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Learn more about the funded researchers and their programs:

(Emergency Medicine), Canada Research Chair in Emergency Venous Thromboembolism, has developed the Falls Rule, a bedside test for emergency doctors to help them in determining if a patient needs a brain scan due to brain bleed. A serious condition that can result in death, brain bleeds have been seen in a number of older adults who have experienced a fall. Application of the Falls Rule can reduce wait times in emergency rooms by having the brain scan ordered at triage. Dr. de Wit is leading a study to assess the Falls Rule and demonstrate its safety and efficacy in correctly identifying brain bleed. This research could lead to the real-world application of the Falls Rule in emergency rooms across the country and around the world, leading to quicker and safer patient discharges and reducing healthcare costs.

Funding amount: $1,384,652

(Pathology and Molecular Medicine) seeks to identify treatments for preventing infection in patients with blood cancers. Levels of antibodies, immune proteins that help prevent infections, are often low in patients with blood cancer. The most common preventative treatment, immunoglobulin replacement (IgRT), is expensive and requires frequent infusions. However, there is uncertainty about when patients should receive IgRT, dosage amounts, and length of treatment. There is also unexplored potential in daily oral antibiotics as an alternative treatment. In partnership with the Canadian Cancer Trials Group (CCTG) at Queen’s, Dr. Callum is conducting the SC30 (RATIONAL) trial to compare standard dose IgRT with low-dose IgRT or oral antibiotics to prevent serious infection and death. Her research has the potential to improve patient quality of life and lower costs of treatments with antibiotics.

Funding amount: $1,197,227

(Biomedical and Molecular Sciences) is applying both immunology and regenerative medicine to better understand the potential of immune subsets in developing novel targeted therapies. During aging, and in diseases such as muscular dystrophies, muscle regeneration is compromised leading to weakened muscle, frailty, and decreased quality of life. Inflammation has been correlated with worse regeneration, however, attempts to eliminate inflammatory immune cells have led to conflicting results due to their dual role in regeneration. Dr. Dick seeks to understand how different macrophage subsets mediates muscle regeneration, how the immune response is altered in aging, and the cellular crosstalk between macrophages, stem cells, and fibroblasts. Her research will support therapies to eliminate chronically inflamed tissues and promote repair, alleviating a major impact on quality of life for patients.

Funding amount: $933,300

(Medicine) is comparing different vancomycin dosing strategies in treating methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections. Intravenous vancomycin is an antibiotic used to treat MRSA. However, the optimal method to adjust the vancomycin dose based on the drug level in the blood is unclear. Dr. Bai is proposing a simpler method based on trough levels that he will compare against a more complicated method using computer modelling through a randomized controlled trial of patients with serious MRSA infections. The goal is to determine if the simpler trough-based strategy achieves a similar success rate to the computer modelling method, and if so, incorporate it into standard practice. This innovation could have wide ranging impact as MRSA infections can affect blood, brain, heart valve, lung, bone, and joint or deep-seated abscesses in patients.

Funding amount: $749,700

(Canadian Cancer Trials Group; Faculty of Health Sciences) is the Senior Investigator for the PAC5 clinical trial. The phase III trial is testing lanreotide for the prevention of one of the most severe complications of pancreatic surgery, postoperative pancreatic fistula (POPF). More than half of all patients undergoing pancreatic surgery experience major postoperative complications, the most critical of which is POPF, leading to worsened quality of life and life-threatening conditions. Patients who experience POPF often require invasive drainage procedures, prolonged length of stay, and re-operation. Drugs like lanreotide, which reduce the normal secretions of the pancreas, have shown promise in reducing POPF when given immediately prior to pancreatic surgery. The CIHR funding will permit CCTG to collaborate on the SWOG S2408 North American academic clinical trial.

Funding amount: $742,052

(Pediatrics) is investigating a potential gene therapy treatment targeting one of the contributors to early childhood mortality. ABGM2 causes rapid degeneration of the brain in infants leading to death by five years of age through the accumulation of a type of brain fat known as GM2 ganglioside in their brain cells. ABGM2 arises from mutations in a single gene. This makes it ideal for gene therapy as it works by using viruses to deliver a normally functioning gene to replace the mutant version. Dr. Walia has developed hB-A, a gene therapy being tested for treatment of two other diseases, Tay-Sachs and Sandhoff, which are similar to ABGM2. Working along the same lines, his team has established proof of a gene therapy treatment which can potentially treat different forms of ABGM2. Dr. Walia seeks to test its safety and efficacy and identify a treatment-dose for testing in a future clinical trial to help infants born with the disease causing mutations in this gene.

Funding amount: $619,650

(Mechanical and Materials Engineering) and (Ophthalmology) are developing a non-invasive personal monitoring device to measure elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) in individuals with glaucoma and those at risk. Glaucoma, the leading cause of irreversible vision loss worldwide, affects more than 400,000 Canadians. Drs. Lai and Campbell, along with their teams, are collaborating with industrial and medical partners, including LenSense Inc., KHSC, and the Toronto Kensington Eye Institute, to advance their contact lens-based pressure sensing technology. They are working toward preclinical studies while accelerating the commercialization of this innovation. This breakthrough has the potential to not only improve the quality of life for individuals with glaucoma but also slow disease progression and reduce vision loss through earlier detection.

Funding amount: $596,700

(Chemical Engineering; Associate Vice-Principal [Research]) is advancing the understanding of a promising new drug to treat age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a chronic progressive degenerative disease affecting the retina causing central vision loss. It is one of the leading causes of irreversible blindness globally and affects more than 1.5 million Canadians. His research is investigating a drug which blocks the body’s inflammatory response to damaged cells, thought to be a cause for dry AMD. Dr. Amsden’s team will determine the dosing requirements needed to slow or halt dry AMD and develop an implantable drug delivery system as an alternative to the current method of repeated injections in the eye. The results of this project will likely extend beyond AMD and prove impactful in treating other ocular diseases.

Funding amount: $569,924

(Surgery) and her team are conducting a study to better understand infective endocarditis outcomes after surgery compared with medical management in persons who inject drugs (PWID). Infective endocarditis is an infection of the heart’s inner lining that can lead to abnormal growths and damage the heart valves; it has increased by >160 per cent in PWID in Canada with the ongoing substance use crisis.  A major consideration of the risk-benefit of surgery vs. medical treatment alone in PWID is reinfection of the heart valve from drug use. Current treatment guidelines are predominately based on studies of infective endocarditis patients without substance use disorder who tend to be older, have more comorbidities, and different presentation of infective endocarditis than PWID. To provide needed evidence from PWID with infective endocarditis, Dr. Brogly’s CIHR-funded project will assemble the largest population-based cohort to date using health record data for Ontario and advanced methods to address study error that can arise from an absence of randomization to treatment.

Funding amount: $481,952

(Critical Care Medicine; Emergency Medicine) is researching the potential of magnesium in preventing atrial fibrillation (AF). Common in critically ill patients, AF is an abnormal heart rhythm that can contribute to low blood pressure and exposure to drugs with potential negative side effects for patients in intensive care units. Dr. Sibley is leading a study to compare magnesium against a placebo for the prevention of AF, analyzing both short and long-term outcomes for patients. Preventing AF can reduce a patient’s risk of stroke, heart failure, and death while also resulting in fewer days in the ICU and risk of rehospitalization. The impact of Dr. Sibley’s research contributes to an increased quality of life for critically ill patients and sets in motion the real-world application of a potentially innovative treatment to prevent AF.

Funding amount: $317,476

Learn more about these Queen’s research projects and other successful grants on the .