CMMT Newsletter July 2024

By jessica pui yeu shum on July 8, 2024

 



Dr. Ben Life
A Life-Changing Research Path

It was curiosity about Huntington’s disease research that led Benjamin Life to Dr. Blair Leavitt’s lab as a master’s student in 2018. Having completed his undergraduate degree at the University of British Columbia, Ben had in fact planned to take a year off, live in his van and do some serious rock climbing. But like the best laid plans of mice and men, that went awry. Ben injured his knee a few months into his rock-climbing sabbatical. “That shortened my life as a van-dwelling climbing bum,” he said. So, he returned to his studies, joining the Leavitt Lab.

“Dr. Leavitt is a Huntington’s clinician but when I started at Dr. Leavitt’s lab, they weren’t looking for someone to study Huntington’s disease. It turned out that they needed someone to work with their new dementia mice.

Ben has completed his PhD research on a gene called progranulin, which is involved in the development of dementia. “In humans, if you don’t have enough progranulin you get dementia,” he said. However, using the dementia mouse model, it became evident that a reduced amount of progranulin doesn’t produce dementia in the mice in the same way as it does in humans. Dr. Leavitt’s lab then developed a mouse model with the human progranulin gene to determine whether the mutations in the human gene make the dementia more pronounced in the mice. “Three hundred mice later, a lot of behaviour tests, and some interesting questions, sent me into the dementia space, the autism space and into some Alzheimer’s work as well,” Ben said.

“The most exciting part of the mouse dementia work was identifying new phenotypes that were associated with dementia that no one had previously seen in mice,” Ben said. As a result, potential dementia therapies for humans can be tested in those mice. “We’re collaborating with seven different companies and labs that are testing drugs. Whenever we’re contacted about using the mice or talk about potential collaborative research initiatives, I think, ‘this is going to get to people and help someone’. That’s very gratifying.

”Ben’s research inadvertently led him down another path, one which proved life-changing. “When I was studying mouse autism, I spent a lot of time in the basement reading about mice, and I began thinking about repetitive behaviour engagement and social deficits and what autism might look like for a person,” he said. “I think among the public there is a very general idea, based on the fictional autistic character Sheldon Cooper in the CBS television series The Big Bang Theory. We’re told that’s what it looks like. In fact, there are many different ways autism can look.” For Ben, it was the recognition of his repetitive behaviour around healing his knee that provided the insight. “I was very limited as to what exercises I could do,” he said. “But I found some and I did the exact same set of exercises every other day for two and a half years without fail. That’s just not the type of thing that neurotypical people do with that level of consistency,” he said.

“Inviting autism into my life was earth shattering, and it made everything easier, it felt so true,” he said. “I understood myself much better, and I began recognizing autistic experiences in many friends and family members too.” Like Ben, they were often unaware of autism, of what it could look like. “I thought about the way we interact and it made everything much more clear.

”Not surprisingly, Ben has become very interested, both personally and professionally, in autism advocacy. “This has shifted my career focus in a major way,” he said. “I’m now very interested in becoming a clinical scientist. The path there is apprenticeship training for two years to learn how to interpret genetic tests. I would love to use the knowledge I have to help people, to help a family understand what their genetics are predisposing them to. I think it would be very impactful if that information comes from someone like me, who is autistic.”

As for the immediate future, Ben is looking forward to taking some time off now that he has completed his PhD. “I’ve been in school my whole life. “I really love being in Vancouver and have loved my time at the CMMT. Being at Children’s Hospital is such a privilege,” he said. “The scope of research is incredible, and Dr. Leavitt’s Lab has collaborations with over half of the labs at the CMMT, which is exciting. It has been an education in so many ways.”



Kevin Jeffers:
A Love of Chemistry and A lot of Community Spirit

In addition to pursuing his PhD in Medical Genetics, Kevin Jeffers has gained a reputation as a force in fundraising, and a keen baker. Originally from a small town in rural Manitoba, Kevin came to the CMMT in 2020 by way of the University of Manitoba, where he had completed his undergraduate degree. He arrived in Vancouver just prior to the beginning of the Covid 19 pandemic. “I had maybe one and a half months in the lab before everything shut down,” he said. During the pandemic Kevin took up running, which would prove pivotal to his fundraising activities. That, and a strong sense of community spirit.

