St. Michael's Hospital

Mpox DNA can persist in the body for up to four weeks: Study

rahul.kalvapalle — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 20:04:03 +0000

Mpox DNA can persist in the body for up to four weeks: Study

rahul.kalvapalle Tue, 03/12/2024 - 16:04

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A sign containing information about monkeypox is seen in International Airport Treviso A. Canova, in Treviso, Italy, on Nov. 30, 2022 (photo by Manuel Romano/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Betty Zou

Topic

Breaking Research

EPIC

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Unity Health

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

ihpme

St. Michael's Hospital

Sunnybrook

Subheadline

The study is one of several projects supported by the mpox rapid research response launched by ��ϲ��'s Emerging and Pandemic Infections Consortium (EPIC) and its hospital partners

DNA from the mpox virus can be found in different parts of the body for up to four weeks after symptom onset, according to a study led by researchers at Unity Health Toronto, the Sunnybrook Research Institute and the ��ϲ��.

The researchers analyzed samples from 64 men who contracted mpox, including participants from the Mpox Prospective Observational Cohort Study led by Darrell Tan, an infectious disease physician at St. Michael’s Hospital, part of Unity Health Toronto – where some of Toronto’s first patients with mpox were identified and cared for – and associate professor in the department of medicine and the Institute of Medical Science at ��ϲ��'s Temerty Faculty of Medicine and in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME) at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

They found that persistence of mpox virus DNA varied depending on where the samples were taken from. Among the key findings was that the DNA was detectable in nearly half of genital skin swabs and one in five skin swabs from other sites a week after symptoms had resolved.

The study, which was published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases, is one of several projects supported by the mpox rapid research response launched by the Emerging and Pandemic Infections Consortium (EPIC), an institutional strategic initiative, and its hospital partners during the global outbreak of mpox – previously known as monkeypox – in 2022.

According to the World Health Organization, nearly 94,000 confirmed cases of mpox, including 179 deaths, have been reported from 117 countries since January 2022. As of September 2023, 1,515 cases have been confirmed in Canada, mostly in Ontario and Quebec.

“Even though we’ve known about mpox for over 70 years, it was new to us because we hadn’t seen it outside the endemic regions,” said Robert Kozak, one of the study’s authors and a clinical microbiologist at Sunnybrook Research Institute and assistant professor in the department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology at Temerty Medicine. “There was still a lot about the virus and disease that we didn’t know,”

To answer key questions about viral shedding, Kozak teamed up with Tan and Sharmistha Mishra, an infectious disease physician at St. Michael’s Hospital and associate professor in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine’s department of medicine and Institute of Medical Science and IHPME.

(L-R) Robert Kozak, Sharmistha Mishra and Darrell Tan (supplied images)

The researchers used a technique called quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) to determine the persistence of mpox virus DNA. Samples were taken from six different sites on the body — genital region, nasal cavity, semen, skin, throat and urine — and over an extended period of time.

On average, mpox DNA was detected in skin swabs from the genital and perianal region and from other skin sites at 30 and 22 days after symptom onset, respectively. These findings are consistent with the sexually transmitted nature of mpox during the recent global epidemic, which primarily affected gay, bisexual and men who have sex with men.

The researchers were unable to detect viral DNA in a large proportion of semen samples and nasal cavity swabs taken when individuals first presented with symptoms, whereas in urine and throat swab samples, mpox DNA persisted for roughly two weeks after symptom onset.

Interestingly, the researchers did not observe a difference in the length of viral DNA persistence between people who received the antiviral drug tecovirimat and those who did not. Tan noted that while study participants were not randomly assigned to receive the drug, these results underscore the uncertainty around tecovirimat’s effectiveness in treating mpox infections.

He added the study provides several key learnings for his clinical colleagues. “First, we’ve documented the breadth of clinical samples in which mpox DNA can be identified and therefore can be used to confirm a diagnosis. Our findings also reinforce that it’s worthwhile for clinicians to collect such samples in individuals where an mpox diagnosis is being considered, even after symptoms of feeling unwell are gone," Tan said.

The researchers caution that just because mpox DNA can be detected up to four weeks after symptom onset, it doesn’t mean that individuals are infectious for that long.

“We don’t know for sure whether the presence of detectable viral DNA necessarily means that the virus is transmissible to other people, so more research definitely needs to be done to determine definitively the period of infectiousness,” Tan said.

To that end, Jacklyn Hurst, a postdoctoral fellow in Kozak’s lab, recently started work in the Toronto High Containment Facility to look for live virus in the same samples from which mpox DNA was detected. The researchers are also using the facility’s biobank of mpox patient samples to identify biomarkers that could predict whether a person will have a mild or severe infection.

“Without the Toronto High Containment Facility, we wouldn’t be able to do any of this. Having that facility will help us answer a lot of questions about this virus and how to stop it,” said Kozak.

He acknowledged the immense contributions of the patient community to this work. “A huge thank you to all the study participants. We wouldn’t be able to do this work without their sacrifice and commitment.”

Geoffrey Hinton tops Toronto Life's list of most influential people

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 19:42:00 +0000

Geoffrey Hinton tops Toronto Life's list of most influential people

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 11/21/2023 - 14:42

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(photo by Polina Teif)

Topic

Our Community

Scarborough Academy of Medicine and Integrated Health

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Alumni

Artificial Intelligence

Computer Science

Faculty of Arts & Science

Faculty of Law

Geoffrey Hinton

Rotman School of Management

St. Michael's Hospital

Toronto Life

��ϲ�� Mississauga

��ϲ�� Scarborough

Subheadline

Hinton among several ��ϲ�� community members highlighted by the magazine

Geoffrey Hinton, a University Professor emeritus of computer science at the ��ϲ�� and the “godfather of AI”, has been ranked the most influential of 2023 by Toronto Life magazine.

