Archives for April 2023

Canada has one of the highest rates of IBD in the world, a disease that causes significant suffering and serious health issues due to chronic gut inflammation.

In partnership with Toronto-based startup Biotagenics, Ontario researchers are developing simple and quick tests to determine optimal personalized treatment plans for IBD patients using next generation genomics.

Inflammatory bowel disease inflames the lining of the gastrointestinal tract and disrupts the body’s ability to digest food, absorb nutrition and eliminate waste in a healthy manner. With more than 10,000 new cases diagnosed each year in Canada and an estimated total of over 250,000 patients nationally (including more than 5,900 children), IBD costs the Canadian economy approximately $2.8 billion per year. Most alarming, the number of Canadian children with IBD has doubled since 1995.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwV-QMB8Ulo

Dr. David Mack at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, talks about the work that he and Dr. Alain Stintzi at the University of Ottawa are doing, in partnership with Biotagenics, to develop precision medicine for IBD patients.

Treating IBD can be unpredictable. If treatments are not sufficiently aggressive, they may not be of help. On the other hand, if treatments are too aggressive, there is a risk of doing more harm than good. There is no cure for this lifelong condition and its cause remains unknown, although it seems to be tied to an imbalance of key beneficial and deleterious intestinal microbes.

Building upon the outcomes of an earlier 2012 Large-Scale Applied Research Project, Ontario researchers are developing precision medicine for IBD patients. Led by Dr. Alain Stintzi at the University of Ottawa and Dr. David Mack at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, in collaboration with spinout company, Biotagenics, researchers are using genomics to characterize, identify and quantify the microbes that change in IBD patients during treatment. They are using this information to design simple and quick tests to reveal the optimal personalized treatment based on each patient’s characteristics in order to keep people with IBD healthy. These tests will help clinicians use the right drug at the right time for the right patient.

Quick Facts

• The project team is unraveling the mechanisms underlying IBD development.
• As part of this work, researchers have developed an industry leading end-to-end platform that provides sophisticated analysis of the impact of diet on intestinal bacteria – providing important information on personalized dietary changes needed to keep people with IBD healthy.
• They are also identifying new targets for future drug development that have the potential to restore the long-term biological interaction and healthy balance between intestinal microbes in order to modify and manage the course of disease.

The work being done by this project team will set the stage for future clinical trials aimed at restoring IBD patients’ microbes to a healthy state. It will reduce long-term disability and enable patients to reach deep and long-lasting remission, thereby improving quality of life and enabling significant cost savings for individuals and our healthcare system.

For more information about Biotagenic’s progress, please visit http://www.biotagenics.com/.

All Awarded Projects

There are more than 7,000 rare genetic diseases, many of which haven’t been identified yet. For more than one million Canadians and their families, these diseases can have a devastating impact.

Care4Rare will more than double our ability to diagnose unsolved rare disease and bring these capabilities to hospitals across Ontario and Canada, while building the infrastructure and tools for worldwide data sharing.

 

Dr. Kym Boycott, a Senior Scientist and Clinical Geneticist at CHEO, talks about the impact of rare disease research by diagnosing rare disease genes.

Led by Dr. Kym Boycott at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute in Ottawa, Care4Rare is a pan-Canadian collaborative team of clinicians, bioinformaticians, and researchers focused on improving the care of people living with rare disease in Canada and around the world. Building on the outcomes of two earlier projects supported by Ontario Genomics (FORGE Canada 2010 and Enhanced Care for Rare Diseases 2012), this initiative includes 21 academic sites across the country and is recognized internationally as a pioneer in the field of genomics and personalized medicine.

Care4Rare’s work is speeding up the diagnostic process, preventing years of diagnostic testing and visits to multiple specialists that patients and their families would otherwise have to endure. Providing a timely diagnosis improves the care and wellbeing of patients and their families and reduces unnecessary healthcare spending.

Quick facts about Care4Rare’s innovations:

• Care4Rare is increasing the connectivity between clinicians and scientists to translate genetic findings into understanding disease mechanisms and finding new treatments for patients with rare diseases;
• Individuals with rare diseases and their families are now connected with others around the globe through RareConnect – an online platform that provides a supportive and safe environment to ask questions, share experience, and interact with others with a similar condition. There are currently over 31, 000 members and over 150 disease – specific communities, including a community for individuals without a diagnosis;
• The time it takes to diagnose rare disease can be reduced to weeks versus years;
• Treatments can be as straightforward as supplementing a single amino acid that is readily available and inexpensive.

For more information, please visit http://care4rare.ca/.

All Awarded Projects

Prenatal diagnosis by amniocentesis or chorionic villi sampling carries a risk of miscarriage, is costly and can only be done by specialists in a small number of centers. Therefore, these diagnostic tests are usually only offered after an earlier prenatal screening test result or fetal ultrasound shows an increased risk for chromosomal abnormality, and results are often not known until 17 weeks of gestation.

Experts at Mount Sinai Hospital have developed a safe, non-invasive and less expensive test, easily done by a variety of health care professionals, to detect fetal chromosome abnormalities and single-gene disorders. Available to all pregnant people, this technique is similar to a PAP smear and can be performed as early as the sixth week of pregnancy. With no other test like this available, it will help deliver better prenatal care and compete in the multi-million-dollar global market.

The technique will be commercialized through a start-up company that will attract investment and create jobs in Ontario’s growing healthcare and biotech sectors.

All Awarded Projects

There is currently no successful treatment for patients with recurrent/treatment-resistant brain cancers, specifically glioblastoma (GBM). Partnering with the University of Toronto and collaborators at McMaster University, Empirica has used genomic screening technology to identify CD133 as a promising target for effective treatment using Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy. The overall goal of the project is to design, genetically engineer and validate next-generation CD133 CAR-T cells that can be manufactured “off-the-shelf,” and thus are less costly and less susceptible to immune suppression.

As one of the most aggressive cancer types, with inevitable recurrence, the global GBM market was US $416.8 million in 2015 and is forecasted to reach US $1.15 billion by 2024 as the global population increases. In Canada, costs of cancer care have been steadily on the rise, and this project aims to provide more effective and universal treatments for recurrent GBM that can alleviate this economic burden and provide patients with improved treatment options.

All Awarded Projects