CIHR Funding provides $3.2M boost to UVic health research

John Burke

Biochemistry professor John Burke received $994,500 for a five-year project called Structural basis of PI4KA regulation and its roles in human disease.

PI4KA is phosphatidylinositol 4 kinase, an enzyme that is required to ensure that molecules of phosphatidylinositol send the appropriate signals to other molecules at cell membranes. When the enzyme’s structure mutates, its function can be suppressed, leading to developmental disorders, or enhanced, leading to cancers.

Burke and a team of biophysicists, cell biologists and chemical biologists will study the structure and dynamics of enzyme regulation using cryo-electron microscopy and hydrogen-deuterium exchange mass spectrometry, both state-of-the-art methods for imaging molecular structure and, therefore, function.

Ultimately, the scientists are seeking the molecular basis of how this enzyme is regulated to gain novel insights into its role in devastating human diseases such as pancreatic cancer and severe gastrointestinal and immune disorders.

“This is an exciting time,” Burke says, “as this funding from CIHR focused on basic research discovery of phosphoinositide signalling has the potential to drive breakthroughs in our ability to therapeutically target PI4KA in human disease.”

Lauren Davey

Assistant professor of microbiology Lauren Davey received $300,000 for three years as a priority announcement in Infection and Immunity - Early Career Research Support. In Modulation of the intestinal bacterium Akkermansia muciniphila to enhance healthy aging and longevity, she’ll be looking into genetic markers for cell senescence that will, Davey hopes, lead to tactics to prevent age-related frailties.

Certain gut bacteria, including Akkermansia, are correlated with health and longevity. This raises the possibility that Akkermansia can be used as a probiotic to promote healthy aging. However, several new species of Akkermansia have been identified and in some circumstances might have the potential to be harmful.

“To contribute to the development of safe, Akkermansia-based probiotics,” Davey says, “we will use cutting-edge techniques in genetics and metabolism to investigate how Akkermansia impacts its host and the surrounding gut microbiome. By understanding the mechanisms that drive the beneficial effects of Akkermansia we will be one step closer to developing microbiome-based therapeutics to promote healthy aging.”

Renée Monchalin

Renée Monchalin, a Métis scholar and assistant professor in the School of Public Health and Social Policy, received $1,912,500 for a five-year project called From Research to Action: Improving abortion access supports and services for Indigenous Women, Two Spirit and LGBTQIA+ People in Canada.

Monchalin envisions a day when Indigenous women, Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ people in Canada can pick up a phone and call an aunty for abortion support and wraparound care.

The grant will enable Monchalin to team with community-led organizations, including Call Auntie/Seventh Generation Midwives Toronto and the ekw'í7tl doula collective, to develop a culturally safe abortion support hotline. 

The research team, which includes UVic scholars Monique Auger, an assistant professor in PHSP, and Astrid Vanessa Pérez Piñán, an associate professor in the School of Public Administration, to assess the hotline’s effectiveness and develop a cultural safety credential module for abortion providers.

The CIHR grant builds on research findings from the Fireweed Project, a three-year Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council-funded study that found Indigenous people face multiple barriers to abortion access including logistical challenges, reproductive coercion and systemic racism.

“Our research confirmed that abortion is common in Indigenous communities,” Monchalin says. “However, stigma is rampant. A lot of people think they’re isolated in this experience.”

Monchalin says the abortion support hotline will help turn the Fireweed Project’s research findings into action, helping deliver more equitable reproductive access support and wraparound care to Indigenous people.

“Indigenous abortion seekers and providers working with Indigenous communities have communicated to us the critical and urgent need for abortion access support and services that are culturally safe, stigma-free, and accessible.”

Leo Rutherford

PhD candidate Leo Rutherford (Social Dimensions of Health) has been awarded $345,000 over three years in the Patient-Oriented Research program.

"This award includes both a salary and research stipend,” Rutherford explains. "It is funding a research scientist position for me at the Community-Based Research Centre in Vancouver.”

Rutherford’s research program will be made up, in part, of an extension of the “Patient Reported Outcomes of Genital Reconstruction and Experiences of Surgical Satisfaction (PROGRESS) for phalloplasty and metoidioplasty” project. It's also an addition of more broad-ranging trans healthcare research, all designed by and for the trans community with a focus on creating content that benefit our communities and make change.