“I began running during the pandemic, just trying do to something,” he said. “I became involved in running through a challenge of sorts,” Kevin said. “One of my former lab mates, Omer Riyadh was observing Ramadan at the time. As a distraction from food, Omer ran 100 kilometers that month. He challenged the rest of the lab to do the same. I thought why not? From there I registered for some local races.”

Around the time of the Vancouver BMO Marathon in 2023, Kevin learned that there were others in the CMMT community who enjoyed running so he reached out to them to form a running group to do runs and races together. He was successful and there is now the Runners of the CMMT. “We try to run some of the bigger events held throughout Vancouver together to raise funds,” Kevin said. “Last September, three of us, Alissandra de Moura Gomes from the Leavitt lab, Glafira Ermakova from the Taubert lab, and myself raised some money for the Terry Fox Run.” Outside of running for charities, Kevin races in some of the larger events put on by RunVan.

At the time of writing, Kevin was fundraising for the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation’s event “Race for the Kids” which took place on Sunday, June 9th. Kevin kickstarted the initiative for the CMMT Team and, along with his team members had raised over $2500 surpassing the 19 member CMMT Team goal of $2,000.

As for his studies at the CMMT, Kevin is a PhD trainee in Dr. Elizabeth Conibear’s Lab. His focus is on the single copy of the yeast Vps13 protein, with the broad goal of understanding how the protein functions. “Humans have four copies of the gene, namely VPS13A-D, all of which are associated with different neurological diseases,” he said. VPS13A is associated with chorea-acanthocytosis, a rare neurodegenerative Huntington’s-like disease without available curative treatments; VPS13B with a neurodevelopmental syndrome called Cohen syndrome; VPS13C with an early onset Parkinson’s disease; and VPS13D with Spinocerebellar Ataxia, a movement disorder. “The hope is that a comprehensive understanding of how the Vps13 protein works, will inform the development of potential therapies in humans.”

Yeast Vps13 associates with several organellar membranes and rapidly transports lipids to its target membranes. Many of these membranes have adaptor proteins which recruit Vps13. Kevin’s work has involved discovering how Vps13 associates with its adaptors, as well as identifying novel interacting proteins. He hopes to conclude his thesis in about a year.

Kevin puts his love of chemistry to good use with one of his other hobbies, baking. “My go to is my amma’s chocolate chip cookie recipe,” he said. “I bring some in for my lab mates as well as the surrounding labs to enjoy. With all the new students now they’re usually gone within a couple of hours.”

He’s also a passionate curler. “I am a wannabe-competitive, curler. Most people in our block of the CMMT are probably aware of this by now. Every fall through spring I’m on the ice, usually two to three times a week.” The Conibear and Taubert Labs have revived the CMMT Cup in a curling competition in April 2023. According to Kevin, “The Conibear Lab still holds the cup and is eager for other labs to challenge us in the game of their choice.” 

As for life after the PhD, Kevin’s not sure. “I’m not sure about staying in academia at the moment. Maybe industry or government research,” he said. He will, no doubt, infuse his community spirit into whatever he takes on.



Erick I. Navarro-Delgado
From Epigenetics to Salsa – It’s All About Integration

Erick I. Navarro-Delgado is a bioinformatician with a passion for connecting people. Having done an internship at St. Paul’s Hospital, in Vancouver, for three months in the summer in 2019, he has returned from his native Mexico to do his PhD at the University of British Columbia, under the co-supervision of Dr. Keegan Korthauer and Dr. Michael Kobor. He is currently interested in developing computational tools to integrate genome, exposome and DNA methylome data to model the factors that contribute to DNA methylation variability across early life.

“My project involves working with early life stages in human life, which we know is very important, as it’s during this time that a phenomenon called developmental programming occurs, which is the potentially long-term physiological changes associated with environmental exposures early in life” Erick said. “It’s the start of our health trajectory.”

One of the mechanisms thought to underly developmental programming is epigenetics, which is a set of mechanisms that can alter the gene expression without altering the gene sequence itself. “I am working with one molecular mark called DNA methylation, which is the addition of a methyl chemical group to the DNA and is like a label on the DNA that lets other proteins know if those DNA segments should be repressed or expressed. It’s like a set of instructions for the cell to know what to do”. Environmental triggers causing DNA methylation changes can affect a person’s health trajectory long term.

