UBC faculty of medicine researchers are leading 48 projects that were recently funded through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Project Grants: Fall 2021 competition, including our department’s faculty members, Drs. Seth Parker and Natalie Strynadka.
The CIHR Project Grants Fall 2021 competition approved 417 research grants, plus 1 bridge grant, for a total investment of approximately $325 million. In addition, 105 priority announcement grants were funded for a total amount of $12,292,500 and 13 supplemental prizes were awarded for a total of $400,000.
In total, UBC researchers are leading 48 projects awarded Project Grants totalling $34.7 million. A further 13 UBC-led projects were awarded priority announcement grants totalling $1.3 million.
Understanding the requirements of alanine supply and demand in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma
Principal Investigator: Dr. Seth Parker
Metabolism is like a recipe book and metabolites are the ingredients that our cells use to grow and function. If our cells become cancerous, they use different recipes to grow which also affects what ingredients are needed. If we can understand which ingredients are required by cancer cells and what they use these ingredients for, then we might be able to design therapies that can slow or stop cancer growth. We study amino acids, a set of metabolites that are important building blocks for making proteins but also can provide the cell with energy and other molecules. Pancreatic cancers, which is a very deadly cancer with very few effective therapies, have a significant appetite for certain amino acids, like alanine, and become dependent on transporters that bring alanine into cancer cells for growth. Alanine can be used to make proteins, other amino acids, DNA and RNA, and fat as well as energy. In this research project, we aim to understand which recipes pancreatic cancer cells use alanine for and why they become dependent on alanine transporters for growth, which might provide insight into new treatments for this deadly disease.
Structure-guided in vitro and in situ analysis of virulence linked secretion systems in drug-resistant bacteria
Principal Investigator: Dr. Natalie Strynadka
Bacteria have evolved sophisticated assemblies to passage macromolecules essential to subsequent disease across their lipid membrane barriers. The Type III Secretion system “injectisome” is one prominent example, a syringe like complex that is essential for downstream pathogenesis of many health elated bacterial species in the clinic and community. This includes the causative agents of food and water borne disease, plague, hospital acquired infections, sexually transmitted disease and beyond. A remarkably sophisticated complex of two dozen highly oligomerized proteins spanning the 2 membranes of the bacteria as well as that of the human host cells they infect, the Strynadka laboratory has been a leader in the structure-guided study of the molecular underpinnings of how the injectisome works. Here her laboratory proposes to use a combination of sophisticated biophysical tools including xray crystallography and cryogenic electron microscopy (single particle/tomography) supported by cellular microbiology to study the atomic features and function of the injectisome in isolation and within the native context of the bacterial cells whose pathogenicity they promote. A related but distinct nanomachine, with many analogies to the Type III injectisome, is the “feeding tube” apparatus Clostridioides difficile mother cells use to passage essential molecules to the daughter cell, the latter which is destined to become a robust long-lived spore that allows this notorious hospital acquired pathogen to persist under even the harshest sanitization methods. The Strynadka laboratory propose to use a similar toolbox of biophysical and microbiology methods to study this fascinating system in vitro and in situ within C.difficile cells. Atomic information gleaned from these studies will drive essential understanding of how molecules are passaged across multiple membranes, and sets the foundation for design of antimicrobials to block their action and subsequent disease causing effects.
Find the original post on the Faculty of Medicine website.
A full list of Priority Announcement Grant Recipients is available on the CIHR website.