Western researchers receive nearly $5M from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research
A new research project at Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry is harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to better understand and treat inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) – one of several projects by Western researchers that received nearly $5 million in funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) through its latest project grants competition.
Led by Dr. Pingzhao Hu, professor, the interdisciplinary study will apply deep learning algorithms to identify patterns of disease and develop new, targeted drug therapies for IBD patients.
Characterized by chronic inflammation, the precise cause of IBD remains unclear, but researchers have linked it to an overreaction of the immune system in people who are genetically predisposed.
Hu and his team are focused on the inflammatory and bacterial aspects of the disease, with specific interest in the relationship between IBD and Escherichia coli, or E. coli, a bacterium which can trigger gut inflammation. Their goal is to develop new drugs that can treat IBD by reducing the overgrowth of harmful strains of E. coli.
“This comprehensive approach holds the potential to revolutionize IBD management and improve patient outcomes,” said Hu.
He said the CIHR funding will accelerate discovery and empower significant strides in IBD treatment. “The funding will allow our research team to combine strengths and innovations beyond a single discipline,” he said.
Other newly-funded projects across Western are exploring a range of critical health-care research including nicotine exposure in youth, prostate cancer, eating disorders, autism, neural processing of natural stimuli and sepsis.
“We are pleased that researchers have secured this funding to address critical gaps in health care,” said Robert Bartha, vice dean of research and innovation. “We continue to increase our impact in major research themes like mental illness, cancer and chronic disease using innovative technology.”
The CIHR Project Grant recipients include:
Lindsay Bodell (co-principal investigator: Sarah Racine): Testing a dynamic model of altered reward processing across stage of illness in individuals with binge eating
Jody Culham: From 2D to 3D: The importance of depth for neural processing of natural stimuli
Pingzhao Hu (co-principal investigator: Samuel Asfaha, Mohan Babu): A deep learning approach to identify inhibitors of adherent invasive Escherichia coli in the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease
Steven Laviolette: Understanding the effects of adolescent nicotine exposure on increased risk for mood and anxiety disorders: Bridging the gap from pre-clinical to clinical investigations
Ryan Stevenson (co-principal investigator: Bobby Stojanoski, Kathleen Lyons): Sensory phenotypes in autism
Aaron Ward (co-principal investigator: Stephen Pautler): Histopathology image analysis for prostate cancer prognosis after radical prostatectomy
The CIHR Priority Announcement recipients are:
Kun Ping Lu (co-principal investigators: Xiao Zhen Zhou and Douglas Fraser): Identification of novel disease drivers, therapeutic targets, and biomarkers of sepsis