After Hinton announced he was leaving his job at Google to warn the world about the existential threat of AI earlier this year, the magazine reports he received more than 1,000 interview requests about the future of the tech he helped create.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invited Hinton to dinner to discuss what Canada should do about AI and he fielded calls from the White House and 10 Downing Street.

“When he speaks, everyone pays attention,” writes Toronto Life, which also published an in-depth profile of Hinton.

Hinton was one of more than 15 ��ϲ�� alumni, faculty and community members that made the magazine’s annual list of movers and shakers.

Others include: Tiff Macklem, governor of the Bank of Canada and former dean of the Rotman School of Management; Ilya Sutskever, an alumnus and co-founder of OpenAI; Gregg Lintern, retiring Toronto chief planner and ��ϲ�� alumnus; Anita Anand, Treasury Board president and a professor in the Faculty of Law (on leave); James Maskalyk, an emergency doctor at St. Michael’s Hospital, Unity Health, and a faculty member in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine; Raquel Urtasun, CEO of self-driving truck startup Waabi and a professor of computer science; Leigh Chapman, Canada’s chief nursing officer and ��ϲ�� alumna; Sam Ibrahim, an entrepreneur and philanthropist who is a major supporter of ��ϲ�� Scarborough; and Carlo Fidani, a businessman, philanthropist and ��ϲ�� honorary degree-holder who has supported the Mississauga Academy of Medicine at ��ϲ�� Mississauga and whose Orlando Corporation has made a major investment in the Scarborough Academy of Medicine and Integrated Health (SAMIH).

Members of the ��ϲ�� community were also featured in the magazine’s list of rising stars, published in the same issue.

Read the full list in Toronto Life

Why is COVID-19 more severe in some people? Researchers use genetics, data science to find out

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 14:08:53 +0000

Why is COVID-19 more severe in some people? Researchers use genetics, data science to find out

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 10/25/2023 - 10:08

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(Photo by Cole Burston/AFP/Getty Images)

Tyler Irving

Topic

Our Community

COVID-19

Data Sciences Institute

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

Princess Margaret Cancer Centre

Sinai Health

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Unity Health

Computer Science

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Faculty of Arts & Science

Hospital for Sick Children

Mount Sinai Hospital

Research & Innovation

St. Michael's Hospital

Statistical Sciences

University Health Network

Women's College Hospital

Subheadline

With the help of ��ϲ��'s Data Sciences Institute, researchers from the university and partner hospitals gathered more than 11,000 full genome sequences from across Canada

Why do some people have a more severe course of COVID-19 disease than others? A genome sequence database created by an international collaboration of researchers, including many from the ��ϲ�� and partner hospitals, may hold the answers to this question – and many more.

The origins of the Canadian COVID-19 Human Host Genome Sequencing Databank, known as CGEn HostSeq, can be traced to the earliest days of the pandemic.

Lisa Strug, senior scientist at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and academic director of ��ϲ��’s Data Sciences Institute, one of several ��ϲ�� institutional strategic initiatives, says genetic data was top of mind for her and other researchers in late 2019 and early 2020 as reports of a novel form of coronavirus emerged from China and then other locations across the globe.

Lisa Strug (Photo courtesy The Hospital for Sick Children)

“In my research, I use data science techniques to map the genes responsible for complex traits,” says Strug, who is a professor in ��ϲ��’s departments of statistical sciences and computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science and in the biostatistics division of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

“We knew that genes were a factor in the severity of previous SARS infections, so it made sense that COVID-19, which is caused by a closely related virus, would have a genetic component, too.

“Very early on, I started getting messages from several scientists who wanted to set up different studies that would help us find those genes.”

Over the next few months, Strug – who is also the associate director of SickKids’ Centre for Applied Genomics, one of three sites across Canada that form CGEn, Canada’s national platform for genome sequencing infrastructure for research – collaborated with nearly 100 researchers from across ��ϲ�� and partner hospitals and institutions, as well as other researchers from across Canada to enrol individuals with COVID-19 and sequence their genomes.

Some of the key team members from the Toronto community included:

Stephen Scherer, chief of research at SickKids Research Institute and a University Professor in ��ϲ��’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine, as well as director of the ��ϲ�� McLaughlin Centre
Rayjean Hung, associate director of population health at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Sinai Health, and a professor in ��ϲ��’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health
Angela Cheung, clinician-scientist at University Health Network, senior scientist at Toronto General Hospital Research Institute and a professor in ��ϲ��’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine
Upton Allen, head of the division of infectious diseases at SickKids and a professor in ��ϲ��’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine

The projected was initiated by Scherer and CGEn’s Naveed Aziz, along with Strug, and a $20-million grant was secured from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, administered through Genome Canada.

“We had to go right to the top to get this project funded fast and our labs and teams worked seven days a week on the project right through the pandemic,” Scherer recalls.

Identifying associations between individual genes and complex traits typically requires thousands of genomes – both from those with the trait and those without. Though there was no shortage of cases to choose from, it was critical to gather and sequence DNA – and then organize the data in a way that would be ethical, efficient and useful to researchers now and in the future.

“One of our key mandates at the Data Sciences Institute is developing techniques and programs that ensure that data remains as open, accessible and as re-producible as it can be,” Strug says.

“That vision was brought to bear as we assembled the data infrastructure for this project – for example, ensuring that consent forms were as broad as possible so that this data could be linked with other sources, from electronic medical records to other health databases.

“We wanted to be sure that even after the COVID-19 pandemic was over this could be a national whole genome sequencing resource to ask all kinds of questions about health and our genes. The development of the database and its open nature also enabled Canada to collaborate effectively with similar projects in other countries.”

Partner hospitals and institutions:

The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids)
Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Sinai Health
Mount Sinai Hospital, Sinai Health
St Michael’s Hospital, Unity Health Toronto
University Health Network (UHN)
Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, UHN
Ontario Institute for Cancer Research
Women’s College Hospital
Toronto General Hospital, UHN
Baycrest Health Sciences

In the end, the project gathered more than 11,000 full genome sequences from across Canada, representing patients with a wide range of health outcomes. Those data were then combined with even more sequences from patients in other countries under what came to be called the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative.

