Vizeacoumar published their 'one-two punch' treatment findings in Clinical Cancer Research. They've collaborated to create a new drug—a bi-specific antibody that targets two key receptors at once.

It's effective in treating triple negative breast cancer and pancreatic cancer in mice, and its creators hope to see it advance to clinical trials over the next five years.

"I just feel like I'm part of that team," said Gordon. 

She said if you're not competing at the fitness festival, making a small individual donation still pushes forward pancreatic cancer research at the University of Saskatchewan .

"It may not seem like a lot of of money, it's not millions and billions of dollars, but it makes a huge difference for these researchers," said Gordon. "This is where our money needs to be."

Chandra Dattani's smile lit up the room, and her laughter was contagious.

But when the beloved Saskatoon businesswoman and volunteer was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer, even her husband, a physician, found very little information about therapies or drugs that could heal her.

"There was very scant literature on triple negative, and I was asking them, why?" said Dr. Dan Dattani.

Typically, oncology teams target estrogen and progesterone receptors to stop breast cancer tumours from growing and spreading. 

Unfortunately, those targets don't work for the 15 to 20 per cent of breast cancer patients with triple negative breast cancer, a swift-moving and aggressive form of the disease.

Still, Chandra Dattani and her family decided to fight back.

They established the Chandra Dattani Memorial Fund in 2010. It's currently endowed with a balance of over 120 thousand dollars, and continues to support critical cancer research on an annual basis.

"She was so dedicated to making sure we'd never gave up on ourselves and was really our biggest cheerleader every step of the way," said Seema Jain, Dattani's eldest daugher.

In this episode, Jain joins her siblings and her father in unraveling her mother's story, and pushing for more research and therapies dedicated to women with a triple negative diagnosis.

"Our biggest hope is hopefully women won't have to suffer the way our mom did," said Dr. Sheev Dattani. 

"Hopefully there will be better treatments coming down the road."

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 teenager and young adult navigating the medical system as a patient with a chronic illness.

"I never wanted my illness to define me," said Linsley.

"I made the best of the situation and took the opportunities that it provided me with so that I could grow and achieve my goals instead of using my illness as a reason to not push myself."

That experience shaped her view of medicine, and it's motivated this second-year McGill science undergrad to keep pushing herself in the academic world.

For decades, families have watched Alzheimer's disease steal their loved ones' cognitive function. It's the most common form of dementia; one that affects a third of people over the age of 85.

It's a disease Dr. Ron Geyer and Dr. Andrew Kirk want to tackle.

Right now, most pharmaceuticals target the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, without addressing its root cause. Most lose their effectiveness after three months. 

Geyer, a biochemist and professor of pathology at the University of Saskatchewan's College of Medicine, said a novel protein could change that.

"They did a first clinical trial with this drug and they showed pretty exceptional efficacy," said Geyer.

NeuroEPO, first developed by researchers at the Center for Molecular Immunology in Cuba, stimulates red blood cells in the brain. It's a recombinant form of the naturally produced erythropoietin protein (EPO), which stops neuron cells from dying, promoting their growth and communication mechanisms. 

During its first round of human trials in early-stage Alzheimer's disease patients, 82 per cent of those receiving the treatment saw stabilization in their cognitive function. For more than half receiving the drug, cognitive function improved.  

Alzheimer's disease progressed and worsened for almost everyone receiving the placebo. 

"We decided to move this forward and do a Phase Two trial in Canada," Geyer said.

Once the study is approved by Health Canada, trials will involve between 80 and 100 patients.  Geyer said so far, everything is on track to begin testing NeuroEPO this summer.

The trick, he said, is delivering the drug directly to the brain.

"It breaks down in the blood quicker than normal EPO, so that's good in that it doesn't cause side effects," Geyer said. 

He said his research group has teamed up with Rocket Science Health Inc., a company that's developed a way to deliver NeuroEPO through the nose to the brain.

Compared to a Covid-19 nasal swab, Geyer said the delivery mechanism for this drug is 'much more comfortable'.

Working with the Sylvia Fedoruk Canadian Centre for Nuclear Innovation, Geyer said his team is also expanding PET scans and neurological diagnostic tools for patients taking part in the study.

"We're hoping that with that, with those diagnostic assays, including MRI to measure the total brain volume, that the clinicians can use this information immediately as the trial starts to better diagnose their Alzheimer's patients, provide more clarity on the diagnosis, let them develop a treatment plan earlier."

Geyer said patients and doctors in Saskatchewan have already contacted his team, trying to sign up.

"We want to make it as broadly available as possible," he said. 

Still, NeuroEPO will not be widely available, until a third-phase trial in the future which proves the drug's efficacy, shows no adverse effects, and involves at least 300-500 patients with Alzheimer's disease. 

Geyer said his team is up to the challenge.

"It's almost impossible to find someone who doesn't know someone who has some form of dementia," said Geyer. "The ultimate goal is to keep people out of the hospital."

Dr. Marek Radomski says research pays off, in attracting dollars to post-secondary institutions, in creating healthier citizens, and in lowering health costs.

He's the vice-dean of research at the University of Saskatchewan's College of Medicine, a member of Canada's U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities,

But in a province that will spend $6.5 billion on health care this year to fight a raging coronavirus pandemic, biomedical research spending is stuck at levels last seen at the turn of the century, 

For decades, the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation, the major grant agency, has seen its budget stagnate at around $5M dollars a year.

"My suggestion would be to double the SHERF budget," said Radomski.

"It's worth investing in research. It's worth investing in very talented people," he said.

"It's worth investing in hungry young wolves. It's worth investing in our very gifted and overworked clinicians."

Radomski said for each dollar Saskatchewan spends on biomedical research through SHERF, his medical scientists bring three additional dollars back.

Most use SHERF grants as seed money to pursue larger grants from highly competitive grant programs through national agencies and organizations.

Radomski was born in Poland, and grew into one of the world's top pharmacological scientists, after four decades spent working in academia and in private industry. A quick scan of Google Scholar shows his publications are now cited by more than 28,000 researchers. 

A gifted mentor, Radomski moved from Trinity College to Saskatoon five years ago, and said Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver needn't be Canada's only high-profile destinations for scientific research.

"There's lots of room for us to be the leaders," he said.

Radomski pointed to clinician scientists at the College of Medicine leading the way in the treatment of strokes, along with Multiple Sclerosis.

Under his watch, he's hired 12 "hungry young wolves" -- outstanding young scientists who have relocated to Saskatoon to push forward new discoveries, techniques and treatments."

"We want to compete with Harvard," he said. "Maybe not in everything but there might be some areas where we can make a huge difference."

Radomski said even with Covid-19, a breakthrough may be on its way, as scientists at the U of S Vaccine Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO) push a low-cost SARS-CoV2 subprotein unit vaccine toward its final round of human clinical trials.

Radomski admits he's made the case for targeted research spending to politicians 'for some time now'.

He won't stop until he sees results.

"We've heard you need to keep on repeating your story," he said. "We've got amazing champions across the campus. Covid brought us an opportunity to highlight the work of these champions."

In this episode, he points to the work of several Saskatchewan physicians and scientists whose efforts are already improving patient health -- and who may ultimately pull Saskatchewan out of the pandemic.

"This is our ambition. It's a tough one to accomplish, but worth going for," said Radomski.  "We want to be the top."

Dr. Evyn Peters has created pivotal changes for patients arriving at Royal University Hospital's mental health short stay unit, and its emergency department.

With 33 publications and interests spanning psychiatry, psychopharmacology and mood disorders, Peters is often one of the first physicians patients see when they’re experiencing a mental health crisis.

Peters was finishing his residency at RUH and the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Medicine in 2017, when he and his colleagues first proposed ketamine for short-stay patients who had tried multiple antidepressants without success.

After studying best practices in other centres, Peters and his colleagues developed a protocol to treat patients with a ketamine nasal spray. His patients stay conscious, and don’t need an intravenous catheter or intensive cardiorespiratory monitoring.

“Not only does it work very quickly but it is twice as effective roughly as your conventional anti-depressants. And what’s more impressive is that it’s being used for patients typically who’ve failed to respond to anti-depressants in the past,” Peters said.

“It certainly is a cost-effective treatment.”

Until 2020, the only other option for hospitalized patients who didn’t respond to other drugs was electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).

Hospitals in Saskatchewan sometimes struggle with backlogs, with patients waiting weeks for ECT. A psychiatrist and anesthetist and nurses must oversee the procedures, including treatments which typically stretch over another four weeks.

“That’s a long time in hospital,” said Peters. “You can get a similar response rate with one or three or four ketamine treatments every second day in about a week in hospital here.”

Peters was the lead author on the 2023 article Intranasal racemic ketamine for patients hospitalized with treatment-resistant depression: A retrospective analysis, published earlier this year in the journal Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, together with his University of Saskatchewan psychiatry colleagues Dr. Katelyn Halpape, Dr. Isaac Cheveldae and Dr. Annabelle Wanson.

His patients, on average, were taking 3.5 psychiatric medications when they were admitted. His team made a point of not requiring patients to wean themselves off other anti-depressants during their treatment with ketamine. 

“We have a response rate in the hospital here of about 65 per cent, which is what you see in other treatment centres” said Peters. “The vast majority of those patients, about 75-80% get discharged immediately after that treatment.”

He said the rest of his patients often face other health and life circumstances complicating their discharge, such as homelessness. On top of that, ketamine is not suitable for anyone who’s recently had a heart attack, stroke, blood pressure issues, or who has schizophrenia.

“The goal was just to get it in use, because it was needed,” said Peters. “Now we can answer some of these questions about why does it work, and for whom does it work the best?”

Dr. Deborah Anderson has spent her career as a biochemist and cancer cell biologist pinning down elusive targets. 

Now she’s made a breakthrough in one of the world’s most swift-moving and aggressive cancers: triple negative breast cancer.

This form of the disease affects 15 to 20 per cent of women diagnosed with breast cancer. It’s , and is often more prevalent in young women, with a disproportionate number of Black and Latina women. Unlike other forms of breast cancer, it’s not fuelled by the hormones estrogen and progesterone, or by the HER2 protein — and so does not respond to typical hormonal therapies 

For Anderson, Director of Research at the Saskatchewan Cancer Agency, unraveling biochemical mysteries has always been a passion.

During her third year as a pre-med student at the University of Manitoba, she switched to an honours biochemistry program.

“I got to learn more about things like the fundamental processes going on in cells, controlling cell functions, cell behaviour, and this just reinforced my interest and love of science and I was hooked,” said Anderson.

After completing her doctoral studies, she went on to work in laboratory of the late Tony Pawson  — a scientist Nature magazine calls ‘one of the most extraordinarily gifted and celebrated molecular and cellular biologists of our time.’

“We were just starting to learn how to make controlled, known mutations, to sort of probe what those different mutations would do to the protein that they were in,” said Anderson. 

“Now you can sequence the whole genome — 20,000 genes and more in a day for a thousand dollars. So the technology has definitely changed what we can do and how fast we can do it.”

Over the past decade, Anderson and her research team have looked at CREB3L1, a protein that sits on a person’s DNA and helps decide whether or not to switch on the genes that stop cancer from spreading.

CREB3L1 is missing inside metastatic cancer cells, leading Anderson to question which proteins are active there instead.

“This is a common thing in cancer where things that put on the brakes are often missing,” Anderson said.

She and a team of six researchers have now identified a protein that promotes metastasis — one that’s often observed in triple negative breast cancer. It has no natural inhibitors, and its three-dimensional folded structure is already mapped out.

In this episode, she explains the way that's led to therapeutic breakthroughs, and new compounds which could be 'game-changers'.

“Patients often ask themselves, is this really worth it to go through all this for the time that it buys me? And if we could offer patients something that was less cytotoxic, that's still providing them with improved survival and benefit in terms of disease control — that would be huge.”

Dr. Anderson and her team are also looking at existing pharmaceuticals approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — and whether any of them are effective against triple negative breast cancer cells.

To date, she said four drugs look promising, particularly in combination with existing chemotherapy drugs. Because they’re already FDA-approved, it’s a far less onerous process to eventually get them to oncologists and their patients.

Taking a daily puffer with inhaled corticosteroids is a mainstay for millions of people who have eosinophilic asthma.

But doctors don't always know what dosage will be most effective for their patients, in preventing inflammation.

Up to now, studies of different corticosteroids have been hit and miss, with a patchwork of different approaches to brochoprovocation, subject groupings, and wash-out times. A study may prove a drug is safe, then neglects to accurately measure the dosage a patient needs. 

Over the past few summers, Christianne Blais looked at what asthma patients need, to breathe easy.

“Our ultimate goal was to see the relative potency,” said Blais. “How do they measure up?”

In this episode, the fourth-year University of Saskatchewan medical student weighs in on what works, and what doesn't, in bronchoprovocations studies of corticosteroids in treating patients with eosinophilic asthma.

Dr. Sabira Valiani was one of the frontline physicians working inside Saskatoon’s critical care units four years ago, during the initial lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It was really weird,” said Valiani.

Valiani said ‘a lot of light bulbs went off in my head’ amid the automated stillness of the unit, as she watched ventilators breathing for heavily sedated patients.

Covered in head-to-toe personal protective equipment, staff in the intensive care unit struggled to simultaneously treat patients, communicate with family members, and enforce hospital policies. 

“Those patients aren’t talking to us,” Valiani said.  “It was empty, it was overwhelming and it was disconnected all at the same time.”

Valiani has now spent seven years in critical care, a move that started with her enrolling in a critical care and ICU elective in Ottawa. 

“I loved it. I loved on the medical side, how you could see the life support that you were giving a patient immediately have a physiologic effect and stabilize that patient,” she said. 

Driven by her experiences during the pandemic, Dr. Valiani delved into research focused on improving patient and family experiences in the ICU. She collaborated with a multidisciplinary team and patient partners to understand the challenges faced by healthcare providers and families alike.