“While DNA methylation is affected by the environment, we have also recently discovered that is affected by genetics. So, an individual’s genetics could also influence the likelihood of some DNA methylation markers tripping disease”. This is where everything connects. Genome-wide we don’t completely understand how genetics and environment associate with DNA methylation changes. Whether they do it together or independently. And where, specifically, they act. The objective of my project is to understand these phenomena,” Erick said.

To find answers to these questions Erick is working with data sets from the CHILD Cohort Study, a national prospective longitudinal birth cohort study, that follows Canadian study participants over time, from mid-pregnancy to childhood. “I have huge amounts of data regarding the environmental exposures at birth and across the first 5 years of life, the genome of the baby, and the epigenome,” he said. “I am putting all this together in an analytical framework that will allow us to understand if differences in DNA methylation are better explained by genetics, or the environment, or both together through interactions, which would mean that the effect of the environment on one molecular mark will depend of the underlying genetics of the person.”

In addition to answering this question, Erick is also making his methodology available as an open source package, so people can conduct the same analyses more easily in other cohorts and explore the results. “So far I have done all the analyses of genetics and environment in DNA methylation in cord blood and the tool is now available in github for people to use,” he said. “The paper is very close to being published.” The next stage is to conduct these same analyses in other cohorts and tissues.

“The final stage of the project is to integrate the different time points that we have for DNA methylation measures and the environmental exposures to understand how genetics and the environment affect DNA methylation not at a single time point but across the trajectory of DNA methylation,” Erick said. “I think these analyses will be very useful in generating hypotheses.”

In addition to this large project, Erick also likes connecting people through dance.

“I like social activities a lot,” he said. “I try to contribute to community building here in Vancouver.” To that end, he founded an organization called Salseo. “This is an organization for queer people to learn to dance Salsa,” he said. “We offer free classes for the community. I’m also part of Vancouver’s Ballroom scene.”

“Another passion of mine is science outreach. I have ongoing projects to build coding skills (mainly R) in students through free workshops, specially targeted at the Latinx community,” he said. And, he is happy to collaborate. “I am always excited to participate in activities that make scientific knowledge more accessible,” he said.



Dr. Blair Leavitt:
From Laboratory to Clinic, Bridging Innovation and Care

As a clinician-scientist, Dr. Blair Leavitt is in a very fortunate position at the interface between the laboratory and clinic. Arriving at the CMMT in 1998 to learn some molecular genetics with Dr. Michael Hayden, he has since become a world-renowned neuroscientist who heads his own lab that focuses on translational pre-clinical neuroscience and the development of novel therapeutics for genetic diseases of the brain and spinal cord. Additionally, he is a consulting neurologist and Director of Research at the UBC Centre for Huntington’s disease, where he works directly with patient families to provide patient care and run clinical trials of new treatments for this devastating neurodegenerative disorder. His primary focus is on developing genetic therapies for neurodegenerative diseases in adults, and for children with pediatric neurodevelopmental disorders.

“Being a clinician-scientist and working in both basic biomedical research and in the clinic helps provide good insight into what’s important to individuals affected by disease and their families,” Dr. Leavitt said. “Certainly, it motivates the basic research and keeps us directed towards applying what we understand to developing new and better therapies. That’s always been one hundred percent of my focus.”

Originally from Alberta, Dr. Leavitt went to McGill University in Montreal for his medical degree. He then did his medical internship at Columbia-Presbyterian in New York, followed by a year’s neurology residency at Cornell and then four years at Harvard in Boston. While in Boston, he completed a basic neuroscience research fellowship at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital of Boston. “As far back as medical school and in my undergraduate studies, I was trying to combine my research with clinical work,” Dr. Leavitt said. “I worked in a lab at Children’s Hospital in Boston, even though I’m an adult neurologist. I was very lucky to have been able to do that.” Then, from the Harvard Longwood Neurology Program in Boston, Dr. Leavitt came to Vancouver to join Dr. Michael Hayden’s lab and study Huntington’s disease.

Dr. Leavitt’s work in the Hayden lab involved developing one of the earliest and best models of Huntington’s disease (HD), work that continues to this day. However, over time, Dr. Leavitt’s focus changed. “Originally many of our studies were trying to understand the pathogenesis of the disease, but I really transitioned about midway through my career into focusing on therapeutic approaches and trying to develop treatments, which range, broadly, from small molecules to genetic therapies,” he said.