It didn’t take long for patterns to start to emerge. A paper published in Nature in 2021 identified 13 genome-wide significant loci that are associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection or severe manifestations of COVID-19.

Since then, even more data have been added, and subsequent analysis has confirmed the significance of existing loci while also identifying new ones. The most recent update to the project, published in Nature earlier this year, brings the total number of distinct, genome-wide significant loci to 51.

“Identification of these loci can help one predict who might be more prone to a severe course of COVID-19 disease,” says Strug.

“When you identify a trait-associated locus, you can also unravel the mechanism by which this genetic region contributes to COVID-19 disease. This potentially identifies therapeutic targets and approaches that a future drug could be designed around.”

While it will take many more years to fully untangle the effects of the different loci that have been identified, Strug says that the database is already showing its worth in other ways.

“It can be difficult to find datasets with whole genome sequence and approved for linkage with other health information that are this large, and we want people to know that it is open and available for all kinds of research well beyond COVID through a completely independent data access committee,” she says.

“For example, several investigators from across Canada have been approved to use these data and we’ve even provided funding to trainees to encourage them to develop new data science methodologies or ask novel health questions using the CGen HostSeq data.”

“This was a humongous effort, where researchers from across Canada came together during the COVID-19 pandemic to recruit, obtain and sequence DNA from more than 11,000 Canadians in a systematic, co-operative, aligned way to create a made-in-Canada data resource that will hopefully be useful for years to come. I think that was really miraculous.”

Research may explain why men are more likely to experience severe cases of COVID-19

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 15:11:29 +0000

Research may explain why men are more likely to experience severe cases of COVID-19

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 10/03/2023 - 11:11

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Haibo Zhang, a researcher at Unity Health Toronto and ��ϲ��, led pre-clinical research that suggests why males are more likely to experience worse outcomes from COVID-19, opening the door to potential new treatments (photo by Julia Soudat)

Betty Zou

Topic

Breaking Research

Emerging and Pandemic Infections Consortium

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

Sinai Health

Sunnybrook Health Sciences

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Unity Health

Graduate Students

Hospital for Sick Children

Research & Innovation

St. Michael's Hospital

University Health Network

Subheadline

Pre-clinical study points to ACE2 protein as a key contributor to the differences in COVID-19 outcomes between males and females

A new study by a team of researchers at the ��ϲ��’s Emerging and Pandemic Infections Consortium (EPIC) has uncovered biological reasons underlying sex differences in COVID-19 outcomes, offering a promising new strategy to prevent illness.

The pre-clinical research, published in the journal iScience, has yet to be replicated in humans, but points to the ACE2 protein as a key contributor to differences in COVID-19 outcomes between males and females.

During the early days of the pandemic, clinicians noticed that males were more likely than females to be hospitalized or admitted to the ICU or to die from COVID-19 despite having similar infection rates.

This pattern held true across all age groups and in countries around the world.

“COVID-19 severity and mortality are much higher in males than in females, but the reasons for this remain poorly understood,” says study senior author Haibo Zhang, a staff scientist in the Keenan Research Centre for Biomedical Science at St. Michael’s Hospital, Unity Health Toronto, and a professor of anesthesiology and pain medicine, and physiology in ��ϲ��’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine.

“That was the driving force for our work.”

The study was a collaborative effort through EPIC, a ��ϲ�� institutional strategic initiative that involves five hospital research partners – the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) Research Institute, Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Sinai Health, Sunnybrook Research Institute, Unity Health Toronto and the University Health Network (UHN) – to facilitate an integrated and innovative response to high-risk, high-burden infectious diseases.

From left: PhD student Jady Liang, co-lead author of the study and Professor Haibo Zhang (photos supplied)

Located on the cell’s outer surface, ACE2 plays an important role in controlling blood pressure and inflammation and protecting organs from damage caused by excess inflammation. During a SARS-CoV-2 infection, the coronavirus spike protein locks on to ACE2 to enter the cell.

The gene encoding the ACE2 protein is located on the X chromosome, which means that females have two copies of the gene and males only have one.

In times of health, the extra copy of the gene for ACE2 doesn’t appear to make a difference – Zhang and his team found similar levels of ACE2 protein in healthy males and females.

Following a SARS-CoV-2 infection, however, they observed a dramatic decrease in ACE2 in males while levels remained consistent in females, suggesting that the additional copy of the ACE2 gene on the X chromosome is helping to compensate and maintain high protein levels in females.

The changes in ACE2 levels were also correlated with a drop in estrogen hormone signalling in males, which could also contribute to the sex-specific differences in COVID-19 outcomes.

To test whether low levels of ACE2 were responsible for the more severe outcomes seen in males with COVID-19, the researchers devised a therapeutic approach using an inhaler to deliver lab-made ACE2 proteins directly into the lungs. Males who received a daily puff of ACE2 after SARS-CoV-2 infection had less virus in their lungs, less lung injury and higher levels of estrogen signalling.

Together, these results paint a clearer picture of how the extra copy of the ACE2 gene and higher estrogen levels in females work together to protect them from experiencing more severe COVID-19.

“A common misconception is that an increased presence of ACE2 receptors would result in a higher infection rate,” says Zhang.

“However, the enhanced activation of ACE2 in females actually serves as a compensatory mechanism during infection that’s aimed at safeguarding the lungs and other vital organs from potential damage.”

In males who lack the second copy of the gene, much of the existing ACE2 gets co-opted by SARS-CoV-2 during an infection. As a result, there is not enough of the protein to fulfil its usual functions of tamping down inflammation and preventing organ damage.

The extra dose of ACE2 delivered by inhaler serves as a decoy to glom onto the coronavirus, thereby preventing it from entering cells while also keeping the native ACE2 proteins free to exert protective effects.