In this article for the Canadian Association of Critical Care Nurses, she and her colleagues examined the effect of visitor restrictions during the pandemic.

Valiani remembers tearful goodbyes, families gathered around screens, unable to hug or touch loved ones infected and dying with Covid-19.

"The family's role becomes significantly diminished,” she said. “So much of that was disrupted during that time." 

In the months and years that followed, visitor restrictions relaxed, but Valiani noticed communication between families, patients and staff still felt awkward.

Valiani and her colleagues turned their lens last year to key moments for Canadians of diverse ethnicities during the critical care journey, in the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia. The findings revealed the strain on healthcare providers playing multiple roles and families feeling disconnected from crucial information.

She estimates 30 per cent of Saskatoon’s ICU patients travel from remote communities, making it crucial to find ways to keep family members informed in a language they understand well.

“People kind of naturally turned towards communication technology in the pandemic,” said Valiani, noting a number of families cannot be present in-person during the day, as intensivists attend rounds. 

Clear and open communication between patients, care providers and families is the key, Valiani said.

“What if we could use artificial intelligence or AI to just translate a medical progress note into an understandable family update?” Valiani asked. 

“It doesn't have to be high tech, right? Like it can be a phone call.”

Together with the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation, Dr. Valiani now works at enhancing patient-family engagement through practical solutions. She emphasizes the importance of involving families in care decisions, acknowledging their unique expertise in understanding patients' wishes.

Her team presented its findings in 2022 at Toronto’s Critical Care Canada Forum.

“We have this cohesive approach to defining the problems,” said Valiani. “Now we can take this to decision makers and say….these are the things people living this experience actually want.”

In this episode, we meet Dr. Stacey Love, Director of Virtual Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation at Saskatchewan's Virtual Health Hub, and an Assistant Professor at the University of Saskatchewan's School of Rehabilitation. She's also involved with the Saskatchewan Centre for Patient Oriented Research.

You can see more of her recent publications here, along with links to her labs:

Musculoskeletal Health and Access to Care: https://cchsa-ccssma.usask.ca/mhac/

Virtual Care and Remote Presence: https://research-groups.usask.ca/remote-presence/index.php#Healthcare

Stacey Lovo remembers the bitterly cold day in December 2012, when two Indigenous women from northern Saskatchewan stepped off the bus in Saskatoon. One had traveled 12 hours, the other seven, both to see physiotherapist Stacey Lovo for back pain.

“It was a big undertaking for them,” said Lovo. She said one woman was forced cut her appointment short, to catch the last bus returning north.

The other woman stayed in Saskatoon to treat spinal pain stemming from what Lovo characterized as a ‘very difficult and scary problem.’

“This was devastating for many reasons,” said Lovo who remembered her patient was distraught, unable to return home to care for her young children.

That glaring disparity in healthcare access propelled Dr. Lovo into action. She returned to the classroom, and earned her PhD in Rehabilitation Science, specializing in low back disorders.

“If you're rural and remote resident or if you're Indigenous, your chances of having back pain are 30 percent higher than an urban person who's non-Indigenous,” said Lovo.

Lovo said long waits for care and spending up to twelve hours in a vehicle to attend a one-hour physiotherapy consultation often aggravate spinal damage — rather than healing it.

“When we're traveling that distance, we're undoing everything that's done in the session,” she said.

Working closely with people in Pelican Narrows and the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation, Dr. Lovo began testing virtual consultations and in-person treatments, advocating for a hybrid model of healthcare.

"These projects are all community driven,” she said. “They’re led and driven by the strengths and knowledges from the communities."

Her team’s innovative use of Remote Presence Robotics in partnership with local nurse practitioners  in Pelican Narrows demonstrated a successful model of team-based virtual physiotherapy, connecting patients hundreds of kilometres away from health providers with care.

Local health providers are the key, Lovo said.

“Taking reflexes and testing for sensation and muscle strength are done by the nurse on the other side,” said Lovo.  “They have incredible rapport with the patients. They know their families.”

When the pandemic amplified the need for virtual care, Dr. Lovo, Dr. Brenna Bath  and Dr. Lovo's graduate students met the challenge with innovation.

Participants in her back pain study reported their outcomes were noticeably better. Many asked to continue with more treatments.

Dr. Lovo's work goes beyond healthcare delivery; it is a commitment to fulfilling treaty obligations and ensuring equitable healthcare access for Indigenous Peoples.

“Canada's promise to First Nations peoples was that medical care would be taken care of, and so we are  working with communities to try things out that will allow us to provide it,” she said.

For senior citizens, fracturing a hip is more often than not a life-changing injury.

One in three of those patients will die within a year. The second will recover and return home. The third often needs to move to a long-term care facility, to cope with reduced mobility.  

Dr. Cathy Arnold makes it her mission to stop those falls and fractures in the first place.

On this episode of the podcast, she joins us to talk about breakthroughs in rehabilitation techniques and research, as Canada marks fall prevention month every November.

After practicing physiotherapy for 25 years in hospital settings, in the community, and in private practice, Arnold is now the director of the School of Rehabilitation Science at the University of Saskatchewan's College of Medicine.

"What led me to research were those opportunities and interactions that I had with my older clients," said Arnold. 

She said their questions often led her to uncover conflicting scientific advice about how best to heal after surgery, and how to cope with aging.

"I became very interested in what did keep people living longer," said Arnold. "I found working with older adults was really rewarding."

Arnold said older adults need to practice balance exercises, and work at increasing their strength, even if they're frail, or if they've been diagnosed with osteoporosis.

A stronger, more flexible person can catch themself during a fall, said Arnold. That strength and balance can mean the difference between a life-changing fracture -- and escaping from a fall with bruises.

"The next time you fall or you lose your balance, you might be able to catch yourself," said Arnold. "You might be able to put out your leg and your muscles are strong enough to stop you."

Brianne Philipenko (MD) was midway through her respirology fellowship in Calgary when the Covid-19 pandemic shut down the city.

She started interval workouts at home using Nike’s fitness app — when inspiration struck.

“Coming up with a creative, innovative way to allow people to access an exercise program outside of the typical organized pulmonary rehabilitation in a gym setting was something that I became really interested in,” said Philipenko..

As a respirologist, Philipenko was already frustrated by the lack of ‘mainstay’ guidelines on incorporating exercise into severe asthma treatment.

“I think that’s a big disservice for our patients,” she said. “We’re giving them these fancy medications that improve their asthma, but we’re not going after the low-hanging fruit such as physical activity.”

“It's something cheap, accessible, that everyone can do, and it's something that I think is very much underutilized.”

Even before the pandemic, access to pulmonary rehabilitation programs was severely limited, as most also serve with people suffering from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). Philipenko’s asthma patients were often leery of exercise, for fear of triggering an attack. 

“You don't exercise, so then you get out of shape and that makes you more short of breath when you exercise,” she said. “It becomes a vicious cycle of deconditioning and fear."

Philipenko teamed up with a physiotherapist and a kinesiologist to develop an at-home rehabilitation program for people with pulmonary hypertension. Patients download an app, then follow the program for eight to 12 weeks, incorporating pacing strategies and breathing exercises to ease their way back into fitness. 

“We're still in the middle of recruitment,” said Philipenko. “We have people that are extremely fit exercising every day, to people that never exercise ever, with asthma participating in the study,” she said. “It's promising.”

By 2021, Erika Penz (MD) and Donald Cockcroft (MD) -- colleagues Philipenko met during internal medicine training — helped convince her to return to her hometown, taking on her current role as a respirologist and an Assistant Professor of Respirology, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan's College of Medicine. 

“They have been giants in the space of asthma, and they really inspired me. They brought me back and made it exciting to participate in the research scene here in Saskatoon,” Philipenko said.

She’s working with the Asthma Research Lab team, where her patients can now take part in bronchoprovocation studies and pharmaceutical clinical trials.

“As much as I love my clinical practice, it's really nice to have something else going on that shakes things up. And for me, that was research,” said Philipenko.

She hopes to see a shift in the way exercise is perceived, pushing for recognition of its critical role alongside pharmaceuticals.

“That's the wonderful thing about asthma, is that if it's controlled, you should be completely asymptomatic. It's not a progressive disease. And we have some medications that can achieve that for people now. So it's a pretty exciting time to be working in this field.”

The way people perceive threats in a pandemic affects the spread of Covid-19, according to social epidemiologist Nazeem Muhajarine. 

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 politicians' words and actions can change infection rates, and why he strives to treat every person he meets in his research with dignity.

When Justin Botterill first arrived at the University of Saskatchewan, he took what he described as a 'shotgun approach' to choosing classes.

Midway through his second year, his psychology professors introduced him to neuropsychology, and to psychiatric and neurological disorders.

He was hooked.

Botterill soon began working with rodent models, later focusing on the hippocampus and pathways involved in forming memories and spatial navigation.

"The hippocampus is widely implicated in a variety of neurological as well as psychiatric disorders," said Botterill. "It's a really important and critical structure."

After completing his PhD in cognition and neuroscience at the University of Saskatchewan, Botterill went on to work as a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Dementia Research at the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research in New York, then at the University of Toronto Scarborough.

In January, he was hired as an assistant professor at Anatomy, Physiology and Pharmacology at the University of Saskatchewan's College of Medicine.

Today, he's setting up his laboratory and hiring researchers to help examine the dentate gyrus, its granule cells and the diverse roles mossy cells play across the hippocampus. 

"Several lines of research over the last five or ten years have really shown that [mossy cells] contribute to a lot of important functions. That's why they're very exciting to study," said Botterill. "It's a really interesting feedback loop."

He said mossy cells are not a single homogenous group of neurons.

"Although historically mossy cells have been treated as a single class of neurons in the hippocampus, several lines of research suggest they differ in their gene expression,  morphology, physiological properties, and anatomy," he said.

"No one's really investigated these potential subcategories of mossy cells at a deep level yet."

In this episode, Botterill explains the role mossy cells in the dorsal hippocampus play in spatial and cognitive functions. He said those in the ventral hippocampus show strong links to emotions such as anxiety. 

He also is looking at the role these excitatory cells play in Temporal lobe epilepsy, a disease characterized by seizures, along with debilitating cognitive and behavioural effects.

"One in three people with epilepsy don't respond to medication," said Botterill, who said he's hoping to focus on translational research in this area.

Botterill hopes to better identify the cells, circuits and proteins inside the dentate gyrus that generate seizures. Alongside researchers including John Howland and Robert Laprairie, he's hoping to eventually test new therapeutics on these target areas, to see which ones best prevent or reduce seizure activity.

"Can we develop treatments that would improve care for individuals, reduce the severity of their seizures, and allow them to lead healthier lives?"

Researchers in Robert Laprairie's laboratory are hard to miss, wearing tie-dyed lab coats as they oversee mice and lab rats in iPad-sized chambers filled with cannabis smoke.

An associate professor in the College of Pharmacy and Nutrition, Dr. Laprairie and his team are trying to unravel the mysteries of human neurotransmitters and cannabinoid receptors, and their role in neurodegenerative disease. 

"Cannabis is challenging. There's a lot of bureaucracy, there's a lot of stuff that gets in the way. So there was a knowledge gap," said Laprairie.

Still, Laprairie never thought of himself as a career scientist, and initially enrolled as an Education student.

Midway through his studies, he took on a part-time job tending canola seedlings for Agriculture Canada — a job that made him re-think his plans, as he learned more about treating disease in plants.

After switching majors and completing his honours degree in biochemistry, Laprairie arrived at Dalhousie to complete his graduate studies, studying how to  'turn up the volume' on damaged cannabinoid receptors in patients with Huntington's disease, and certain forms of epilepsy. 

"I wanted to focus more on the pharmacology. How does the CB1 [cannabinoid receptor type 1] as a receptor work?" said Laprairie.

Patients with Huntington's disease often lose up to half of their functioning cannabinoid receptors without ever knowing it. 

It's not easy to see that slow degradation happening, Laprairie said.

"In animal studies we've seen the animals tend to be more anxious when the [CB1] receptors stopped. They tend to be somewhat spastic and their movements,” said Laprairie. “Their movements can be a little bit less coordinated and they seem to exhibit some of the symptoms of depression."

Today, Laprairie holds a Canadian Institutes of Health Research chair in Drug Discovery and Development. He and his team are trying to create positive alasteric modulators (PAMs) — drugs that boost, or turn up the volume on a patient's remaining CB1 receptors — without the intoxicating effects associated with marjuana.

In this episode, we also hear why communication -- and finding the right mentor -- is crucial for biomedical researchers and scientists with young families. 

Laprairie jokes that he fathered one child as he completed each degree -- and with three young children, his early career became hectic.

"There's just a lot of strain that puts on a family. Communication and scheduling became essential for survival," he said.

Crediting Dr. Eileen Denovan-Wright, an 'amazing’ supervisor with helping him through his master's and doctoral work, Laprairie describes biomedical research as 'a team sport'

"Her support of me and her acknowledgement and understanding made all the difference in the world. I would not have been successful without that support," Laprairie said.

Upon his return to Saskatoon, Laprairie went on to work with Dr. Richard Huntsman using cannabidiol, which appeared to reduce the frequency of childhood epileptic seizures when administered orally. 

"Patients that were tested here at the University of Saskatchewan saw about a 50% drop in seizure activity," said Laprairie. 

"For someone who is experiencing a lot of seizures that are otherwise untreatable, that's huge.”

Laprairie says the pharmacology of hallucinogenic drugs including psilocybin mushrooms and LSD are an area he plans to explore in the future.

He believes some hallucinogens could serve as potential anti-depressants, among other therapeutic uses. 

After raising five children of his own, Dr. Ron Siemens 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 farms, Siemens explains what fuels his passion for healthy families and communities. 

Without a car, without childcare, without a grocery store, a pharmacy, or a place to get blood work done, how does a person with diabetes in rural Saskatchewan keep their disease in check?