For many years, the Leavitt Lab has also focused on a brain disease called frontotemporal dementia, specifically a form caused by mutations in the gene that encodes for the protein progranulin. “The genetic cause of this disease was identified as part of a large collaborative effort, and it turns out that we were studying families in BC that carry a specific mutation in progranulin,” Dr. Leavitt said. They have developed mouse models that replicate that mutation to study how the normal progranulin gene functions and how changes to progranulin function cause disease, and importantly, how that might be corrected.

“We also study a number of childhood brain diseases,” Dr. Leavitt said. “One we’ve been studying for many years is called pyridoxine dependent epilepsy. There is a genetic mutation within the gene that codes for a protein called antiquitin. We have developed anitiquitin-deleted mice and are using those models to develop new treatments, in collaboration with a number of investigators around BCCH. Additionally, we have some exciting international collaborations where we’re testing new treatments,” he said.

Most recently, Dr. Leavitt’s lab has begun studying another childhood disorder caused by mutations in a gene call GNA01. “It’s a really interesting brain disease where different mutations affect the brain in different ways,” Dr. Leavitt said. “We’re studying one that affects a part of the brain called the striatum and this mutation causes a movement disorder, somewhat similar, in many ways, to Juvenile Huntington’s disease. There are several local families affected by this mutation. We are studying this mutation in mouse models to develop genetic therapies.”

With respect to the development of therapies, Dr. Leavitt said that they have run the gamut over the years. “They have included using viral and non-viral approaches,” he said. “Specifically, the work over the last five to six years has been very much focused on non-viral gene therapies. We are using lipid nanoparticles, or LNPs to deliver therapies and more specifically to deliver CRISPR based genome editing.” He explained that LNPs are used to deliver therapies to the brain either through direct delivery or delivery into the cerebrospinal fluid. CRISPR-based genome editing is used to either directly correct the underlying mutation in DNA or to introduce changes in the brain that will ameliorate or treat the underlying pathogenesis.

Other approaches, in addition to using mouse models, include translating the work in mice into cultures of human-derived cells. “Specifically, a lot of our work is moving towards induced pluripotential stem cells, or IPSCs, that are derived from humans with the mutation or derived from healthy individuals where we can introduce the mutation that causes the disease,” he said. Those IPSCs can be differentiated in a dish into different types of cells. “We’re primarily interested in the brain so we differentiate them into neurons and various different forms of glia,” he said. “We can also model or test some of our therapeutic approaches in human brain cells in a dish. They can be used to generate more complex systems like brain organoids, although that is really work that we’re just starting to transition into.”

Dr. Leavitt’s clinical work at the UBC Centre for Huntington’s disease helps translate novel therapeutics developed in his lab into to clinical trials that can happen more quickly than is traditionally the case. “Because the centre is so well-established, it has become the referral clinic for the whole of BC and the Yukon, so pretty much every family with Huntington’s has interacted or connected with it,” Dr. Leavitt said. “People have come from all over the world to participate in our clinical trials.” The Centre for HD has several components, including clinical care, research, and genetics with social work built in,” he said. The Centre for HD is supported not just by the work done by clinicians but also through funding from the Huntington Society of Canada, which supports the Centre social worker. “It is a multidisciplinary clinic,” Dr. Leavitt said. “For me, it’s an amazing position to be in. I have a research lab that studies this and other similar diseases, trying to translate that research into clinical trials, and then I’m also involved in the clinical trials for the human diseases that we study in the lab.”

Yet despite the seemingly obvious benefits of the clinician-scientist role in health research, the reality is that for young individuals coming up, pursing this path is becoming increasingly difficult. “I was supported through an award from the CIHR called the Clinician-Scientist award, which, unfortunately, they no longer give out,” Dr. Leavitt said. “My career trajectory was made possible by a pathway that no longer exists, so I can imagine and I know from individuals coming through who want to be clinician scientists, that it’s becoming harder and harder to find that balance and be able to do both.” Currently, this is a situation that looks unlikely to change. “Funding for research hasn’t kept pace with costs and CIHR is not funded to an appropriate level,” he said. “This was an important program that was cut, and I don’t know the rationale for it, but I think it’s a real loss to our biomedical research environment that we aren’t supporting clinician-scientists to a greater degree,” Dr. Leavitt said. Even with his experience, he finds the constant struggle for funding challenging. “If had to say the one thing that I find difficult it would be the constant demands to get funding and the lack of long-term support.”