Beyond the thrill of discovery, Zhang says he is excited by the potential implications of these findings, which are the first to demonstrate the effectiveness of inhaling ACE2, on preventing and treating COVID-19 in humans.

He imagines a scenario where people who are entering high-risk situations – boarding an airplane or attending a large in-person conference, for example – might take a puff of ACE2 to protect their lungs from the virus. Similarly, the treatment could also be given to people after infection to reduce the risk of hospitalization and death.

“By using the inhaler, ACE2 remains in the lungs at a sustained, low concentration over an extended period, where it can neutralize the virus even before it enters into our cells. We anticipate that our research will motivate individuals to contemplate this faster and more efficacious strategy for both prevention and treatment of COVID-19 in humans,” says Zhang.

Zhang worked with fellow researchers Samira Mubareka (Sunnybrook, Temerty Faculty of Medicine), Theo Moraes (SickKids, Temerty Faculty of Medicine) and Mingyao Liu (UHN, Temerty Faculty of Medicine). Much of their work took place in the Toronto High Containment Facility (THCF), which is the only containment level 3 research lab in the Greater Toronto Area and the largest in the province.

Having access to the THCF allowed Zhang and his team to pivot quickly during the early months of the pandemic and apply their expertise in lung physiology and disease to answering rapidly emerging questions about COVID-19.

Jady Liang, the co-lead author of the new study, had just started her PhD with Zhang when the pandemic started. She recalls the stress and intensity of training and working in the THCF during that time but credits EPIC staff and other THCF users with helping her become comfortable with the processes and protocols.

“It was a lot of hard work from everyone on the team during the pandemic, especially during the first wave,” says Liang, who is now a fourth-year PhD student in the department of physiology.

“We need a lot of people with expertise in different fields to work together so that we can advance and be prepared for the next pandemic.”

The study received support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, among others.

Researcher develops kidney stone ‘vacuum’

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 14:56:03 +0000

Researcher develops kidney stone ‘vacuum’

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 03/27/2023 - 10:56

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Monica Farcas, a surgeon-investigator at St. Michael’s Hospital and a ��ϲ�� assistant professor of urology, led the development of a device that can vacuum up remaining bits of kidney stones (photo courtesy of St. Michael's Foundation)

Erin Howe

Topic

Our Community

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Unity Health

Research & Innovation

St. Michael's Hospital

A Toronto researcher has developed a new tool to remove kidney stone fragments left over after laser surgery and is working to bring the invention to market with support from a new entrepreneurship program.

“Kidney stones can be life-altering – some people place their lives on hold [and] they worry about a potential kidney stone attack, which can be unexpected,” says Monica Farcas, a surgeon-investigator at St. Michael’s Hospital, Unity Health Toronto, and an assistant professor of urology in the ��ϲ��’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine. “It’s common for people who experience kidney stones to visit the emergency room dozens of times over the course of their lives with a kidney stone attack.”

One in 10 people in Canada experiences kidney stones. The symptoms are sudden and debilitating, and laser surgery is a common treatment. Surgeons break the stones up and remove most of the pieces after laser surgery, but when remaining bits fail to pass through a person’s urine, they can develop into larger stones or harbor bacteria that lead to repeated urinary tract infections.

A researcher at Unity Health’s Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute who holds the Agnico Eagle Chair in Endourology and Minimally Invasive Urology, Farcas led the creation and development of a device that can be inserted into a patient’s kidney to vacuum out any remaining bits of stone. In the long term, patients are less likely to need follow-up care or to visit the emergency room.

Farcas says there were significant challenges in designing the device since instruments used in these types of procedures need to be tiny and can’t disrupt the kidney in any way. She and her team built a prototype and are testing and improving the device.

Farcas received support along the way from the Temerty Medicine’s Entrepreneur in Residence (EiR) program. It launched as a pilot last year with funding from James and Louise Temerty and the Temerty Foundation, and continues to be a resource for Temerty Medicine-affiliated faculty.

“Physicians are generous with their knowledge and want to find the best solutions for their patients, colleagues and the broader population. The Temerty EiR program fosters an entrepreneurial culture to help them improve human health through commercialization,” says Jarrod Ladouceur, the faculty’s industrial partnerships officer.

Farcas is among the first cohort of entrepreneurs in the EiR program. Participants gain access to a team of seven entrepreneur-advisers, staff support and help for crafting pitches to bring new health-care devices and technology to market.

The program also provides seed funding to help participants with expenses related to early-stage milestones such as hiring a lawyer to assist with contract reviews.

For many clinicians, it can be difficult to find time for mentorship and learning opportunities, but Farcas says she was able to tailor the experience to suit her busy schedule.

“My mentors have been instrumental in showing me how to think about a customer base, learn about intellectual property and patents and better understand which projects to focus on,” says Farcas, who studied engineering before she entered medicine and holds several patents in surgical innovation.

“I’ve got lots of clinical and research experience, but talking to someone who sees things from a business perspective has been tremendously helpful,” she says.

Farcas also credits the EiR program with helping her in the most recent Angels’ Den Pitch Competition at St. Michael’s Foundation last November – her second time before the judges and jury. Farcas’s pitch earned her one of the event’s three prizes, the Keenan Award for Medical Discovery, which includes $150,000 to support the next steps in developing the surgical tool.

��ϲ�� Entrepreneurship Week 2023: Top 10 startups to watch

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 02 Mar 2023 16:01:59 +0000

��ϲ�� Entrepreneurship Week 2023: Top 10 startups to watch

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 03/02/2023 - 11:01

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(supplied images)

Mariam Matti

Topic

Our Community

Black Founders Network

Entrepreneurship Week

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Entrepreneurship

Faculty of Arts & Science

Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

Psychology

Self-Driving Cars

St. Michael's Hospital

Startups

��ϲ�� Mississauga

��ϲ�� Scarborough

A plant-based alternative to conventional plastic. Using drones to tackle reforestation in wildfire-ravaged locations. And a new generation of self-driving technologies that leverage the full potential of artificial intelligence.