Those are the questions Dr. Stu Skinner and his Wellness Wheel team members face each day, as they treat Cree and Saulteaux patients on the Day Star, George Gordon, Kawacatoose and Muskowekwan First Nations in south-eastern Saskatchewan.

"We see a lot of patients with diabetic foot infections," said Skinner, a University of Saskatchewan-trained physician who specializes in infectious diseases and internal medicine. 

Some of his patients typically walk 5 km or more in a day. Some don't realize their feet are injured until it’s too late -- when gangrene appears. 

In this episode, he describes the complications of uncontrolled diabetes, which can lead to heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure, vision loss, and amputations.

Facing tough financial choices, discrimination and long travel times, he said a number of his patients won't seek health care until it's too late.

"I always joke that we need to go back to the old doctor model with the black bag where you go to people's houses and you treat them there because that's what works," Skinner said.

“People who have that lived experience have a lot to contribute and really are key,” said Susanne Nikolai, nurse lead and Wellness Wheel’s clinical coordinator. 

Nikolai said working with Skinner and his team has been  “absolutely the best nursing that I've done in my almost 30 years as a registered nurse."

Earlier this year, the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation approved a $7,500 grant for 'Culturally Responsive “Diabetes 101” Training and Knowledge Mobilization Among Indigenous Peers Living with Diabetes in Regina Urban Hub and Indigenous Communities'. 

Skinner plans to use the money to build trust with his patients, to connect them with diabetic peers in their community, and to find out what's stopping them from getting the care they need.

"Many of our patients don't have transportation or they need childcare," said Skinner. 

"If I, as a physician, mail out a letter for an appointment to someone, but they can only check their mailbox maybe once every three to four months, how are they ever going to know about the appointments, even if they could make it there?"

Help an elementary school.

Cornea and Kim reached out to some of the schools hardest-hit during Saskatoon's Covid-19 pandemic, and asked what their wish lists included.

In this episode, hear why Cornea and Kim chose King George School -- and what the donation will change for its 106 students.

We hear from both graduate students, along with King George's vice-principal, Anne-Marie Rollo.

She said the donation is 'life-changing' for the elementary school.

"For many of our young children being socially isolated really disconnected them from their family, their land, their culture," said Rollo. "We are incredibly excited for this opportunity,"

In December, Kim and Cornea stopped by King George to drop off the $1,300 donated by biomedical researchers.

They hoped it would be enough to send the school's Grade 7 and 8 students on an end-of-year field trip in June.

But that wasn't where the fundraiser ended.

Cornea, who is doing masters' work characterizing the BRK protein prevalent in both breast cancer and gastric cancer, recalls returning to campus in January.

In the mailbox, she came across an envelope addressed to Dr. Marek Radomski, the Vice-Dean of Research at the College of Medicine.

After she dropped the envelope at his house, Radomski opened it.

Inside he found a cheque for $2,000.

The money was raised by Dr. Mary Kinloch, alumni of the University of Saskatchewan College of Medicine, and members of the Saskatchewan Regional Medical Association.

Cornea said Radomski was stunned.

"He couldn't believe the number on the cheque. He couldn't believe the generosity," Cornea said.

She said in a typical year, the OVDR would raise roughly third of that total.

"It kind of sheds a different light on what not just biomedical researchers can do, but what the College and the physicians, what we all can do when we put our minds to it," said Nayoung Kim, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Biochemistry.

Kim and Cornea said they plan to keep the OVDR in touch with students and staff at King George School.

With a total donation of $3,305, the entire school can now visit Brightwater, a nature reserve just south of Saskatoon.

Parents and family members will also be part of the field trip, which is set for June, according to Rollo.

Kim and Cornea say the idea is a tangible way of investing in Saskatoon's future.

"They're raising people who are going to be providing medical care in our community, maybe raising future students or staff at the College of Medicine," said Cornea. 

"It's so cool to see that cycle of support."

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 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 crosshairs.

"That's actually why I get excited," said Penz. "The more we can understand and reduce these risks.... the more we can reduce the burden on both caregivers and the health care system."

By cutting smoking, vaping, and exposure to pollutants such as asbestos, Penz says we can release the tremendous pressure lung diseases place on hospitals, patients and their families.

In this episode, we hear why she became fluent in the language of both clinicians and bureaucrats; what being a clinician entails during a respiratory pandemic; and why Penz is determined to halt the pain and suffering of preventable lung disease.

"Pushing politicians to do what is good for the health of the people, there's no way around it," said Dr Jacob Alhassan.

Born and raised in a rural Ghanaian village, Alhassan grew up without electricty and paved roads. He watched women die in childbirth. He grew resentful of health systems that left the poorest people to fend for themselves, while the rich thrived.

Alhassan decided to take action.

At first, he thought he would study hard to become a local hospital administrator. Partway through his university years, Alhassan began to dream even bigger.

In this episode, he looks back at his arrival in Saskatoon, and how his trajectory to becoming an assistant professor of Community Health and Epidemiology was forever changed by provincial austerity measures that wiped out the Saskatchewan Transportation Company (STC).

Billed as a cut that would save taxpayers $85 million dollars over five years, Alhassan studied Hansard and the full debate around the public transit network's closure. He found little evidence supporting the decision to cut it.

"We have a political system that is not necessarily arranged for the well-being of average people," said Alhassan, who still remembers travelling to towns and cities across Saskatchewan to interview people devastated by the closure of the intercity bus service.

He said the cuts "radically changed" some people's lives, in some cases shortening them. Losing the parcel service also cost the provincial health care system more, with patients delaying medical care, and pharmacists throwing out delayed and weather-damaged medication and vaccines.

"It's literally a might-makes-right sort of thing, where the most powerful people make decisions that deeply impact the lives of people who don't really have the voice to raise their concerns or to be heard," Alhassan said.

Today, Alhassan's looking more closely at health outcomes tied to public transportation, and their financial impact on taxpayers. He's also one of the academic co-leads of the University of Saskatchewan's Certificate in Global Health.

"You cannot do this type of work to improve people's health if you disconnect yourself from the politics," said Alhassan. "That's not going to happen if I kind of sit in the ivory tower and kind of disconnect myself from the political aspect of this. I strongly believe in that."

Valerie Verge was in her early twenties when she landed her first job, doing neuroscience research and she loved it. But 43 years ago, her research journey began to take a twist.

"I developed an allergy to rats and mice,” she said. “I was using a box of Kleenex a day.”

She reluctantly had to admit that this may not be her career path, and spent her evenings earning a ‘back-up plan’ degree in computer programming at McGill. She refused to give up laboratory work, and went on with her colleagues to code and create an in house computerized image analysis system that was not readily available commercially or affordable.

“That was huge back then,” she said. “It came in very, very handy because we were able to integrate images on our microscope with computers and quantitatively analyze them.”

As her allergies gradually lessened, Verge stayed in the lab and earned her Ph.D. in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill in 1990, then moved to the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm for post-doctoral studies. By 1992, she followed her heart to the prairies, and found ‘wonderful opportunities’ for research at University of Saskatchewan’s College of Medicine and soon after in a new UofS MS focussed research centre in Saskatoon City Hospital. 

Today, she’s a professor of anatomy, physiology and pharmacology, and the director of the Cameco MS Neuroscience Research Centre, with expertise converging on a singular goal — finding innovative ways to repair the nervous system.

Her recent peripheral nerve repair collaboration with Dr. Ming Chan from the University of Alberta Department of Medicine and Dr. Gillian Muir, Dean of the UofS Western College of Veterinary Medicine  explores acute intermittent hypoxia (AIH) This non-invasive therapy involves breathing controlled alternating cycles of regular air and air with reduced oxygen levels.

"It sounds horrible! But it’s not like having a stroke, where you can have zero oxygen,” said Verge. “This is more like just taking it down by a percentage to a level that induces a beneficial stress response.”

The rationale behind AIH lies in its ability to trigger repair responses. By subjecting the body to a mild, controlled stressor, the therapy aims to activate repair mechanisms that can be beneficial for nervous system repair. Dr. Verge's work involves investigating the impact of AIH on repairing peripheral nerves, outside of the brain and spinal cord and more recently, extending this therapy to investigate repair and neuroprotection in a model of multiple sclerosis.

In a female mouse model of progressive multiple sclerosis, Verge said graduate student Nataliya Tokarska observed an 80 per cent reduction in inflammation levels after just once daily treatment with the AIH protocol for one week

“They’re supposed to only get worse. Even two weeks after ending treatment, they’re still showing improvement,” said Dr. Verge, noting regions with lesions transitioned to a state of ‘advanced’ myelin repair; axons were being remyelinated and the immune response was dramatically decreased and shifted to a pro-repair state .

“It’s an extremely robust repair response like I’ve never seen in my 43 years of doing research.”

Verge said the technique has already helped patients with spinal cord injuries. In humans it does  not raise their blood pressure or heart rate or induce memory loss.

Unlike invasive procedures, such as electrical nerve stimulation (ES), the entire body is exposed to AIH. Verge and her team are now building on previous ES findings, showing intermittent low oxygen therapy behaves in a similar favourable manner repairing damaged and severed nerves in animal models.

Grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and MS Canada allow the research team to transition from pre-clinical rat work to human trials in carpal tunnel syndrome, and one day even multiple sclerosis patients. This marks a crucial step toward validating the efficacy of AIH in repairing the nervous system.

“It’s a pleasure to see things come full circle,” said Verge, who said her role now is to inspire and share insight with the next generation of neuroscientists.

“We’re very, very hopeful for the future.”

"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, nor was it easy.

Miller initially had 'incredibly painful' side effects with the drugs her neurologist prescribed.

From welts and burns, to peeling skin, headaches, and crippling abdominal pain, she was on the verge of applying for long-term disability coverage, when she was referred to University of Saskatchewan MS specialists working at Saskatoon's City Hospital.

"I didn't know MS medications are not covered in our health system," said Miller. "The only way we get better medications is through research."

Miller said researchers and clinicians at Saskatoon's City Hospital brought new medications and treatment protocols to Saskatchewan, which gave her a new lease on life.

"I wouldn't be living with the independence that I have today," said Miller. "It made all the difference."

As Saskatchewan drops its proof-of-vaccine requirements and masking orders, doctors and nurses are angry and frustrated, as they care for record numbers of Covid patients.

"There's this tension of how to manage all of this going forward so that we don't have surge after surge and wave after wave continue to basically crush our healthcare system," said Dr. Alex Wong.

The infectious disease specialist based at Regina General Hospital said Saskatchewan politicians ignore medical advice in their rush to drop Covid restrictions.

Some, Wong said, have spread half-truths misinformation about the Omicron variant, and the efficacy of the vaccine.

Roughly half of adults in Saskatchewan have received a third Covid booster, something Wong said makes a 'colossal' difference with Omicron.

"If I could pick one thing to leave in place. It would be the proof of vaccine program," said Wong.

Without it, "there's not going to necessarily be that sense of urgency and motivation," Wong said.

The associate professor of infectious diseases at the College of Medicine said variants will keep emerging, as the virus circulates through unvaccinated populations in other parts of the world.

Wong said public health messaging on masks and vaccines must be clear and it must be driven by scientific principles, not political fear.

"It's not really right to let society just forget about people who are on the fringes, who are marginalized, who are medically frail or immunocompromised or vulnerable or kids under five," said Wong.

"That's just not okay. That's not what a caring, functional society does."

Wong said Saskatchewan's public health message must be clear: get vaccinated.

"That is the one most sustainable way out of all of this towards some normalcy."

Most patients at a hospital or a clinic walk in sick. Doctors do their best to treat their ailments.

Dr. Neils Koehncke's patients aren't necessarily sick. In fact, most are reasonably healthy and still on the job.

But their duties at work often lead to a plethora of risky situations and occupational hazards. 

"It's the flip side of healthy, or at least people healthy enough to work suddenly being exposed to these environments that are really unusual," said Koehncke, the director of the Canadian Centre for Health and Safety in Agriculture (CCHSA). 

"It's very intriguing," Koehncke said. 

As an associate professor, Koehncke teaches occupational medicine at the University of Saskatchewan's College of Medicine, and he sees outpatients in a clinical setting regularly.

In Saskatchewan, occupational medicine specialists see a higher proportion of farmers, ranchers and agricultural workers in their case load, along with miners and oilpatch workers.

As such, Koehncke wears a number of hats (including a real hardhat), as he collaborates with respirologists, veterinarians, pathologists, neurologists and population health specialists to better understand and mitigate on-the-job hazards.

"The team here [at CCHSA] is so remarkable," he said. "If you're practicing occupational medicine in Saskatchewan, agriculture is going to be a big industry that you come across."

Koehncke spent nearly two decades as Saskatchewan's chief occupational medical officer, and became heavily involved in fatality and injury surveillance on farms. 

Through his career, Koehncke also gained practical experience assessing industrial sites through tours and hands-on work at mines, oilfield installations, and foundries.

"The safety is sometimes very obvious, you know, you don't want to get run over by that forklift coming towards you," said Koehncke. 

"But the health stuff is less obvious and is sometimes more insidious. And it was just really fascinating."

In this episode, Koehncke speaks about why he became "an occ doc", and about the challenges of compiling and analyzing data from wildly different sources inside workplaces.

From noise, vibration, radiation, heat, cold, ergnomic problems. chemicals, dust, fibres, to psychological and biological hazards that can do long-term damage to frontline workers, Koehncke said there's a role for input from workers, followed by careful analysis and data collection.

That goes hand-in-hand with outreach work, to convey improvements and strategies keeping workers safer on the job. 

"Work doesn't have to be a place that actually is harmful to our health over time," Koehncke said. 

"We come up with better ways of addressing the risks that actually result in a reduction of mortality and a reduction of illness in the workforce."

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 anti-cancer therapy, even regenerating damaged nerves.

"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 cards," said Tait, a medical anthropologist and psychiatry professor at the University of Saskatchewan.

"We really don’t do any public health education at all around being a recipient.” 