That said, it is the support of the people around him that, in large part, enables Dr. Leavitt to do as much as he does. “In the clinic and the lab I am surrounded by really brilliant people,” he said. “The beautiful thing about the lab is that there’s a constant influx of incredible students who come to me with new ideas, techniques and enthusiasm, and they’re constantly pushing me.” His lab has also been running for a significant amount of time and has established processes in place. “I have an amazing lab manager (Alissandra De Moura Gomez) who is very active in the research and helps keep everything going. And I have good administrative support through the CMMT. That’s really important. Because without the research and administrative support I certainly couldn’t do everything. Being surrounded by really amazing people enables me to keep doing the things I do.”

——–

Dr. Leavitt is a full Professor in the Department of Medical Genetics & the Department of Medicine, Division of Neurology (Associate) at the University of British Columbia, and a consulting neurologist and Director of Research at the UBC Centre for Huntington’s Disease. Dr. Leavitt is currently the Director of the CMMT Transgenic Animal Facility and a founding Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Huntington’s Disease; He was the Elected Co-Chair and Vice-President, Huntington Study Group. 2014- present; and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada, Specialist in Neurology. Dr. Leavitt is a Co-founder, the CEO, and member of the Board of Directors of Incisive Genetics Inc.

Team CMMT in the BCCHF RBC Race for the Kids  The annual BC Children’s Hospital Foundation Race for the Kids took place on Sunday, June 9th, 2024.  A HUGE Congratulations to the 20 members of Team CMMT that helped fundraise a total of $3,363 for this important cause!





CMMT Summer Event – Baseball Game & Outdoor Social  This June, the CMMT dusted off their baseball caps and headed to Nat Bailey Stadium for a ballgame followed by an outdoor social at Queen Elizabeth Park. Everyone had a “ball” of a time!!!

Publications

Dylan V. Neel, M.Phill, Clara Baselga-Garriga, Molly Benson, Mackenzie Keegan, Marianne Chase, Derek D’Agostino, Kristin Drake, Jennifer Linn Hagar, Meredith Gibbons Hasenoehrl, Jennifer Kulesa-Kelley, Alex Leite, Silpa Mohapatra, Susanna Marie Portaro, Lindsay M. Pothier, Jesse Rosenthal, Alexander V. Sherman, Hong Yu, Alexandra McCaffrey1, Doreen Ho, Sarah Luppino, Richard Bedlack, Daragh Heitzman, MD, Senda Ajroud-Driss, Jonathan Katz, Kevin Felice, Charles Whitaker, Shafeeq Ladha, Gustavo Alameda, Eduardo Locatelli, MD, Irfan A. Qureshi, Michael T. Hotchkin, Michael R. Hayden, Merit E. Cudkowicz, Suma Babu, James D. Berry, Sabrina Paganoni. “Multi-center expanded access (EA) program for access to investigational products for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).” Muscle and Nerve. PMID: 36929648

David J. Ecker, Clarice D. Aiello, Joseph R. Arron, C. Frank Bennett, Amy Bernard, Xandra O. Breakefield, Timothy J. Broderick, Shawneequa L. Callier, Barry Canton, Janice S. Chen, C. Simone Fishburn, Banning Garrett, Sidney Hecht, Tobias Janowitz, Melinda Kliegman, Adrian Krainer, Chrystal Louis, Christopher Lowe, Joni Rutter, Alfica Sehgal, Yesim Tozan, Kevin J. Tracey, Fyodor D. Urnov, Daniel Wattendorf, Thomas W. Williams, Xuanhe Zhao & Michael R. Hayden. Opportunities and challenges for innovative and equitable healthcare. Nature Drug Discovery. PMID: 38409339

van Karnebeek CDM, Tarailo-Graovac M, Leen R, Meinsma R, Correard S, Jansen-Meijer J, Prykhozhij SV, Pena IA, Ban K, Schock S, Saxena V, Pras-Raves ML, Drögemöller BI, Grootemaat AE, van der Wel NN, Dobritzsch D, Roseboom W, Schomakers BV, Jaspers YRJ, Zoetekouw L, Roelofsen J, Ferreira CR, van der Lee R, Ross CJ, Kochan J, McIntyre RL, van Klinken JB, van Weeghel M, Kramer G, Weschke B, Labrune P, Willemsen MA, Riva D, Garavaglia B, Moeschler JB, Filiano JJ, Ekker M, Berman JN, Dyment D, Vaz FM, Wasserman WW, Houtkooper RH, van Kuilenburg ABP, 2024, “CIAO1 and MMS19 deficiency: a lethal neurodegenerative phenotype caused by cytosolic Fe-S cluster protein assembly disorders”, Genetics in Medicine, 26, 101104.  doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gim.2024.101104.