These are just some innovative ideas that have emerged from the ��ϲ��’s entrepreneurship community in recent years.

Ranked one of the top five university business incubators in the world, ��ϲ�� Entrepreneurship is set to celebrate these and other startups, as well as their founders, during its annual ��ϲ�� Entrepreneurship Week from March 6 to 9. The schedule includes pitch competitions, workshops, panel discussions and the popular True Blue Expo, which will feature the founders of more than 40 of ��ϲ��’s top startups.

Another highlight: Raquel Urtasun, founder and CEO of Waabi and a ��ϲ�� professor of computer science, will discuss lessons learned while building her self-driving vehicle company at the Desjardins Speakers Series on March 9.

Here are 10 exciting ��ϲ�� startups to keep an eye on in 2023:

Arma Biosciences

The ability to give patients agency over their own health monitoring was one of the reasons Surath Gomis co-founded Arma Biosciences. The startup’s goal is to develop a new sensor technology for biomarker-informed digital health care. In partnership with Analog Devices, work on the company’s first product is underway – a handheld finger-prick blood test for patients with heart failure.

With a PhD in electrical and computer engineering from ��ϲ��, Gomis established the company in 2020 with his supervisor Shana Kelley, a researcher in ��ϲ��’s Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy and Temerty Faculty of Medicine.

Gomis hopes future products will include wearable, implantable and ingestible sensors for monitoring applications.

Erthos

��ϲ�� alumnae Nuha Siddiqui and Kritika Tyagi are working to transform the plastic industry for the better. In 2018, the pair co-founded Erthos, a company that offers fully biodegradable plant-based material as a replacement for single-use plastics.

Erthos creates resins using materials that are both compostable and microplastic-free – and compatible with existing manufacturing technology. Siddiqui and Tyagi recently made the Forbes list of 30 under 30 in the social impact category, which noted that Erthos has raised more than US$5.5 million in funding.

TransCrypts

Ali Zaheer and Zain Zaidi co-founded TransCrypts to transform digital privacy and security. Back in 2020, they set out to answer a simple question: “Why can’t consumers own their important documentation digitally and in a way that can be easily verified?”

TransCrypts – which took home a $10,000 second-place startup prize at a ��ϲ�� pitch competition during last year’s Entrepreneurship Week – is a blockchain-based document verification platform that gives people direct access to their official documents, such as medical records. Supported by ��ϲ�� Scarborough’s The Hub, Zaheer and Zaidi have already helped thousands of Ukrainian refugees access medical records through a pilot project and landed US$2.4 million in funding from backers including Shark Tank investor Mark Cuban.

Waabi

A world-leading expert in machine learning and computer vision, Raquel Urtasun was inspired to start Waabi when she recognized a need for a new generation of self-driving technologies that leverage AI’s full potential. Backed by high-profile investors, including Volvo and Uber, the company is leading the way when it comes to the next generation of self-driving solutions.

The company recently launched Waabi World, an advanced simulator to test its autonomous vehicles, and Waabi Driver, its first generation of self-driving trucks. Urtasun says she focused on the long-haul trucking sector because it’s one of the most dangerous occupations – not to mention an industry that suffers from a shortage of drivers.

WooYourBoo

Husband-and-wife co-founders La Vance and Colleen Dotson – head coach of the ��ϲ�� Track & Field Club – are the entrepreneurial force behind a slick dating app for people already in relationships.

WooYourBoo aims to help partners reconnect and better communicate with each other through quizzes, activities and rewards.

“Our goal is to create depth and help you reconnect with this person that you’ve committed to – and make it fun,” Colleen recently told ��ϲ�� News.

The Dotsons say that ��ϲ��’s Black Founders Network was instrumental in building WooYourBoo, which was among the inaugural cohort of the BFN Accelerate Program.

OTI Lumionics

OTI Lumionics could change the look of the smartphone in your pocket.

Founded by ��ϲ�� alumnus Michael Helander, the company has been working on expanding its line of organic LED technology solutions – including smartphone screens that are uninterrupted by notches, which are currently needed to house front-facing cameras and other equipment in some smartphone designs.

The company, which was spun out of research at ��ϲ��, has collaborated with Microsoft Quantum and, most recently, their name has been connected to Apple as a key supplier for a future notch-free iPhone.

Flash Forest

Flash Forest, a startup with ties to ��ϲ�� Mississauga, is fighting climate change and restoring forests by leveraging the use of drones, AI, geographic information systems and plant science technology.

The company – which received support from ��ϲ��’s Mississauga’s ICUBE incubator – recently inked a federal contract to use drones to plant more than one million trees over the next two years in wildfire-ravaged locations across Canada.

The co-founders, brothers Bryce and Cameron Jones, say they are focused on restoring severe wildfire sites where the seed pods and cones are lost.

Signal 1

Signal 1 is looking to transform health care by equipping doctors and nurses with real-time AI predictions.

The company, co-founded by CEO Tomi Poutanen, a ��ϲ�� alumnus, and Mara Lederman, professor of strategic management at the Rotman School of Management, has built a machine learning tool called CHARTWatch that can help predict how much support a patient will need.

The tool was originally developed at St. Michael’s Hospital by a team led by Signal 1's clinical adviser Muhammad Mamdani, who is vice-president of data science and advanced analytics at Unity Health Toronto and holds cross-appointments at ��ϲ��’s Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, Temerty Faculty of Medicine and Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

The surgical unit at St. Michael’s Hospital has already begun using CHARTWatch to help care teams communicate and make decisions.

Mounib Real Food Only

When ��ϲ�� Scarborough alumna Iman Mounib encountered gut health issues, she took it upon herself to create products that are free of refined sugars, palm oils, gluten and dairy.