Tait serves as co-lead of Canada's Network Environments for Indigenous Health Research, and research lead for the First Nations and Metis Organ Donation and Transplantation Network. 

Through an indigenous lens, she and fellow think tank members tackle ethical and philosophical questions around transplant medicine. 

"Indigenous people are very pragmatic and sometimes people forget that,” Tait said. "It's okay for us to change our minds."

In this episode, Tait discusses the role of blood memory, why the 'wall' of anonymity between donor families and recipients is problematic, and ethical dilemmas raised by Indigenous elders, surgeons and patients with lived experience.

"People are messy," said Tait. "They aren’t entirely sure how they feel about it. If they look at it from different vantage points, they may decide to do things differently.”

Asmahan AbuArish grew up in Hebron, surrounded by military checkpoints.

She knew she wanted to help people, but she had to give up her dream of being a medical doctor early.

Fortunately, AbuArish is no quitter.

She discovered physics — and later its very real applications in curing inflammatory pulmonary diseases such as cystic fibrosis (CF) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Last year, Dr. AbuArish arrived at the University of Saskatchewan to open her own lab, landing $175,000 through the Canada Foundation for Innovation's John Evans Leaders Fund. 

Today, Dr. Asmahan AbuArish is an assistant professor of anatomy, physiology and pharmacology at the U of S College of Medicine. She is a quantitative molecular biophysicist.

AbuArish admits she avoided biology and classes involving memorization during her studies, thinking she'd pursue a career as a teacher. But she kept asking questions during physics labs and eventually had to reconstruct two-dimensional images of the data she'd collected.

"This is when I thought, this is my data coming alive and I'm looking at it in 3D," AbuArish said.

"This was fascinating. This is when I realized I'm doing something nobody has done before."

From that moment, AbuArish said she was hooked.

In this episode, she explains why patterns, data modeling and fruit fly models, combined with a super-resolution scanning confocal microscope, will enable her to perform advanced biophysics analyses. Detailed imaging and fluorescent molecular tagging allow AbuArish and her team to figure out which pulmonary medications will — and won’t work.

It's work that has immediate implications for patients with CF and COPD.

"I'm interested in understanding how does the healthy complete form of the molecule function, and then how does it function? How does the mutant function? How do they behave? What is the difference in their behaviors?"

When Scott Widenmaier left high school, he wasn't sure what career path he wanted to pursue.

He grew up in Alameda, Saskatchewan, and soon found work on oil rigs. But by the time he was in his early twenties, he knew it was time for a change.

"I realized that winters are just too cold to continue doing that," said Widenmaier. "I wasn't sure what I was going to do with my life, but I was interested in biology and human physiology."

In his third year as a science major at the University of Regina, he became fascinated by a lab experiment examining how neurotransmitters control heart rates. He then moved west, to graduate studies at the University of British Columbia, studying endocrinology and its role in diabetes.

"I really like the elegance of the feedback circuits," said Widenmaier, who went on to land a post-doctoral position with Dr. Gökhan Hotamisligil at Harvard University's School of Public Health.

As he discovered the emerging field of immunometabolism, Widenmaier began to see links between the way the gut and the human immune system talk to each other, especially around obesity.

"That communication to the immune systems and the metabolic systems is dysfunctional and contributes to a lot of the diseases that we see linked to obesity," said Widenmaier, who studies the way the body manages cholesterol.

That's the focus of his work at the University of Saskatchewan as an assistant professor in the College of Medicine's department of Anatomy, Physiology and Pharmacology.

"There's this transcription factor that sits in a part of the cell and it recognizes when cholesterol's too high," he said. "It changes where it goes in the cell and it regulates a response by the cell to try to prevent the cholesterol from causing damage and stress."

Widenmaier has now landed a number of awards, including the Heart and Stroke Foundation's National New Investigator Award in 2020/21. Widenmaier was also named that year's McDonald Scholar.

"We've made a lot of progress with understanding the role of NRF1 and NRF2 in the liver," he said. "We've identified some molecules that may be important for protecting cells from too much cholesterol."

In this episode, hear how this work has implications for patients with heart and stroke disease, obesity, liver disease, degenerative brain conditions, as well as various forms of cancer. 

"The issue with cholesterol is that we absolutely need it, but we also need it to be exactly the right amount," said Widenmaier. "There's lots of times where that that capacity gets stretched, especially under conditions of obesity."

"What are those natural adaptive systems? If we can find out what they are, can we make them work better?"

When Dr. Rachel Asiniwasis returned to the prairies after her dermatology residency in Toronto, she noticed a pattern among many of her pediatric patients.

Hundreds of them were coming to her with itchy, raw patches of skin, the result of atopic dermatitis — eczema.

“One of the biggest frustrations for me is when people say ‘oh, it’s just a skin problem’,” said Asiniwasis. “Itching in many ways is just as impactful as chronic pain,”

Atopic dermatitis is the most common chronic skin inflammatory disease. The vast majority of cases start in children under the age of five. At least one in every ten Indigenous children in Canada has some form of eczema. That figure rises to one in every four children in some Arctic communities.

Asiniwasis said the itch and pain -- amongst other signs and symptoms in moderate to severe cases -- can lead to depression, ADHD, anxiety, and an increased risk of suicide.

Two years ago, she conducted a survey of 50 dermatologists, nurses and family physicians who work in Indigenous communities across Canada. Atopic dermatitis was the most common skin disease reported by their patients, followed by bacterial infections. 

Working with medical leaders in five southern Saskatchewan Indigenous communities, Asiniwasis was also granted permission and ethics board approval to perform a confidential chart review for hundreds of pediatric patients with atopic dermatitis. A number of those patients saw their uncontrolled atopic dermatitis devolve into secondary infections, often leading to hospital visits and multiple courses of antibiotics.

"The literature's also showing high rates of bacterial skin infections, which is another part of the scoping review,” she said. “We're also seeing problems with chronic impetigo, boils, MRSA, all of these types of bacterial skin infections in those with uncontrolled eczema in rural and indigenous children, across all fronts.”

She’s seen a number of patients with skin lichenification: something she refers to as ‘elephant skin’. 

“It comes to a point where often our first line topical therapies don't penetrate and treat it, or it can take months,” she said. “We have to escalate therapy in these patients, so that can put them at risk for other side effects. We need to prescribe things like immunosuppressants, like methotrexate, or biologic targeted therapy if it's all over the skin. They can't be put in creams everywhere."

After Asiniwasis asked her young patients and their caregivers to describe barriers to healing their skin, they spoke of long wait times to see dermatologists, often travelling hundreds of kilometres at their own cost to seek care. 

They also described the cost of skin care products in northern communities as ‘hyper-inflated’. Her patients and their families also face a sharp learning curve, as they adhere to strict bathing regimens, moisturizing, recognizing signs of infection, and learning to use topical ointments effectively. 

Asiniwasis said resources in rural and northern communities for follow-up care are often limited. 

“We can really tell someone a a lot about someone's health by looking at their skin.”

Patients in intensive care units often move to a regular ward before they're discharged, and sent home.

But increasingly, hospitals are skipping that step, sending a handful of ICU patients directly home.

"We were really looking at analyzing the data of safety in terms of discharging patients home safely in terms of outcomes such as mortality, or a re-admission to hospital," said Ryan Donnelly, who's currently finishing his first year of residency in Regina. 

He said for young patients without serious co-morbidities, direct discharges to home are an option. 

"If you have a patient who's in the ICU who has been waiting for a ward bed and ends up getting well enough to go home, it kind of started that way," he said.

"The data analyzing it came after the practice started happening already."

Under the supervision of Dr. Eric Sy and Dr. Vincent Lau, Donnelly teamed up with Sehar Parvez, who's now in her fourth year of medical school at the University of Saskatchewan's Regina campus.  

Their work was first published in September 2021 in the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia, with a subsequent article published in January 2023's journal of Critical Care Medicine.

Although the Covid-19 pandemic limited any direct interviews with patients, Donnelly and Parvez started by combing through more than 8,000 papers that mentioned direct to home discharges.

"The evidence that we've gathered from my meta-analysis is that it can be safe," said Donnelly. "It's something that is going to be happening more and more."

Their next step was to put together a questionnaire, and sending it to healthcare providers across the country. They received more than 350 responses.

"About a third of healthcare providers didn't know that there is an increase in the direct discharge home from the ICU," said Parvez. "I thought that was very interesting."

She and Donnelly found critical care providers were more likely to feel comfortable discharging an intensive care patient directly home, especially compared to healthcare workers who weren't as familiar with the practice.

Parvez went on to analyze outcomes for 120 patients who were in the hospital between February 2020 and May 2021. 

Each one was discharged directly home after spending time in the critical care unit. 

"We found that 32% of our direct discharges to home at that time were from substance overdose," said Parvez. 

She and Donnelly studied the outcomes for patients, watching whether they had to be re-admitted to hospital within 30 days to a year.

Parvez said the practice is safest when a patient has health care support workers checking in with them, documenting and communiating changes immediately to their family doctor.

In this episode, both Donnelly and Parvez share what it was like to be a medical school student during a global pandemic, as they learned to do research under the supervision of veteran clinicians at the Regina General Hospital.

"We had to learn very quickly though how to do research in a virtual environment," said Parvez. "We didn't know how to use Zoom right away. We didn't know how to share a screen right away,

She now is looking at internal medicine as a potential career path. 

"It informed my desire to want to work on being a mentor, being an educator, and continuing to practice evidence-based medicine," said Donnelly, a family medicine resident.

"It was certainly rewarding."

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 opening several brand-new rural medical facilities this year. Nurses also managed to keep upgrading their skills with training in reproductive and obstetric services.

Alongside the bricks-and-mortar buildings, there's also more predictable income now for families in Inhambane province, thanks to micro-projects led by local women. 

"Mozambican policy ever since the liberation movement has been about promoting gender equality," said Jessie Forsyth, director of the Mozambique-Canada Maternal Health project.

"But it's difficult. Change is difficult," she said. "So much of what we do requires long-term vision."

Sarah Donkers is a physiotherapist and specialist in neurological 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 cord injuries, and with Parkinson's disease.

"It was two-way learning," Donkers said, as she documented the effect of the advice and emotional connections her patients made with each other during the neurological and physical rehabiliation program.

After ten weeks, most patients urged her team to continue the twice-weekly sessions. "It was really rewarding."

If you've ever sat through a bad date at a restaurant, unsure of what to order, you're still doing better than a typical zebrafish date.

Dr. Michelle Collins said without safety precautions, a zebrafish male and female left together overnight often eat their embryos.

The assistant professor of Anatomy, Physiology and Pharmacology at the University of Saskatchewan's College of Medicine has studied zebrafish for years, using them as a model to examine genetic factors in cardiac development.

"They're actually quite beautiful," she said. "The embryos look almost like a crystal ball."

In this episode, Collins takes us inside her laboratory, where she breeds both typical and genetically modified zebrafish, to better understand irregularities inside the human heart.

"We start to see some early changes in the developing heart that just get worse as the fish ages," she said. 

"You start to see that the heart chambers aren't really contracting properly, they're very arrhythmic," said Collins. "They really model what a person that has something like atrial fibrilation would be experiencing later on in life." 

In December, Collins published her most recent findings in the Journal of Cardiovascular Development and Disease, noting the public health implications for humans with similar patterns of abnormal heart development.

Her interest in calcium stores, and the way they're regulated in ion channels led her to Discovery Grants last year of nearly $200,000 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada (NSERC).

Collins' first microscope was a Christmas gift. By the fourth grade, she was running experiments at home, thanks to a book from her grandparents

"I had some really great science teachers that really helped propel me into scientific research," said Collins, who became curious about developmental biology.

Today, she works with real-time video feeds, using a high-powered microscope that allows her and her team members to observe zebrafish hearts at up to 150 frames per second, producing detailed video images of the vascular system in fluorescent colour.

"It's very gentle on live samples, which is really instrumental to what we do because we want to look at a beating heart. We don't want to blast it with lasers," said Collins. 

"We have this sort of a spinning disc, which allows less phototoxicity from the laser, and it also can acquire movies really quickly," she added.

Her hope is to one day match mutations in the zebrafish genes with mutations in patients with genetic heart defects.

"Can we use these new genes that we've identified to screen patients and figure out if this could be an underlying cause of their cardiac arrhythmia?" 

One of the trickiest parts of treating patients with neuromuscular diseases such as Parkinson's and Multiple Sclerosis is figuring out how to keep them active and moving.

Fourth-year medical student Kyra Ives dove in, spending one summer studying the effect of deep brain stimulators on patients with Parkinson's disease.

She and her team watched participants experience major differences in tasks involving gait and balance.

Through that work, Ives also uncovered a number of obstacles for people with both Parkinsons and MS.

That's something she and the mobility lab team analyzed more closely the next summer, after MS patients sent in photo dispatches of their daily lives.

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 it's being done on a very personal level?" asked King. "We're now finding new and interesting ways of going about this."

When interviewing people who've experienced chronic conditions, homelessness, addictions, or abuse, she said researchers bear an ethical duty to avoid inflicting pain or harm on the people they're interviewing.

"If you bring someone into a dark place, it's really important that you bring them back into light," said King, who said Indigenous spiritual beliefs and ways of knowing carry healing power.

"When they're done the interview, they're feeling much better about themselves," she said.

In this episode, King challenges the traditional academic approach to health research, along with its outcomes for Indigenous people.

Midway through his undergraduate degree at the University of British Columbia, a laboratory 'help wanted' poster caught Jeff Dong's eye.

He applied, gaining invaluable practical experience that summer in Stephanie Borgland's lab.

"She really supported me in understanding what research is about," said Dong, who went on to complete his PhD through UBC's Department of Microbiology and Immunology, moving to Calgary for post-doctoral work at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute. "That process was really exciting for me."

He accepted a faculty position last year as an assistant professor in the University of Saskatchewan's Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology & Immunology. 

Dong is fascinated by macrophages: white blood cells that serve as the immune system's warning system and clean-up crew.