Li Z., Liang D., Ebelt S., Gearing M., Kobor M.S., Konwar C., Maclsaac J.L., Dever K., Wingo A.P., Levey A.I., Lah J.J., Wingo T.S., and Hüls A. (2024). Differential DNA Methylation in the Brain as Potential Mediator of the Association Between Traffic-related PM2.5 and Neuropathology Markers of Alzheimer’s Disease. Alzheimers Dement. 20:2538-2551. 

Eisenberg D.T.A., Ryan C.P., Lee N.R., Carba D.B., MacIsaac J.L., Dever K., Atashzay P., Kobor M.S., and Kuzawa C. (2024). DNA Methylation-based Estimators of Telomere Length Show Low Correspondence with Paternal Age at Conception and Other Measures of External Validity of Telomere Length. GeroScience. 10.1007/s11357-024-01114-2. Online ahead of print. 

Hastings W.J., Ye Q., Wolf S.E., Ryan C.P., Das S.K., Huffman K.M., Kobor M.S., Kraus W.E., MacIsaac J.L., Martin C.K., Racette S.B., Redman L.M., Belsky D.W., and Shalev I. (2024). Effect of Caloric Restriction on Telomere Length in Healthy Adults: CALERIE™ 2 Trial Analysis. Aging cell. e14149. Online ahead of print.

Lee S., Sbihi H., MacIsaac J.L., Balshaw R., Ambalavanan A., Subbarao P., Mandhane P.J., Moraes T.J., Turvey S.E., Duan Q., Brauer M., Brook J.R., Kobor M.S., and Jones M.J. (2024). Persistent DNA Methylation Changes Across the First Year of Life and Prenatal NO2 Exposure in a Canadian Prospective Birth Study. Environ Health Perspect. 132: 47004. 

Ryan C.P., Lee N.R., Carba D.B., MacIsaac J.L., Lin D.T.S., Atashzay P., Belsky D.W., Kobor M.S., and Kuzawa C.W. (2024) Pregnancy is Linked to Faster Epigenetic Aging in Young Women. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 121:e2317290121. 

Hernandez Cordero A.I., Li X., Xi Yang C., Ambalavanan A., MacIsaac J.L., Kobor M.S., Doiron D., Tan W., Bourbeau J., Sin D.D., Duan Q., and Leung J.M.; CanCOLD Collaborative Research Group. (2024) Cannabis Smoking is Associated with Advanced Epigenetic Age. Eur Respir J. 63:2400458.

Pett L., Li Z., Abrishamcar S., Hodge K., Everson T., Christensen G., Gearing M., Kobor M.S., Konwar C., MacIsaac J.L., Dever K., Wingo A.P., Levey A., Lah J.J., Wingo T.S., and Hüls A. (2024) The Association Between Neighborhood Deprivation and DNA Methylation in an Autopsy Cohort. Aging. 16:6694-6716.

Marchi E., Hinks T.S.C., Richardson M., Khalfaoui L., Symon F.A., Rajasekar P., Clifford R., Hargadon B., Austin C.D., MacIsaac J.L., Kobor M.S., Siddiqui S., Mar J.S., Arron J.R., Choy D.F., and Bradding P. (2024). The Effects of Inhaled Corticosteroids on Healthy Airways. Allergy. Doi: 10.1111/all.16146. Online ahead of print.

Jiaming Xu, Brendil Sabatino, Junran Yan, Glafira Ermakova, Kelsie RS Doering, Stefan Taubert, S Lee. The unfolded protein response of the endoplasmic reticulum protects Caenorhabditis elegans against DNA damage caused by stalled replication forks. G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics. 2024-04-03. DOI: 10.1093/g3journal/jkae017

Salama O.E., Hizon N., Del Vecchio M., Kolsun K., Fonseca M.A., Lin D.T.S., Urtatiz O., MacIsaac J.L., Kobor M.S., Sellers E.A.C., Dolinsky V.W., Dart A.B., Jones M.J., and Wicklow B.A. (2024). DNA Methylation Signatures of Youth-onset Type 2 Diabetes and Exposure to Maternal Diabetes. Clin Epigenetics. 16:65. 