She founded Mounib Real Food Only, which sells a chocolate hazelnut spread made of just three local ingredients. The company also makes a peanut chocolate spread, as well as an almond chocolate version. Mounib’s goal was to create alternatives to popular products that are both tasty and good for you.

The products are sold in almost 20 restaurants, cafes and stores in the Greater Toronto Area, as well as one location in Ottawa.

HippoCamera

HippoCamera is a smartphone application that helps to improve memory recall, which could be beneficial for individuals in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of memory impairment.

Backed by years of research at ��ϲ��, the app has an easy-to-use interface and is a personalized way to boost recall of daily experiences and enhance activity in the hippocampus, a part of the brain that plays a key role in memory.

Morgan Barense, a professor in the department of psychology in the Faculty of Arts & Science and co-author of a recent study on the technology, said her team found that memories that were associated with the HippoCamera were long-lasting – and that the device worked for both healthy older adults and those starting to show cognitive decline.

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Two of Canada’s first Black doctors commemorated: Toronto Star

bresgead — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 16:42:59 +0000

Two of Canada’s first Black doctors commemorated: Toronto Star

bresgead Tue, 02/14/2023 - 11:42

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(Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

Topic

Our Community

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Unity Health

Alumni

Black History Month

St. Michael's Hospital

The ��ϲ��’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine and Heritage Toronto recently co-presented two commemorative plaques celebrating two of Canada’s first Black doctors – Alexander Augusta and Anderson Abbott – at Seeley Hall, the Toronto Star reports.

The plaques, set to be installed in May, are intended to “take a step towards equity,” Nav Persaud told the newspaper. A staff physician at St. Michael’s Hospital and an assistant professor in the department of family and community medicine in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Persaud co-authored a paper in the Canadian Medical Education Journal last year examining the legacies of Augusta and Abbott and calling for the 19th-century physicians to be included in medical curricula to teach trainees about the history of racism in medical schools and how that contributes to modern-day health disparities.

Rejected by U.S. medical schools, Augusta became the first Black medical student in Canada West when he was granted admission to ��ϲ��’s Trinity College in the early 1850s. After receiving his degree in 1860, Augusta worked for several years as a physician in Toronto before returning to the U.S. to serve in the Civil War, becoming the first African-American surgeon in the Union Army. Abbott, one of Augusta’s mentees, earned his medical licence in 1861, becoming the first Canadian-born doctor of African descent.

Study finds lethality of air pollution in India may be overestimated

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 14:12:10 +0000

Study finds lethality of air pollution in India may be overestimated

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 10/18/2022 - 10:12

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India has among the highest levels of air pollution in the world, but researchers have found that its impact on mortality rates in the country has been overstated (photo by Peter Adams/Getty Images)

Heidi Singer

Topic

Breaking Research

Unity Health

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Global

India

Research & Innovation

St. Michael's Hospital

High levels of exposure to air pollution in India have a smaller effect on mortality than previously estimated, according to a study that covered the entire country.

Prabhat Jha

The nationwide study – published in Environmental Health Perspectives by Prabhat Jha, a scientist at Unity Health Toronto and a University Professor at the ��ϲ��’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, as well as his colleagues – linked concentrations of PM2.5 derived from satellite-based measurements of deaths in over 7,400 small areas among seven million people.

India has among the highest levels of air pollution in the world and nearly every person in the country lives in areas with fine particulate matter levels well above PM2.5 – the level considered safe by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The authors quantified the relationship between PM2.5 exposures over several years to the subsequent mortality risk, focusing on the leading killers of Indian adults: respiratory disease, heart disease, stroke and overall mortality. Their analyses adjusted for risk factors that make these diseases more common such as smoking, urban or rural residency, and education. Because these diseases and PM2.5 tend to cluster in some areas but not others, they also adjusted for spatial clustering.

“Measuring the health effects of air pollution is complicated,” says lead author Patrick Brown, an associate professor in ��ϲ��’s department of statistical sciences in the Faculty of Arts & Science. “There are so many things to tease out to establish if a relationship with deaths is true, or just noise in the data. Even the modest excess risks we found for stroke might reflect the uncertainty that is inherent in these types of epidemiological studies.”

Analyzing over 200,000 deaths of people aged 15 to 69 years, the authors found a nine per cent excess risk in stroke deaths for every 10 units of increase in PM2.5 exposure (measured as micrograms per cubic meter). However, there were no excess risks for respiratory or heart disease and for total mortality (after excluding stroke). Study results were broadly similar in different age groups and in areas with higher or lower use of household solid fuel, which itself is the major contributor to PM2.5 exposure as measured by satellites.

Results showing little or no effect on heart disease and only modest effects on stroke are similar to an earlier, smaller study led by McMaster University that examined air pollution and deaths in 750 communities in 21 countries. In contrast to these direct observations, earlier estimates of air pollution deaths in India use complex models that assume much higher mortality risks from PM2.5 exposure.

The results are one of many insights being generated by the Million Death Study – one of the largest studies of premature mortality in the world. The study, covering deaths from 2001 to 2014, is a long-running effort to better understand the causes of mortality in countries such as India, where the vast majority of people die at home without a death certificate. Launched by Jha, it has helped governments and health providers to better allocate scarce public health funding.

“Direct studies like the MDS are far preferable to extrapolating from models, many of which take reports from non-Indian settings and apply them – unseeingly – to India,” Brown said. “Earlier models have probably overstated the extent to which air pollution kills adults in India.”

“Most existing studies on air quality and health are done in high-income countries, where PM2.5 exposures are far lower and disease patterns are substantially different than in low and middle-income countries such as India,” adds co-author George D’Souza, dean of St. John’s Medical College in Bengaluru, India. “That needs to change.”

There remain many reasons to act on air pollution in India.

“PM2.5 may not be the big killer in India as has been touted, but action to reduce PM2.5 exposure is still necessary,” says Jha, who is also a physician at St. Michael‘s Hospital, a site of Unity Health Toronto. “Air pollution worsens child lung health and lowers quality of life, and that is sufficient justification to act.”