He tracks the way they work in the brain and spinal cord, focusing on how they slip into states of dysfunction with age, and with stress.

"They're the first line of defence," said Dong. "The microglia will go and say, 'okay the cell has died, let me clean this up.' Or if there's the release of something toxic, the cell will say, 'oh, there's something happening here, let me check it out."

With age though, our microglia aren't always as diligent. 

"As a cell becomes older, it can forget what it's supposed to do," said Dong. 

Dong recently received support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to look more closely at macrophages.

"What are the specific mechanisms or signaling that occur on the macrophages, and how does this lead to their ability to remove or to react against these oxidized lipids?"

He said patients with spinal cord damage, and diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis often endure similar breakdowns.

Dong's work, Oxidized phosphatidylcholines identified as potent drivers of neurodegeneration in Multiple sclerosis, won a Brain Star Award last year from Canada's MS Society and the Canadian Institutes of Health Information. He's also won the MS Society's Catalyst grant for early-career researchers.

"That's a pilot project where we're looking to generate some novel tools and new animal models to study a protein, a molecule we call 'osteopontin'," said Dong. "We think it may be a player in terms of making MS disease worse with age."

In this episode, he talks about macrophage longevity, as well as cellular changes caused by Multiple Sclerosis.

"How long has the cell been responding against the damage, and how old is the cell itself?" said Dong. "They both contribute to the progression."

He's also testing different models, to see whether higher levels of fitness makes cells more resilient against oxidative stress. 

"Hopefully we'll have answers in a year or two," he said.

Dong admits he chose the University of Saskatchewan because of its strength in MS research, and because there are so many young biomedical scientists.

"The university is very vibrant in terms of the early career research community," he said. "These are fantastic colleagues who I can grow with and do very exciting research with over the next number of decades."

From his time as captain of the Saskatoon Blades, to a career with the Saskatoon Police Service and the law -- Bruce Gordon was the kind of father, athlete and coach who inspired everyone around him.

After he was diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer in 2017, his wife Chris joined family and friends to start a wave of 'Be Like Bruce' fundraisers.

"We were stunned and to be given a diagnosis of absolutely zero hope was devastating," said Chris Gordon.

In his last months, Bruce spoke openly about his cancer, and how unfair it felt as he went through chemotherapy and tried to make the most of his last weeks on earth.

He and his wife Chris both said the sense of love and community support they felt in that time was 'overwhelming'.

But Chris Gordon also witnessed the pain her husband endured.

"It was excruciating for him," she said. "The treatments, the management for pancreatic cancer. Nobody should have to go through what he had to go through."

After he died, Chris Gordon knew donations in Bruce's name truly had to uphold her husband's motto -- "Community Above All Else". 

"I wanted it to have an impact on the community," she said. "I was able to reach out to the university and that's where I discovered the Cancer Research Centre."

Through the College of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan, Chris Gordon set up the Be Like Bruce Memorial Pancreatic Research Fund, with every dollar staying in her city at Saskatoon's Cancer Research Cluster.

Over the past four years, private donations to the the #BelikeBruce Memorial Pancreatic Research fund have raised nearly $50,000.

In this episode, we hear her story, and from both Dr. Andrew Freywald and Dr. Franco Vizeacoumar, who explain why donations like Gordon's are 'absolutely crucial' when equipment malfunctions, or needs to be replaced.

"That definitely helped us to move forward fast and more effectively," said Dr. Freywald. "It helped us also to accelerate pancreatic cancer related work, as well as investigations and other types of cancer."

Over time, Freywald and Vizeacoumar and their teams used their findings in targeting pancreatic cancer tumours to leverage more than $1.3M in grants. Those, in turn, led to advances in treating breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and prostate cancer.  

"Getting that laboratory-based discovery into the clinics and that's really the ultimate goal of any cancer researcher. And that's what me and Andrew are striving for," said Dr. Vizeacoumar. 

For Vizeacoumar, Freywald and Chris Gordon, the work won't stop anytime soon. They're all motivated to build a better future for anyone diagnosed with cancer.

"I don't wish this upon anybody, that any family go through what our family has gone through," Gordon said.  "My hope is to bring awareness and insight to people that our donations do make a difference."

The University of Saskatchewan continues to be a leader in cancer research. Each dollar donated stays in Saskatoon, and has a vital impact on what researchers like Dr. Freywald and Dr. Vizeacoumar are trying to achieve. To find out how you can ‘Be Like Bruce’ and make a difference, visit the College of Medicine's donation page.

Before we’re even born, our bodies begin to grow and train an army of spies and assassins, creating a crew of immune system fighters in the upper chest's thymus gland. While this production is dominated by T cells, other immune cells such as B cells and plasma cells can be generated within the thymus, albeit at a very low level.

After adolescence, the thymus reduces production at its 'spy and assassin' factory to a trickle. This has consequences because as we age, our immune system makes mistakes, leading to mutations in our DNA; changes in the types of antibodies we produce, and odd feedback loops.

Those glitches contribute to the generation of chronic lymphocytic leukemia or B-cell lymphomas such as non-Hodgkin lymphoma. They can also contribute to the development of autoimmune diseases such as lupus and myasthenia gravis.

"We think this all has to do with a life-or-death signalling loop," said Dr. Peter Pioli, who moved to the University of Saskatchewan last year to become an assistant professor of Biochemistry, Microbiology & Immunology. In February, he published his findings in iScience.

"For autoimmune patients, you get this thymus that gets filled up with all these B-cells and plasma cells, so you no longer have this little trickle; you have a bit of a runaway train," he said.

Using mouse models, Pioli and his team are trying to piece together the triggers convincing aging B-cells to mistakenly ramp up plasma cell production. They want to know how this impacts the development of various diseases.

In this episode, Pioli explains his interest in plasma cells.

"It  fascinates and confounds you all in one," said Pioli. "This one cell has to have this perfectly aligned machinery to do this. And it's kind of hard to look away when you find something like that."

A "curious troublemaker" who loved to tinker as a kid, Pioli remembers taking apart tools and objects in his parents' garage, removing pieces and trying to rebuild them. That curiosity carried him through his undergraduate, graduate studies and post-doctoral work in Wisconsin, Utah, and California.

"It's just a lot of fun," said Pioli. "You get the payoff of hopefully finding something that could actually help someone someday: understanding aging, understanding these breakdowns that lead to autoimmune diseases and tissue breakdown."

Pioli admits his scientific career has taken plenty of detours, but he's extremely grateful it unfolded the way it did.

"There's a lot you learn from that, not just in terms of experience," he said. "You also learn about yourself in terms of your potential to persevere.  And maybe the potential to be supremely stubborn, to keep at it."

Debra Morgan grew up on a farm and continued farming with her husband, initially working in nursing in the winter.

Nursing shifts took her from neurosurgery to pediatrics, to orthopedics, then to Saskatoon's geriatric units at City Hospital and Royal University Hospital.

"I just found that I really enjoyed working with older people," Morgan said.

She soon followed her passion for research, opting to study geriatric care as she earned her masters' and doctoral degrees in nursing. 

Today, she's a professor and chair of rural health delivery at the Canadian Centre for Rural and Agricultural Health. Morgan also serves as the director of the University of Saskatchewan's specialist Rural and Remote Memory Clinic launched in 2004 as a research demonstration project and now funded by the Ministry of Health. She built and leads Saskatchewan's Rural Dementia Action Program (RaDAR).

"Twenty years ago when we started this, there was very little rural dementia research," said Morgan. "We didn't know if the best practices in the literature would work in rural settings, or how."

Early on, RaDAR team specialists observed a disproportionate number of rural patients referred to the specialist Rural and Remote Memory Clinic were for less complex diagnoses, where a specialist referral is not typically indicated.

Morgan wanted to know why those patients couldn't get care closer to home.

“Alzheimer’s disease, which is the most common type of dementia, should usually be diagnosed by primary care providers in their community," she said. 

Often, she found family doctors and nurse practitioners did not feel comfortable making a dementia diagnosis.

After a provincial consultation, Morgan realized rural and remote nurse practitioners and family doctors would benefit from working in an interdisciplinary team and from a standardized assessment tool, one connected to the patient's provincial health record.

"Rural primary care providers see so many different conditions in a day, they are generalists," said Morgan. "They don't see the number of people with dementia as they would someone with diabetes or heart disease, for example."

Starting from scratch, Morgan and her team put together a one-day interdisciplinary rural memory clinic for patients in the Sun Country Health Region, using the town of Kipling, Sask. as its initial base.

During periodic memory clinics in Kipling, she'd bring together patients and their families with nurse practitioners, occupational therapists, physical therapists, home care nurses, social workers and family doctors, along with a First Link coordinator from the Alzheimer Society.

That team would assesss one dementia patient in the morning, and another in the afternoon.

Morgan has been documenting their progress each step of the way and spreading the memory clinic model to other rural communities. Six rural primary healthcare teams are now delivering these clinics and more are planned.

"Our research, we try to involve the people who will be delivering or using the services in their rural communities, as they know best what is needed to improve the quality of life of people living with dementia and their families," she said.

"Families tell us they really value having that clinic close to home, with healthcare providers that they know," Morgan said.

"It reduces that feeling of just being very isolated and alone.

In this episode, hear why Covid-19 stalled expansion plans for more than a year, and next steps for expanding the services delivered by both the specialist Rural and Remote Memory Clinic at the University of Saskatchewan, and the rural primary healthcare memory clinics.

May this holiday season find all our Researchers Under the Scope listeners feeling cozy, festive and warm. 

In the spirit of giving, the Office of the Vice-Dean of Research at the College of Medicine has once again teamed up, to make a donation to students and staff at King George Elementary School in Saskatoon. This is where you can scroll down and find the details you need to make an e-transfer donation.  

And in the New Year, we resolve to bring you an episode for parents of young children. With Influenza A, RSV, and Covid-19 ripping through schools, daycares and workplaces, we have a preview from our next episode wth Dr. Darryl Adamko. He's Saskatchewan's top pediatric researcher, and a pediatric respirologist at the Jim Pattison Children's Hospital in Saskatoon. Adamko is working on a prototype that would allow family doctors to screen young children for asthma and other pulmonary diseases far more quickly and accurately. 

Thanks again for sharing your ears with us! We wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year, and we'll meet up here again in 2023.

For doctors in Saskatchewan, depression and anxiety have skyrocketed during the pandemic.

We check in with Dr. Camelia Adams, an associate professor of psychiatry, who's been tracking physicians' mental health during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Just one of the 118 physicians she surveyed reported asking for help with mental health issues. 

That's no surprise to Angie Wiebe, one of the psychologists working with the University of Saskatchewan's Employee Assistance Program.

Wiebe said almost everyone she's counselling has experienced emotional distress because of the pandemic. In this episode, she shares warning signs to watch for, as mental health becomes "a bit of a pressure cooker".

Dr. Angelica Lang knows most of the people she sees have to keep working, even if they have shoulder pain.

As an assistant professor at the University of Saskatchewan and director of the Musculoskeletal and Ergonomics Lab at the Canadian Centre for Rural and Agricultural Health, Lang’s goal is to reduce that pain — keeping patients on the job.

“A lot of daily life has to be done with your hands,” she said. “The base of that is your shoulder. It allows you to position your hand in all these different ways.”

Lang knows the importance of movement. She grew up in Melfort, Sask., playing hockey, soccer, volleyball, along with track and field. A Huskies track athlete, she found her calling in kinesiology, leading her to a specialization in the clinical biomechanics of the shoulder.

Her passion for understanding the shoulder, a joint unique in its movement and demands, drove her towards an MSc in Biomechanics under Dr. Clark Dickerson, a shoulder expert.

"This combines math, which I already liked, with movement, which I'm really getting into," she said. “How you perform your work, how you get injured at work, or how a different disorder might influence your movement, and then cause a functional problem.”

Lang said at least 40 per cent of people who suffer from a rotator cuff injury still endure shoulder pain up to a year later. That pain can cause sleep issues, and eventually it becomes unsustainable.

“My question is, does it matter how long you’ve had pain?” she said. “Is it the way that they move that’s setting them up to not necessarily get better?”

Her laboratory is one of the first to look at the time elapsed since an initial injury, and the role of ongoing shoulder pain as a confounding or influencing factor in that patient’s recovery.

“Once the pain happens, there's some sort of compensation to avoid these painful positions,” said Lang, whose research team is studying 60 people from Saskatoon and rural Saskatchewan, to assess differences in shoulder pain.

A significant part of Lang's work involves the musculoskeletal health of breast cancer survivors, particularly those who’ve undergone mastectomies and reconstructions.

"It's fairly well documented that breast cancer survivors have upper limb dysfunction after their treatment,” Lang said. “I’m interested in what that means for their functional abilities.”

Participants in those studies often make periodic trips to Saskatoon, for assessments at the Musculoskeletal and Ergonomics Lab at the Canadian Centre for Rural and Agricultural Health.

In this episode, Lang shows us the “Rotopod” farm equipment simulator, designed to simulate the seated position farmers often stay in for long hours during seeding, spraying and harvest.

Her team examines movement and biomechanics in agricultural settings, particularly how whole body vibrations from machinery affect farmers. They use advanced motion tracking systems, like the Vicon motion capture system and Inertial Measurement Units, to study body movement in various scenarios, both in the lab and when research crews drive to farms and mines across Saskatchewan, to observe work duties in the field.

Last summer, her team visited farmers on the job near Aylesbury, Biggar, Clavet, and Debden, Saskatchewan. They tracked their movement as they performed five tasks, including using an overhead drill, lifting a shovel, climbing and dumping a heavy bag, and pruning a shrub. Lang and a pair of graduate students watched farmers put cattle through a squeeze chute — a task that can be challenging for both the operator and the animal.

“It’s something we never would have been able to measure had we only had them come to the lab,” said Lang. “By being able to be specific to their job and make the recommendations specific to farming demands, hopefully that will help.”