Rada Tazhitdinova, Sara Cristiano, Joshua Yi, Valdimir Zhurov, Rodney P. De Koter, Alexander V. Timoshenko. Expression and secretion of galectin-12 in the context of neutrophilic differentiation of human promyeloblastic HL-60 cells. 30 April 2024. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcp.31288
Save The Date

The annual CMMT Research Day will take place on September 27, 2024. Please join us for a day of trainee talks, faculty speakers, poster presentations, lunch, social and more!!!Guest Speaker: Kym M Boycott, Senior Scientist, CHEO Research Institute   

Faculty Speaker: Francesca Capon, Professor,Department of Medical Genetics, Senior Scientist, Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics (CMMT)
Read more: https://cmmt.ubc.ca/2024/06/17/cmmt-research-day-september-27th-2024/
The annual Vancouver Gairdner National Symposium will take place on October 21, 2024.

The two inspirational Gairdner Awardees speaking are:Dr. Michel Sadelain, MD, PhD: “For seminal contributions to the conception, development and application of CD19-CAR T cell therapy for cancer.’’Dr. David Klenerman, FRS, FMedSci: “For the fundamental and applied research that led to a revolutionary and affordable method to sequence DNA on a massive scale, which has dramatically accelerated discoveries in the life sciences and medicine.
Read more: https://cmmt.ubc.ca/2024/06/07/save-the-date-2024-vancouver-gairdner-national-symposium-october-21-2024/

Special Announcements

Dr. Stefan Taubert has been promoted to the rank of Professor, with tenure, effective July 1, 2023
His commitment to teaching excellence, graduate supervision, research and community service contribute to advancing UBC’s vision as a global institution of learning and research.

Congratulations Stefan!
Read more about the Taubert Lab: https://cmmt.ubc.ca/taubert-lab/

Graduations

Dr. Ben Life: PhD Thesis Title: Progranulin function and regulation in brain disease.

Dr. Hilary Brewis: PhD Thesis Title: Deciphering H2A.Z-Mediated Transcriptional Regulation in Sacchromyces Cerevisiae. 

Dr. Zheng Dong: PhD Thesis Title: Investigating Evolutionary Conservation and Population Specificity of DNA Methylation.

Rui Wang: MSc Thesis Title: Exploring the Impact of SNCA Overexpression on Mouse Hippocampal DNA Methylome and Transcriptome During Midlife.
Awards and Scholarships

Christine Chen, Dennis Lab
CSG-M Award

Ashleen Phandar, Hayden Lab
HSC Undergraduate Summer Student Fellowship Award

Dr. Neel Mehta, Hayden Lab
BB&D Publication Fund
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37597209/

Meingold Chan, Kobor Lab
CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship Award

Dr. Elizabeth Simpson, Simpson Lab
2024 Canucks for Kids Fund Diabetes Catalyst Grant competition
https://www.bcchr.ca/diabetes

Chiaki Shuzenji, Taubert Lab
UBC Four Year Fellowship

Dr. Stefan Taubert, Taubert Lab
NSERC Discovery Grant

Glafira Ermakova, Taubert Lab
CIHR CGS-D Award 

James Wu, Taubert Lab
UBC Healthy Aging Summer Student Research Award

Rachel Spencer, Taubert Lab
CIHR CGS-D Award

Yuchang (Janice) Zhan, Taubert Lab
UBC NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award
UBC Faculty of Medicine Summer Student Research Program (FoM SSRP) Award

Dr. Wyeth Wasserman, Wasserman Lab
NSERC Discovery Grant
CIHR Project Grant (as co-applicant)
Travel Award for the 2024-25 endMS Scholar Program for Researchers IN Training (SPRINT)

Kiana Rashidi, Wasserman Lab
BCCHRI Summer Studentship
Work Learn International Undergraduate Research Award
Fun Facts

The deepest place on Earth is the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean.

The longest river in the world is the River Nile, clocking 6,853km in length.            

Did you know?

Giraffes are 30 time more likely to get hit by lighting than people.

There is a 50% chance that two people will share a birthday in a group of 23 people. 
Our next newsletter will be released September 2024.
Submit storyline suggestions to media@cmmt.ubc.ca by August 15, 2024. 
Submit awards, events, publications, kudos, etc. to media@cmmt.ubc.ca by August 15, 2024.
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Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics
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