The research received support from the Indian Council of Medical Research, Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

Monkeypox studies suggest ways to reduce viral spread

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 03 Oct 2022 17:21:55 +0000

Monkeypox studies suggest ways to reduce viral spread

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 10/03/2022 - 13:21

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(Photo by MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images)

Betty Zou

Topic

Our Community

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

Monkeypox

Sinai Health

Sunnybrook Health Sciences

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Unity Health

Mount Sinai Hospital

St. Michael's Hospital

Less than three months since it launched, the monkeypox rapid research response led by the ��ϲ��’s Emerging and Pandemic Infections Consortium (EPIC) and three partner hospitals is generating results that could help curb transmission of the virus.

“When monkeypox first arrived in Canada, we quickly learned about the stockpile of smallpox vaccine [which also protects against monkeypox],” said Jesse Knight, a PhD student in ��ϲ��’s Institute of Medical Science in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine. “Given that the vaccine supply was quite limited early on, it was important to use it quickly and efficiently to help reduce cases.”

Knight is the first author on a new modelling study that looks at how to optimize the initial rollout of vaccine to prevent the most infections. The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, suggests that the greatest number of infections could be prevented by prioritizing vaccines to bigger cities with larger networks of communities at risk, the highest epidemic potential and largest number of initial cases.

Knight notes these results do not mean that areas outside of big cities should not receive vaccines, but rather they provide guidance on how to maximize immediate impact – early in an epidemic – of an extremely limited supply until more doses become available. Indeed, while Ontario’s vaccination efforts initially centred on Toronto, they soon expanded to areas outside the city.

Darrell Tan and Sharmistha Mishra

The preliminary findings were co-authored by Knight’s academic supervisor Sharmistha Mishra and collaborator Darrell Tan, both clinician-researchers at St. Michael’s Hospital, Unity Health Toronto, and associate professors in ��ϲ��’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine.

Mishra and Tan are also co-leads of EPIC’s monkeypox rapid research response. EPIC is one of several ��ϲ�� institutional strategic initiatives.

For their study, the researchers built a mathematical model that simulated the potential transmission of monkeypox virus in the context of sexual networks of gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men. The model reflects two interconnected sexual networks that can be thought of as communities within two cities – one larger network like in Toronto and a smaller network in a medium-sized Ontario city – and simulated the roll-out of 5,000 vaccine doses starting two months after the first case of monkeypox.

The team tested scenarios in which they changed the relative population size in each network (i.e., city), the interconnectedness between the two sexual networks (sex among individuals between cities), epidemic potential of the virus in each city and the distribution of initial “imported” cases across cities.

A city’s epidemic potential reflects how likely a person carrying the virus is to pass it on to others by taking into account the density and configuration of the sexual network, access to prevention and care and the underlying social and structural contexts that shape sexual networks and shape access.

“Early insights from these analyses helped inform vaccine prioritization by health units across Ontario, which to date has centred on community-based organizations, service providers, health units and public health teams at every level working together to mobilize access and deliver vaccines to gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men who may be most at risk of infection,” said Mishra.

From the start, Mishra said, community leadership has been at the forefront of the response, including the science – with modeling questions, inputs, interpretation and application shaped by communities and the public health actors working to serve communities.

Knight hopes that this work will also have an impact on how vaccines are deployed globally.

“Given our increasingly connected world, our findings really highlight the importance of global vaccine equity in responding to outbreaks, and also in preventing them in the first place," he said.

Vaccines can help break chains of transmission when deployed strategically, but another opportunity to stop transmission is in the environment — where people infected with the virus may shed it onto surfaces and objects.

“We knew very little about fomite [surface] transmission of monkeypox prior to this outbreak,” said Christopher Kandel, an infectious disease physician at Michael Garron Hospital, Toronto East Health Network, and assistant professor in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine’s department of medicine.

To study the risk of environmental transmission of monkeypox, Kandel and Sharon Sukhdeo, an infectious diseases resident at ��ϲ��, teamed up with EPIC faculty members Allison McGeer, who is at Mount Sinai Hospital and is a professor in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine and at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME) in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Adrienne Chan, who is at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and is an associate professor in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, and Matthew Muller, who is at St. Michael’s Hospital and is an associate professor in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine and at IHPME.

For the first part of their study, the team swabbed a mixture of high- and low-touch surfaces in hospital exam rooms where patients with monkeypox had received care. They tested the same surfaces again after the rooms had been cleaned.

Their preliminary results showed detectable levels of monkeypox DNA on many high-touch and a few low-touch surfaces. Encouragingly, the researchers could not detect the virus on the majority of surfaces after cleaning. Where they did detect the virus after cleaning, levels were significantly reduced.

Kandel notes that while they were able to detect monkeypox DNA, their methods can’t determine whether the detected virus was infectious.

As a next step, the researchers will expand their study to look at environmental transmission within households. They will ask people who are self-isolating with monkeypox to swab objects and surfaces in their home at different timepoints, which will provide insight into how long an infected person sheds the virus and whether common at-home cleaning products can effectively disinfect contaminated surfaces.

“There are so many questions that need to be answered,” said Kandel. “With these studies, we’ll have a much better understanding of monkeypox transmission, including how infectious people are and how long isolation should last to best protect others.”

Fahad Razak on why he's passionate about the Ontario Science Advisory Table – and the important work ahead

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 15:24:21 +0000

Fahad Razak on why he's passionate about the Ontario Science Advisory Table – and the important work ahead

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 07/12/2022 - 11:24

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Fahad Razak, a professor at ��ϲ�� and a physician at St. Michael's Hospital, was named scientific director of Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table in May 2022 (photo by Tyler Johnston)

Jim Oldfield

Topic

Our Community

COVID-19

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Unity Health

St. Michael's Hospital

Fahad Razak became the scientific director of Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table earlier this year and already he’s been at the centre of questions on mask mandates, wastewater signals and the table’s move from the ��ϲ�� to Public Health Ontario.