Throughout the conversation, Dr. Lang credited her team and colleagues for their contributions and stressed the significance of combining different fields of study to advance understanding and treatment of musculoskeletal disorders.

“That’s motivating to me as a researcher," said Lang. "The people that we're working with, they see the value in what we're doing, they support us."

Rupeena Purewal 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 serious respiratory infections.

And, as she learns more about the coronavirus' asymptomatic spread, Dr. Purewal warns parents they cannot afford to keep skipping routine vaccinations or check-ups for their kids. 

When Veronica McKinney was a little girl, she vivdly remembers going to the Saskatoon Public Library, borrowing a Time-Life book about the human body.

"I loved that book and I would read it. I would copy the cover. I can picture it even to this day, all the different little cells," said McKinney, now an assistant professor at the College of Medicine.

"I was just fascinated by how our body works and how it's just so amazing,” she said, as she recalled borrowing the book over and over, and tracing the pictures on its cover.

McKinney also considers herself lucky to have learned traditional ways of maintaining health from her mother.

While McKinney’s great-grandmother was Cree, the matriarch lost her status when she married a Metis man from northern Alberta. The family built a house on a road allowance near Midnight Lake in Saskatchewan's boreal forest, where McKinney's mother spent her childhood with her hokum learning healing techniques, how to gather medicine from the bush and how to deliver babies. 

She passed that knowledge to her daughter Veronica during summers in the north, as they'd visit extended family to fish, and gather berries.

"I still to this day use some of it," said McKinney. "A lot of this is more about how you live your life every day, how we connect to the land."

By the time she was a teenager, McKinney soon saw disparities in the way people treated her Indigenous cousins, mother and family.

"I often thought, like, why are people acting so angry? I couldn't understand that," she said."It was hard to get jobs, even as a teenager, because people wouldn't look at you."

McKinney persevered, enroling first in Arts and Science courses at the University of Saskatchewan, then transferring to train as a laboratory technologist, a career that took her west.

She remembered patients from diverse backgrounds asking her for help, when the Peter Lougheed Centre first opened in north-east Calgary. 

"I'd go to poke them in the morning to get their blood, and they'd often kind of grab onto me and look to me to help them," said McKinney, who said most patients just wanted to understand better what was happening to them. 

“It really touched me,” she said.

"That was sort of my mantra, whether it was nursing or lab tech or medicine, that I'm not taking myself out of this mix. I'm going to keep on trying," McKinney said.

"I decided I'd better apply or I'd never get this out of my system," she said. "And they took me!"

McKinney is now a family physician with patients at Saskatoon’s West Side Community Clinic. She’s also the Director of Northern Medical Services at the College of Medicine, a role she loves for the practical benefits she can bring to remote communities and northern people.

In this episode, she explains remote presence technology, and the way it’s lightened the load for caregivers, emergency workers, and families who no longer have to leave their home communities as often to consult with specialists and therapists.

Using video conferencing and remote diagnostic tools including ultrasound equipment, patients and their families learn how to observe warning signs, and how to head off bigger health problems.

McKinney says that means fewer air ambulance trips, easier recoveries with friends and family nearby, along with improved outcomes for hundreds northern patients, including children and expectant mothers.

"There are huge benefits from some of these things," she said. "That also helps with the recruitment and retention of physicians and nurses and various providers, knowing that you can have that backup, that you can connect right away."

McKinney’s warm and engaging approach to medicine is centred around connecting patients and care providers, and exploring her curiosity.

Welcome one, welcome all. At Researchers Under the Scope, you will get to know what amps up the researchers at the University of Saskatchewan College of Medicine. In mid-2020, they are dealing with COVID-19 in so many different ways: extracting blood from COVID-19 patients, planning a province's hospital response to a pandemic, asking residents why they're avoiding hospitals even when they face potentially fatal crises. And they're just getting started. Listen in starting June 7, 2020.

Dr. Munier Nour said osteoporosis is often seen as a disease that affects older adults. But compared to their peers, kids with Type 1 diabetes grow into adults eight times as likely to suffer bone fractures.

“Osteoporosis may actually have its origins during pediatric years,” he said. “Because Type 1 diabetes occurs so early in life ….. it influences that bone development that occurs during your peak growth.”

Now, Nour is a co-lead on a national team trying to figure out why.

The pediatric endocrinologist has always taken a logical approach to problem-solving. When he first enrolled at the University of Calgary, he took engineering courses, in case medicine didn’t work out.

Nour was accepted to medical school, where he found himself drawn to both pediatric intensive care and internal medicine, until one last-minute elective.

In this episode, Nour credits his supervisor, retired University of Calgary professor Dr. David Stephure, with changing his mind.

“It certainly wasn’t on my radar at all,” said Nour. “He was just a wonderful mentor. I think he really kind of sparked quite an interest and passion to pursue pediatric endocrinology.”

Nour completed his fellowship at the University of Calgary, along with his medical doctorate and master's degree in biomedical sciences. He completed his pediatric residency at Queen’s University, then joined the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Medicine in 2014. He spent his first year as the province’s lone pediatric endocrinologist.

Since then, the associate professor has embarked on a mission to understand why children with Type 1 diabetes exhibit a higher risk of impaired bone health and osteoporosis than their peers.

Nour said although it’s often overlooked as an endocrine organ, bone is ‘quite dynamic’, playing a crucial role in hormonal regulation.

“Some hormones produced by bone include things like fibroblast growth factor-23 (FGF23), which has a lot to do with our phosphate metabolism. As well, there's another hormone called osteocalcin, which actually has quite a role in diabetes as well,” said Nour.

Today, he and Dr. Saija Kontulainen are overseeing the Canadian Bone Strength Development in Children with Type 1 Diabetes Study: a national longitudinal study.

Using a grant of $1,352,140 from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and with help from Diabetes Canada, they’re evaluating differences in bone development between children with Type 1 diabetes and their peers.

Dr. Nour said they’ll recruit up to 210 boys and girls between the ages of 10 and 12, tracking them over three years with annual bone health assessments. The study includes Saskatchewan patients, along with pre-teens in Calgary, Toronto and Ottawa.

Using high-resolution peripheral quantitative CT scans (HR-pQCT), hormonal measurements, muscle strength testing, bone density scans, and force plate tests, his team will assess key markers and differences in bone micro-architecture as the preteens’ radius and tibia grow.

“There's even fairly advanced engineering techniques that can be used to kind of simulate a fracture load and see when that bone would actually fail," said Nour.

Dr. Nour hopes this research will lead to interventions for children with type 1 diabetes that potentially strengthen their long-term bone health.

“So little is understood right now about what is different and why,” said Nour. “What can we do to prevent it?”

"When I got into medical school, the last thing in the world I wanted to be was a surgeon because I couldn't stand the sight of blood," said Dr. Mike Moser.

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 techniques, which set the stage for a lifetime of tinkering.

After being sidelined by a knee injury. Geyer turned to molecular biology and organic chemistry, developing a deep fascination with the building blocks of life.

"I was interested in understanding how cell processes worked, how pathways in cells were wired and linked together," said Geyer.

His post-doctoral work took him to the Molecular Sciences Institute at Berkeley, then to the University of Florida, with a focus on synthetic biology. 

But building synthetic molecules felt 'fairly slow and tedious' for Geyer. Upon his return to Canada, he founded a now-defunct biotechnology company focused on improving cancer treatments.

"I decided to harness the power of nature and work with biological molecules, rather than synthetic derivatives of them," Geyer said. 

When he arrived at the University of Saskatchewan to accept a faculty position, Geyer's focus turned to developing new therapeutic antibodies, and better techniques for diagnosing mutations and disease.

To make it happen, he brought together the Western College of Veterinary Medicine, the Saskatchewan Centre for Cyclotron Sciences, the Saskatchewan Cancer Agency, Royal University Hospital and the College of Medicine, creating an antibody 'pipeline'.

Geyer's teams now work inside the Health Sciences building, in a fast-expanding research cluster.

"The goal was originally to repatriate all the tests we'd been sending out to other provinces," said Geyer. "More recently, we've developed our own tests."

In this episode, he explains why this work has led to faster diagnosis, better monitoring, new treatments, and a sense of hope for thousands of Saskatchewan people with leukemia and lymphoma.

"It's really exciting and really state-of-the-art," said Geyer.

"Ultimately, it serves to provide better medical care for the people of Saskatchewan, not only in terms of the availability of tests, but also in attracting physicians to the province."

When Dr. Katherine Knox first arrived in Saskatchewan more than two decades ago, the province covered one prescription drug for patients with Multiple Sclerosis.

Beyond that, patients had to pay for drugs out-of-pocket.

Today, Knox said the province reimburses MS patients for 14 different drugs.

“MS is an expensive disease on many levels,” said Knox, noting Saskatchewan’s coverage is now the most favourable for MS patients anywhere in Canada.

In Saskatchewan, three in 1,000 people have Multiple Sclerosis — one of the highest incidences of Multiple Sclerosis in the world. 

As treatments improve, the number of people living with this chronic autoimmune disease is rising.

“It’s probably a combination of genetic and environmental factors that play a role,” said Knox, who first learned about the disease as a student volunteer with the MS Society of Canada.

“Everyone had such a unique disease experience,” Knox said. “So I just became more curious.”

Her research these days focuses on non-drug approaches which prevent the onset of disability.

After 15 years with the disease, it’s estimated roughly half of MS patients need a cane or walking aid.

“Understandably many people don’t want to use a walker for good reason,” said Knox. 

“It’s bulky, it’s awkward, it certainly lets people know that you have an issue with your walking.”

To delay that, Knox turned to researchers at the College of Kinesiology’s Biomechanics of Balance and Movement Lab, to look at the power of a ‘light touch’.

The goal is to help people with MS regain — and keep — their balance and mobility.

“Patients would tell us you know when I walk the dog and hold the leash, my balance feels better. Or when I lightly touch the back of the chair I can be re-orientated,” she said. 

By teaming up with Dr. Alison Oates, fourth-year resident Najala Orrell, and Pawan Kumar, an engineer and kinesiology research fellow, Knox studies patients’ balance and stability, using various haptic inputs.

“Even just a light touch on a walker or perhaps a different object can help them regain their balance,” said Knox.

In this episode, she said keeping her patients moving and avoiding falls is crucial.

“We do need innovation and technology to come up with ways that can provide sensory feedback that would be discreet, socially acceptable, and easy to use,” said Knox.

Dr Michael Levin is a neuroscientist unravelling the mysteries of nerve degeneration in Multiple Sclerosis patients. 

He's also Saskatchewan's inaugural MS Clinical Research Chair, whose team recently won a New Frontiers in Research Fund award. 

"In my lifetime, there's been a dramatic change in how we treat MS," said Levin. "There's a lot of hope when people come into the clinic."

But after taking steroids for a number of years, many MS patients still relapse.

"It's this kind of slow degenerative kind of nickel and diming of people's function that we would really like to nip in the bud," said Levin.

His task now is to find a drug that re-shapes a key protein involved with nerve degeneration, sending that protein back into its normal position.

In this episode, hear why this could be a game-changer for MS patients across Saskatchewan and the world.

Dr. Alexander Wong remembers forcing himself to hide his fear last year, as he treated his first Covid-19 patients.

“It kind of felt like we were staring down the bottom of a big gun barrel," said Wong, an assistant professor in the College of Medicine's Department of Infectious Diseases.

The virus has killed 546 people in Saskatchewan.

In this episode, Wong looks at public health, at politics, and at 'really complicated' decision-making during the pandemic, as Regina's critical-care teams fought to save severely ill patients.

Growing up in Columbia had a profound impact on Dr. Juan-Nicolas Pẽna-Sànchez. In this episode, hear why the former family physician pivoted, becoming Saskatchewan's lead in finding the best ways to treat Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis in rural and Indigenous patients.

Even as a teenager, Juan-Nicolás Peña-Sánchez could see stark differences in health for those who had medical coverage — and those without, thanks to his stepfather, an emergency department physician.

“I used to go with him sometimes on shifts to learn and shadow him,” said Peña-Sánchez said. “The healthcare system was quite fragmented and most of the population was not covered.”

In the 1990s, the Colombian healthcare system was reformed within the context of “neoliberal health reforms” promoted by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, integrating privatization of the care delivery system, individual health insurance as the mechanism for receiving healthcare, the development of basic benefit plans, among other reforms.

“It changed the way to practice medicine,” said Peña-Sánchez, who observed among his stepfather and his medical school instructors’ grew dissatisfied with limits imposed under the new tiered coverage system.

Peña-Sánchez went on to work for non-governmental organizations in Bogotá, providing healthcare to individuals living in marginalized communities and with limited resources. After witnessing the inequities amplified by healthcare reforms, Peña-Sánchez began to analyze health systems themselves. He moved to Spain, Poland, and France to continue his graduate studies, and then to the University of Saskatchewan, where he joined the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology as an associate professor after researching physician satisfaction and alternatives to ‘fee-for-service’ payment models.

Still, Peña-Sánchez missed interacting directly with patients, and hearing their stories. Through the College of Medicine, he began learning about inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and moved his focus to innovative models of care for IBD. 

Canada’s high prevalence of IBD, particularly Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, stood in stark contrast to his experiences in Colombia. 

Dr. Peña-Sánchez formed the IBD among Indigenous Peoples Research Team after realizing in 2017 there was virtually no data on the incidence, prevalence or treatment of IBD for First Nations and Metis people.

“We learned that IBD is increasing among First Nations in Saskatchewan,” said Peña-Sánchez, who started zeroing in on disparities in those patients’ healthcare access and outcomes. Peña-Sánchez and his team explain their findings in this episode.

“Having that regular access is critical,” he said, advocating for innovative approaches to healthcare delivery.

Dr. Peña-Sánchez also explored the potential of virtual care, particularly telephone consultations, to improve healthcare access for rural populations. He found rural residents were more satisfied with telephone care compared to urban dwellers, an insight that underscores the need for adaptable healthcare models. 

Currently, Dr. Peña-Sánchez is focused on patient navigation interventions to support individuals with chronic gastrointestinal conditions, particularly in rural Saskatchewan and for Indigenous community members. His research aims to improve access to specialized IBD care and patient outcomes through peer support and patient navigators.

One patient Shivani Tauh interviewed had to remove his ventilator tube to speak with her.

Another told her it felt 'disingenuous' when able-bodied health care providers looked at his spinal cord injury and assured him 'this will pass'.

Shivani Tauh kicks off our undergraduate summer research series in this episode, discussing her work on spinal cord injuries, and how they change a person's outlook, mobility and prognosis.

Tauh, who is now entering her fourth year of medical school, has gathered concrete policy suggestions for those whose work deals with medical assistance in dying (MAID).

Over two summers, Tauh interviewed both health care workers, and people who had suffered spinal cord injuries, to elicit their opinions and experiences, as Canada overhauls and modernizes its laws around end-of-life care. Tauh's research was done under the supervision of Dr. Lilian Thorpe and Dr. Darren Nickel.

Tauh said the field is fraught with ethical questions, and this research has changed the way she views end-of-life care.

In this episode, she describes in-person interviews with spinal cord injury patients as "eye-opening", pointing to one patient's account of feeling isolated and alone.

"He never felt like his health care providers, specifically his physicians, really understood what he was going through," said Tauh.

"It's difficult to have somebody that really has no true insight or understanding into what you're going through say, 'oh it'll be okay'.

Taugh said her summer work underscored the need to protect vulnerable people within the health care system while also preserving their autonomy.

"I would like to incorporate end-of-life care into my practice, regardless of what specialty I end up going into," said Tauh.  "This is an area of medicine I feel very passionate about."

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 down antiviral therapeutics that slow or inhibit COVID-19 infections. 

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 exceptional educators and researchers," said Thoma, who specializes in emergency medicine and trauma. He's also the CEO and founder of CanadiEM.org.

In this episode, Thoma lays out the risks and rewards of moving medical education from textbooks to the online world. He also explains how to spot false and misleading information.

Thoma said the Covid-19 pandemic gives clinicians and researchers a sense of urgency in debunking the proliferation of false and misleading medical statements on social media.

“If we’re not at the table and having some of these conversations and sharing high quality resources and work, we’re just going to get drowned out," he said.

In the heart of the Health Sciences Building, Dr. Amanda Hall studies a tray of organoids under a microscope.

“They do need a lot of attention and a lot of feeding,” she said, pointing to dot-like points in a gel solution. 

The pediatric surgeon and assistant professor of pediatric general surgery will use those dots to identify factors that help infants overcome short gut syndrome.

The rare condition affects roughly 24 in every 100,000 babies born in Canada, presenting a profound challenge for infants born with insufficient intestinal length or compromised absorptive capacity.

“It’s a very, very long, difficult road,” said Hall. “Often they’re stuck in hospital and there’s no progress happening, so definitely [families] want another option.”

Hall’s interest in medicine dates back to the late 1990s in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, and a family TV with three channels. In elementary school, she remembered faithfully recording the reality show Life’s Little Miracles, where a camera crew followed patients at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children.

“They’d actually go into the operating room and film the surgeries, which was amazing,” she said. “That’s what I wanted to do.”

After she was accepted to the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Medicine, Hall met Dr. Grant Miller and Dr. Gordon Zello during her second year of residency. To become a pediatric surgeon, she had to earn her master’s degree, and Miller took the graduate student under his wing, focusing on parenteral nutrition-associated liver disease in infants.

“I just loved research,” said Hall. “I loved the struggle, the unending nights of work, then finally that amazing feeling when you see numbers that make sense.”

It was the beginning of Hall’s deep-dive into the intricacies of the human gut.

Right now, half of infants diagnosed with short gut syndrome get better on their own, with the help of intravenous nutrition. A few undergo complex bowel transplants, but close to 38 per cent succumb to the disease.

“They would have what we call failure to thrive,” said Hall. “They don’t gain weight, they have uncontrollable diarrhea, they might have vomiting.”

In this episode, Hall takes us inside her lab to meet her miniature, spherical organs, cultivated from stem cells, mimicking the intricate structure of the human intestine.

“Definitely you become attached to them. They require a lot of work, a lot of time, and a lot of expense,” Hall said.

Hall is exploring the potential benefits of breast milk and probiotics in encouraging growth inside these mini intestines. From there, she hopes to identify specific components that could accelerate the recovery of infants suffering from short gut syndrome.

“We know that breast milk …. helps with our immune function, helps with the actual integrity of the bowel. I’m curious to know does it actually help the bowel grow faster?”

For families grappling with the challenges of short gut syndrome, Hall's work offers a beacon of hope.

“The idea of finding a universal cure is not very realistic,” said Hall. “But if we can start identifying different factors to help and improve the process, that’ll be very important.”

She says a multitude of factors affect short gut syndrome, and some drugs are already in development.

“There’s definitely hope on the horizon,” she said.

Our podcast host, Jen Quesnel, has undergone two Caesarian sections -- lifesaving interventions that deliver babies safely.

She's not alone. In Saskatchewan, roughly one quarter of mothers giving birth are doing it via abdominal surgery. More than one in three births in British Columbia are C-sections. 

After avoiding driving, stairs, and lifting anything heavy for a month or so, most mothers recover smoothly.

But some don't.

Belma Kamencic spent her past two summers analyzing those with surgical site infections.

She then conducted interviews with dozens of mothers with infected incisions, to better understand their experiences.

In this episode, we hear what patients told Kamencic, who said there are four specific changes she'd like to see hospitals make, to cut the risk of future C-section infections.

Daphne Yau can trace her interest in endocrinology back to a beta-cell physiology experiment during her master’s degree,  working with laboratory mice with Type 2 Diabetes.

“It was the part of the pancreas that makes insulin,” she said. “It was fascinating. It also made me realize that maybe pure laboratory research wasn't quite for me."

From there, her interest in hormones and fluctuating blood sugar levels grew.

Yau is no stranger to medicine. Her mother was a pharmacist, while her father and aunt both worked as physicians. Following in their footsteps, Lou completed her pediatrics residency at Queen’s University, with fellowship training at McGill. She then focused on congenital hyperinsulinism at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital.

She still remembers her residency, and meeting a premature baby with a rare genetic disorder  in neonatal intensive care.

“The blood sugars were horrendously low right from the start,” Yau said. “Their brain uses most of that glucose, so that's why it's so critical in that period that they get a steady supply.”

Together with an endocrinologist and a multi-disciplinary team, Yau and her colleagues traced back the root of the hyperinsulinism — the infant’s mother and grandmother also suffered from rare forms of diabetes.

Unregulated, plummeting blood sugar levels in infants can cause brain injuries and permanent neurological damage, Yau said.

“Your brain can't really store much in the way of glucose and it can't make it on its own the way some other tissues and organs in the body can,” said Yau.

“If you test a child who's had hypoglycemia when they're two or four, you may not actually pick up on this. Not till maybe later on, when they're in school and they're struggling.”

Yau joined the College of Medicine five years ago as a pediatric endocrinologist and assistant professor of pediatrics. Today, she’s based at the Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital. Her research focuses on understanding and addressing congenital hyperinsulinism, as well as screening for diabetes and other metabolic disorders.

In this episode, Dr. Yau pointed to recent success with a project inspired by Dr. Mark Inman. Together, their team is trying to improve diabetes screening and education in northern Saskatchewan, particularly for Indigenous children and teenagers.

She said the heel prick hospitals often perform on newborns inspired them.

“Could someone at home prick their finger, put some few drops of blood on this card and have their A1C measured that way as opposed to having to go to the lab?” Yau said.

The results to date show promise, which could make it easier to screen young patients in remote communities for diabetes.

Yau is also working with researchers in the United Kingdom who study blood sugar dysregulation in infants, exploring alternative treatments and lower doses of medications such as diazoxide, to mitigate side effects.

“What are the levels we really should be targeting to minimize the potential for long-term harms?”

Audrey Zucker-Levin estimates it's been more than 30 years since she first poked her head into a researcher's office at New York City's Hospital for Special Surgery.

Back then, the clinical therapist spent her days treating hospital patients, stopping by the laboratory after her shifts.

"I was very intrigued by the prosthesis, by the mechanical and the physiologic connection," said Zucker-Levin.

"I kept basically showing up any time I had spare time," she said. "They just put me to work."

After long hours spent studying patients in early video work, Zucker-Levin recalled studying muscle movement and function through patients' knees, hips and lower-leg placement. She learned more about missing feet, and became curious about the neurological connections producing phantom sensations -- messages trying to connect and control the places where limbs once grew. 

Zucker-Levin went on to study prosthesis innovations, and welcomes today's gait lab advancements. 

"We were very dependent upon the technology of the prosthesis, as well as the ability of the person, and we were trying to match them," she said. "It was fascinating work."

Zucker-Levin enroled in a part-time doctoral program at NYU, but didn't complete it right away.

She followed her husband to Bethesda and a fellowship at the National Institutes of Health. After a few years, Zucker-Levin, her husband and two young sons relocated to the University of Tennessee in Memphis. She took on a faculty position there, determined to complete her PhD.

"We had a babe in arms and a toddler," she said. "And I flew back and forth to New York every other week with the two little ones."

Today, she empathisizes with parents who are students. She admits it was not easy finding balance as a full-time faculty member, as a part-time doctoral student, and as a full-time mother.  

“But I had lots of support," Zucker-Levin said. "I really enjoyed the research. I really enjoyed that ability to try and figure out how to help people function easier, or better."

After she and her husband moved to Saskatoon in 2017, Zucker-Levin was hired as a professor at the University of Saskatchewan's School of Rehabilitation Science.

With support from the Saskatchewan Centre for Patient-Oriented Research, and the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation, her team now focuses on improving function in people affected by lower-leg amputations.

Zucker-Levin started by assessing rates of amputation in Saskatchewan compared to other countries. From there, her team went on to use MRI scans to assess phantom sensation, watching the neurological connections the brain uses to keep or regain function; they’re also experimenting with exercise programs aimed at using phantom sensations to help patients heal, along with studying a host of other factors affecting post-operative care.

From insects and birds, to the underwater world, Juan Ianowski's fascination with the natural world began early.

As a biologist, he was drawn to physiological processes, later scrutinizing the kidneys of insects, whose epithelial cells behave in similar ways to those in human lungs.

By 2015, Ianowski's research was focused on the pathophysiology of lung cells, and the nerve channels controlling them. He and his collaborators were working with the Canadian Light Source, to get a more accurate picture of the tiny cells involved.

But Ianowski had a nagging feeling he was missing the bigger picture. 

"I had a very large gap in my life," said Ianowski. "I had never seen a patient."

That summer, he fired off an e-mail to Dr. Julian Tam, who'd just moved into a new position as the director of Saskatchewan's adult Cystic Fibrosis clinic.

They agreed to go for coffee.

Tam already knew Saskatoon, after spending his residency in internal medicine here, followed by a fellowship in Respirology.

"I liked that I could reason out, based on various principles, how things worked in our lungs," said Tam. "There were a few patients that I looked after with CF fairly early on in my training, and I think they really left a mark on me.”

When they met, Tam found Ianowski's work interesting, but saw 'a bit of a disconnect' between the research and his day-to-day practice. 

Within months, the respirologist asked Ianowski to shadow him during patient visits.

Most CF patients take dozens of pills each day, as well inhaling nebulized saline solutions designed to loosen mucous, and reduce infections.   

“It can be very time-consuming and we would love for their treatments to be as efficacious as possible,” said Tam.

To figure out how, and why the saline solution worked — and what could make it more potent, Tam and Ianowski became collaborators on numerous projects supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Information, the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation, and Cystic Fibrosis Canada.

With the help of colleagues at the Canadian Light Source and the  Canadian Centre for Health and Safety in Agriculture, they started finding answers by doing mass spectrometry in real time, in a herd of pigs genetically modified to carry the gene for Cystic Fibrosis.

“This is pretty hard because the amount of fluid that we are looking for is very small. So it's about the width of a human hair,” said Ianowski. 

That work led to numerous publications, and to the University of Saskatchewan’s application for a patent for a better inhaled treatment to treat CF lung disease.

Now, Tam and Ianowski also looking at gastrointestinal disease in CF patients, and TRIKAFTA — an innovative class of drugs that’s effective for most — but not all — people with the disease.

Today, they’re testing those drugs in the lab to gain a detailed understanding of the effects they produce. A recent CIHR grant will help them better understand the basic epithelia of the lungs. They’re also looking for ways to better treat CF patients who cannot tolerate TRIKAFTA treatments.

“Our hope is that some of our work gives us a better understanding of the disease process,” said Tam, as he and Ianowski aim for better treatments, by figuring out which lung cells to target, and where.

To crack the causes of metabolic disease, Dr. Changting Xiao 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 Saskatchewan, and his fascination with the human gut, and its role in creating 'bad blood fats'.

"The gut is often overlooked and often under-studied," Xiao said. "The gut is very smart and complex, and there is much more to be learned."

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 strains of Klebsiella pneumoniae. 

“Bacteria are constantly changing," said Thomassin. "What seems to be emerging in some places are crosses between classic and hypervirulent strains, where antibiotic-resistant bacterium can make a healthy person sick."

Hear why she likens her work to fixing a car engine blindfolded.

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 in the next few months.

Dr. Ivar Mendez is one of the world's leading experts in neuroscience and robotics, neuromodulation, and remote medicine.

But nine years ago, the award-winning neuroscientist who founded Dalhousie's Brain Repair Centre faced a career dilemma.

Would he accept a senior clinician's position at Harvard University, or would he move to Saskatchewan, to oversee surgery for an entire province?

Today, Dr. Ivar Mendez says he's glad he chose Saskatoon.

"It's been a privilege for me to work with remote communities in Saskatchewan," said Dr. Mendez, provincial head of surgery and a clinical neurosurgeon with the University of Saskatchewan and the Saskatchewan Health Authority.