An assistant professor in the department of medicine at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine and at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health’s Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, Razak is an internist and epidemiologist at St. Michael’s Hospital, Unity Health Toronto.

He spoke with writer Jim Oldfield about his decision to take on the job as the science table’s scientific director and the potential challenges ahead.

How did you find time for this role?

Before I took this role, I decided to step away from clinical work for a year. As a general internist at St. Michael’s Hospital, on the front lines of the pandemic, it’s been a very busy two and half years. My specialty has seen an enormous volume of COVID-19 patients, many with complex conditions that brought intense responsibility. I realized there was no way to continue that work and still do research, teach and advise at Ontario Health. I also have two kids under the age of five. So, my colleagues at the hospital very generously pulled away my clinical and administrative duties, and ensured we had enough staff and supports to cover my leave. And of course, I had a long talk with my wife and family about the new role and what it would mean.

What motivated you to take on this new responsibility?

It’s important that the science table becomes sustainable, and this position offers an opportunity to help ensure that happens. The pandemic has come in several waves. We hope it will be over in a few months, but nothing about this virus suggests that’s true. With each wave we’ve had a new series of questions to answer, many of them critical and urgent. And each time, the table has been there – with new modelling, or guidelines on vaccine roll-out or lessons learned in long-term care. But it takes a lot of effort to co-ordinate and produce that work. The table has about 30 core scientists and dozens more ancillary members and staff – many of whom support and communicate findings. There isn’t much precedent for running an operation that large from a university, and so now we have an opportunity to create a new home and permanent infrastructure to support the work.

Any tension around that shift?

One critical strength of the table is that, among many members of the public and decision-makers, it’s considered an independent body. Which it is. Researchers on the table are unpaid volunteers – internationally recognized scientists at the apex of their careers. They receive no material benefit from being on the table. They come to questions and issues with a purely scientific lens and do their best to produce what [Harvard University Professor] Sheila Jasanoff called “a serviceable truth.” That means, based on the facts, they get as close as possible to a truth that is usable by decision makers and the public, acknowledging that we live in a world of incomplete data. When a group like this moves or undergoes a change, the question on many minds is whether the change will compromise their independence. Many in the media and on the table asked this question.

My strong belief is that the fundamental reasons why the group is independent and effective remain unchanged. These are still acclaimed scientists doing unpaid work as a public service. And, they can walk away at any time – that ability underpins the credibility and ultimately the value of the table’s work.

What other changes are coming to the table?

I think we’ll see a refresh of membership and leadership over coming months. Two-and-a-half years is a long time to pour effort into this work off the side of a desk. We all have other jobs, so it can’t be an indefinite commitment. Beyond that, there is a need for the table to provide scientific advice that is not pandemic-related.

When you think about SARS-1 or the Walkerton water crisis, if a group like ours had been in place, I believe the province could have mounted a more nimble and robust response. So, we need to build out the terms of reference for this group, so we can respond better in the next crisis as well as this one. A lot of what we did during this pandemic was like building a plane while flying it, which is really not a good approach. Now we have an infrastructure in place, we can stay centred on COVID-19 but also retool so we can shift focus in the future.

Who chooses the scientific director for the table?

That happens through discussion among table members and the chairs [Adalsteinn Brown and Brian Schwartz]. Part of the idea is the person in this role can help communicate the scientific and consensus-building work of the table to government, policymakers, media and the public. I’ve been a core scientific member of the table since the beginning, and became associate director in fall 2021, so I’m familiar with the work our scientists have generated and I’m passionate about its value.

How are you prepared to handle questions from the media?

I’ve done interviews and learned from a few missteps – and certainly during the pandemic I and many colleagues have been called on by media to comment. I just try to convey what we know and don’t know as honestly as I can, avoid extrapolating from the data, and identify major risks. Sometimes those risks are known, or maybe they’re known, but haven’t been considered enough, in my view. But I want to be a transparent voice for the work of the table and any consensus we land on. And I recognize that sometimes that will be unpopular.

But regardless, I think it’s important to show empathy. Both the virus and pandemic control measures have caused a lot of harm and suffering. The idea of a wicked problem really applies here – we’re often faced with trying to choose the best of several bad options. The choices are trade-offs that touch on values and morality and governance, so they aren’t just about the science. Look, I grew up in Windsor, which is a blue-collar town. My dad worked in the construction industry, our family relied on the larger economy for survival and, like many families, we needed public schools to stay open for our education. That upbringing has really influenced my perspective on the pandemic.

What do you see in Ontario's future with regards to COVID-19?

We’re at a risky point in the pandemic. There’s a high degree of fatigue among the public and decision makers, and attention to pandemic concerns has greatly waned. The general feeling out there is, ‘Let’s move past this.’ But the reality is we’re not dealing with a human foe. In the last six months, we’ve seen a rapid resurgence of deaths in long-term care. And we’ve never had an infection rate like we saw in the last peak, which was up to 150,000 new cases a day. Many people developed only minor illness, but we still don’t know the long-term risks. Long COVID will be a huge burden for people and the health-care system, and I don’t think we’ve adequately recognized those risks.

I also worry a lot about whether we can mount an effective response in the next wave. As much as we would like it to be over, the wastewater signal across the province is clearly rising. And, as we have seen in abundant media coverage, the health system is clearly in crisis, not just from COVID-19 admissions, but the general fatigue, staff shortages, patient backlogs and other effects that are the cumulative legacy of two and a half years of the pandemic. We continue to see the spread of new variants that could coincide with higher-risk scenarios in the fall, when people move inside, schools re-open and other public spaces get more crowded. That timing could collide with pandemic fatigue and widespread illness from Long COVID to make things even worse. Will we have the energy to rally as a society? I don’t know. I hope we all have a great summer, but we will need to re-focus.

This interview was originally published by the Temerty Faculty of Medicine on June 21, 2022.

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