This spring, he published Sariri, a book of essays about his travels to remote communities in Bolivia.

He said there are 'commonalities' between Indigenous people in both Bolivia and northern Saskatchewan, in terms of their relationship with the earth and its teachings.

"They have a lot of knowledge and healing that we in Western medicine are not using, but it's very valuable," Mendez said. 

Mendez has made it his mission to bring 'remote presence' robots into nursing stations in 17 fly-in and remote communities across northern Saskatchewan.

In this episode, hear why being able to practice virtual medicine paid off during the Covid-19 pandemic, as lockdowns isolated Saskatchewan's poorest, most remote citizens.

In 2021, midway through the pandemic, Dr. Mendez took unpaid leave and returned to Bolivia where the coronavirus was ripping through hospitals, killing hundreds of health care workers and thousands of Bolivian citizens.

"There were no ICU beds, no beds at all," said Mendez. "Hundreds of thousands of people were dying."

After he arrived, Dr. Mendez sent countless families personal protective equipment, Bluetooth-equipped medical devices, and he set up real-time consultations with phsyicians so they could monitor sick patients at home.

"They were able to save many lives," said Mendez, noting a 'significantly lower' mortality rate for patients whose family members cared for them at home, compared to those admitted to hospital.  

In this episode, Dr. Mendez also describes a recent trip to Ethiopia, where prenatal care for rural women was nearly non-existent, until teams from Saskatchewan tried giving midwives portable ultrasound kits.

With supervision from obstetricians in urban centres, 17 Ethiopian midwives became 'expert sonographers' offering free pre-natal scans on market Saturdays.

Some women walked for more than ten hours, for their first chance to see their baby.

"When I went back to Ethiopia a couple of weeks ago, they'd done 3,800 ultrasounds -- more than ten times what we ever thought," said Mendez.

"They wanted to know if their babies were healthy." 

In this episode, hear more about Mendez' initial fascination with the human brain, his push to bring stem cell transplants to patients with brain injuries and disease, and why he cares deeply about bringing health care to impoverished communities.

Using 'doc in a box' virtual medicine, clinicians can 'see' patients in 17 remote communities in northern Saskatchewan including La Loche, Pelican Narrows, and Stony Rapids.

"We have built the most comprehensive remote presence robotic program in Canada, and one of the most advanced in the world," he said. "

Mendez predicts virtual care, robotics and artificial intelligence will 'revolutionize' health care.

"It will disrupt the way we practice medicine and I think we will be better, for the way we're using them," he said.

Haissam Haddad inadvertently horrified his family when he signed up for engineering courses in his first year of university.

The teenager returned the next day to change his major to medicine -- a move he's glad he made.

Dr. Haddad practiced family medicine in Syria for three years, then arrived in Canada in 1986 to visit his wife's family, who urged him to stay.

Haddad faced an uphill battle when he investigated the possibility of becoming a Canadian doctor. One colleague even told him he’d be better off opening a Syrian grocery store.

“This gave me a lot of energy to prove him wrong,” said Haddad.

His early years in Canada were characterized by relentless perseverance, as Haddad confronted the arduous process of certification and integration into the medical system. He focused on learning English every weekday, picking up back-to-back twelve-hour shifts at a Halifax laundromat every weekend, to support his family.

“The first day it took me, like, almost 16 hours to read one page,” Haddad said. “I had no option to fail.”

After three years of English lessons and intensive studying, Dr. Sam Haddad earned a passing score on Canada’s medical licensing exam.

In this episode, Dr. Haddad recounts pivotal moments that steered him towards cardiology, including formative experiences in cardiac surgery during his residency at Dalhousie, which took place during the HIV epidemic.

“I’ve always liked the heart,” said Haddad. "I decided to do cardiology because it has less blood and less risk.”

Haddad’s dedication to improving patient outcomes through research soon became evident, as he tackled clinical gaps and treatment efficacy in heart failure management and heart transplant protocols.

“Almost on a weekly basis, you have a patient who did not respond to the usual treatment,” said Haddad. “This is the research question. How come this patient is not getting better?”

As his expertise grew, Haddad became one of only two Canadian cardiologists who were part of the National Institutes of Health Heart Failure Network. His patients took part in clinical trials that led to significant advancements. 

“A lot of our patients didn't have private insurance,” Haddad said. “We can do a lot of work to help patients who are not able to buy their own medication."

Haddad led the cardiac transplant and heart failure programs at the University of Ottawa’s Heart Institute, exponentially increasing the number of transplants performed. At the same time, he said at cardiovascular medicine was making revolutionary strides with artificial hearts and improved anti-rejection medications.

When he began, half of heart failure patients died within a year. Now, over 90 per cent survive.

After moving to Saskatoon to become Saskatchewan’s Provincial Head of Medicine in 2016, Haddad continued his clinical practice, taking on leadership roles in medical education and research.

Instrumental in recruiting almost half of the specialists practicing in Saskatchewan today, Haddad also established the University of Saskatchewan Cardiovascular Research Group, fostering a collaborative environment for innovative research initiatives.

Last year, Dr. Haddad was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada..

“Nothing comes easy,” said Haddad. “You have to work hard. You have to fail multiple times before you're successful.”

Diagnosing pulmonary diseases ilike asthma in young children is still largely a matter of trial and error, according to Saskatchewan’s top pediatric respirologist.

As viruses and colds tear through schools and daycares across North America, Dr. Darryl Adamko wants to change that.

“If you have asthma this year and you're not taking your inhaled steroids, well you're rolling the dice,” said Adamko, who’s watched an influx of young patients over the past few months at the Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital in Saskatoon.

In children, problems with breathing are the leading cause of hospitalizations.

Undiagnosed asthma and other pulmonary conditions in children mean small patients have a a much tougher fight when they’re infected by Covid-19, RSV or influenza.

“You have to be taking those preventative drugs first before the virus finds you,” said Adamko.

That’s why he’s pinning down biomarkers for pulmonary disease in a familiar tool for family doctors: urine samples.

“We still really don't have a great test for like preschool kids. It's just history for the most part,” he said.

Using mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, he and his team have spent more than a decade analyzing urine samples and refining their methodology.

“Now that we've got enough urine samples analyzed that, I think we've got a good signal,” said Adamko.

His research today is aimed at creating a urine test that would give giving family doctors and paediatricians a faster, more efficient way to diagnose pulmonary conditions long before kids arrive at the hospital.

In this episode, he explains why a resurgence of RSV after years of Covid restrictions has hit young patients hard.

“It's really bad for little babies. It loves the smallest little airways,” Adamko said. “This year the problem is we've got a bunch of two-year-olds, and one-year-olds who have never seen these viruses.”

As a pediatric neurologist, Dr. Richard Huntsman sees the children with the most medically complex epilepsy

"It completely disrupts the life of a family," said Huntsman. "Limitations on what the child can do, limitations on what the family can do."

"When the kids have really severe and difficult-to-control epilepsy, It's a huge burden on their parents."

Eight years ago, parents started asking Huntsman about whether they could try treating their childrens' seizures -- with cannabis.

Back then, Canadian health officials allowed doctors to prescribe the medical use of dried marijuana buds -- which meant smoking them.

"No pediatrician would recommend that for a child," said Huntsman, who said any therapeutic benefits and dosages for cannabis products at the time amounted to a big question mark.

"I was maybe a little bit skeptical that we would see huge improvements," Huntsman said. 

As an associate professor of pediatric neurology in the College of Medicine, Huntsman knew CBD and THC contain anticonvulsants.

He wanted high-quality, independent data, so he designed an investigator-sponsored study to test cannabis on epileptic children.

"I certainly did raise eyebrows when I went to the different funding agencies," he said, crediting his department, the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation, and the Jim Pattison Children's Hospital Foundation for their financial backing.

"That took a lot of courage."

Huntsman and his team approached Saskatoon-area licenced producer CanniMed, Canada's first licenced producer of medical marijuana, to create a food-grade CBD oil for children with a targeted ingredient list.

"We knew exactly what was in it with regards to concentrations of cannabidiol, THC, and to a lesser degree other cannabinoids which are present in these compounds," Huntsman said.

He then recruited 20 Canadian children with drug-resistant, medically severe epilepsy started by recording their baseline seizure frequency. Eleven of them attended monthly appointments in Saskatoon, to participate in the study.

Parents turned in detailed medical journals each visit, including changes they observed in their child and in their family's quality of life.

The CBD oil worked.

"The reduction in seizure frequency was around 60 per cent." said Huntsman, calling the findings 'really significant'.

Although not all children responded the same way, Huntsman was even more surprised to see a number of children become entirely seizure-free by the end of the study.

"These were kids who'd tried multiple multiple medications, had tried ketogenic diets, had tried things like steroids, etc to control their seizures."

In this episode, we hear how those patients are doing today, and why one young boy's case became a true 'aha' moment for Huntsman.

"He was interacting more, he was laughing at funny bits of movies, which he'd never done before." said Huntsman.

Huntsman founded the Cannabinoid Research Initiative of Saskatchewan, hoping to join forces with other biomedical researchers to learn more about CBD and THC, and whether they're more effective in combinations or alone.

In this episode, we also hear  where Huntsman wants to see more research, with hundreds of cannabinoids and potential compounds to explore.

Like a lot of kids, Anurag Sakharkar used to dream about being a doctor, or an astronaut. His parents, both academics, encouraged him to follow his dream.

In high school, he began spending evenings and weekends working at the University of Saskatchewan’s biomedical labs, perfecting advanced research methods, western blots and PCR analysis . He began learning about Parkinson’s disease with Dr. Changiz Taghibiglou, then started examining novel cancer treatment approaches with Dr. Franco Vizeacoumar.

The Covid-19 pandemic brought Anu’s in-person laboratory time to an abrupt halt. Undeterred, he began to spend his nights poring over gene expression data, using computational analysis to identify patterns.

“We integrated all these different methods and looked at the genome coordination as a whole,” said Anu. “What important pathways are involved, and how do they connect and interact at the DNA, protein, and RNA levels?”

His curiosity spread from analyzing biomarkers in cancer cells — to learning more about the dramatic changes occurring in an astronaut’s body during space flight.

Astronauts lose bone density and muscle mass in space. They endure neurological degeneration, renal and cardiovascular dysfunction, compromised immunity, and upon their return to earth they have a far higher risk of developing cancer. Anu noticed a more large-scale inherent change in these astronauts in his research.

“You see gene correlation and coordination breaking down all over the entire genome,” said Anu. “You have a huge systemic trauma that's occurring in these astronauts when they go into space.”

Together with Dr. Jian Yang from the College of Pharmacy and Nutrition, Anu started analyzing astronaut gene expression data gathered in NASA’s open-source GeneLab. It tracked eight men and two women posted to the International Space Station for a six-month period, including pre-flight, inflight, and postflight measurements.

Anu developed a novel expression analysis method, and has now identified 32 genes with outsized effects on astronauts’ health as possible candidates for biomarkers to characterize, monitor, and even treat health issues.

In February, his research was published in Life. With support from the University of Saskatchewan President’s NSERC Research Fund, it also formed a partial basis of Anu’s honours thesis as he completes his final undergraduate year this spring, majoring in Cellular Physiology and Pharmacology.

He’s developed partnerships with universities around the world, along with NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, and private space bioscience companies.

“Space is definitely humanity’s future,” Anu said. “That future is getting closer and closer."

Eric Sy's greatest passion is looking after patients and trying to get them better. COVID-19 is stumping so many in the medical field. But Sy and so many others are working hard to find treatment methods to alleviate COVID's toll on patients around the world. Interviewer Chelsea Laskowski gets Eric Sy on Skype and they talk Trump, blood plasma, and why Sy is approaching everything with extreme caution right now. Recorded on May 5, 2020.

"I'm passionate about what I do,' he said, describing his journey through medicine as a series of lucky breaks.

In his home country of Cameroon, Lukong was identified early as a promising scholar. Upon graduating from high school, he won an eight-year government scholarship to master both biochemistry and French linguistics.

"They were looking for technical and medical translators to come back to the country," said Lukong, who enroled at Keele University in the United Kingdom, earning double bachelor's degrees.

Lukong then moved to the University of Montreal for his masters-level work.

But his career path changed, after Cameroon's economic and political crisis during the early 1990s. With a young family to support, Lukong opted to stay in North America.

"I had nobody to guide me," said Lukong. "I didn't have somebody who looked like me anywhere."

Undeterred, his work on lysosomes and identifying mutations brought him to McGill, Harvard, and finally the University of Saskatchewan.

Today his lab focuses on the biochemistry of breast cancer.

"From the very first person that I saw, I was already welcome," said Lukong, who vividly remembers the contrast between his job interview in Saskatoon and Quebec. "Everybody was welcoming."

Lukong is a biochemistry professor and a member of the University of Saskatchewan's Cancer Research Cluster. 

His lab aims to pinpoint what BReast tumor Kinase (BRK), non-receptor tyrosine kinase is doing in these patients' bodies. Lukong is also investigating whether its presence is what's leading them to become drug-resistant.

"The big problem we have right now is drug resistance," said Lukong.

He said nearly a third of breast cancer patients taking Tamoxifen will develop some resistance to it.

It's even tougher with Fulvestrant, a secondary treatment, one whose effect wears off in almost all patients over time.

"That's the new direction my lab is taking now," said Lukong.

Lukong also makes time to mentor his researchers, and to find out what their goals are.

For him, one of the most difficult aspects of pursuing a career in biomedical science was that no one else looked like him.

Even today, Lukong said a number of promising Black students often drift away from their studies, or give up on academia.

"All they need is that role model" said Lukong. 

Last year, he became the vice-president of the Canadian Black Scientists Network, which is set to hold its first conference for Black Excellence in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine/Health next month.

The four-day "BE-STEMM 2022" virtual conference begins January 30, 2022.

"That's why I'm here. To tell them, you can do it," said Lukong.