UNews - Borries Demeler

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge students dive into biochemistry

caroline.zentner — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 20:25:06 +0000

Two ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge students dived into biochemistry in a big way over the summer and became the first Indigenous undergraduate students to work at the Canadian Center for Hydrodynamics (CCH) with analytical ultracentrifugation (AUC).

Demetra (Demi) Good Rider and Thunder Crowshoe completed the Indigenous Student Success Certificate (ISSC) earlier this year. The certificate is designed to help Indigenous students make a smooth transition to university life. They enjoyed their biology and chemistry courses, and Crowshoe jumped at the chance when Beth Grier, a student recruitment officer, informed him that biochemistry professor Dr. Borries (Bo) Demeler was seeking students to work at the CCH.

Demi Good Rider, at left, and Thunder Crowshoe posed for a photo at Sunshine Point in Glacier National Park following the Salish Kootenai College conference in Montana.

“I just emailed Bo and we set up a meeting time,” says Crowshoe. “He took me around his lab and showed me the type of stuff he does and the AUC. He was also looking for more students.”

Crowshoe and Dr. Michelle Hogue, a professor and coordinator of the ISSC, recommended Good Rider, who also accepted Demeler’s offer. She signed up for a co-op position through Career Bridge, while Crowshoe did an applied study in the lab, along with another applied study already underway with Jennifer Burke, a biology instructor, in the ULethbridge herbarium.

“It was a great enrichment for our lab to be joined by Demi and Thunder this summer; they are wonderful teammates,” says Demeler. “They not only impressed us with their scientific acumen, but also generously shared their culture with all of us and invited our lab to their tribe’s powwow in Brocket — a wonderful experience for everyone. We now look forward to opening up the world of biophysics to other interested Indigenous students.”

At the CCH, Crowshoe’s project focused on the purification of DNA and RNA. Good Rider’s project involved creating a plasmid design to develop a calibration standard for the AUC instrument.

“Coming into a biochem job like this, I had no idea what was going to be happening or what I was going to be doing,” says Good Rider. “I’ve done both biology and chemistry, but I’ve never done them together in this sort of sense. It was really interesting to see all the things that we were able to accomplish this summer.”

“I was looking for a job like this because I love science and especially mathematics,” says Crowshoe. “I have Crohn’s disease, and it can affect me in a way that I can’t do physical work. This job was a good fit, and it really opened the door for me.”

In addition to working on their projects, Crowshoe and Good Rider travelled to Missoula, Montana, twice over the summer. They presented posters about their projects at Day of Discovery, a science conference, in Pablo, MT, which is the headquarters for the Flathead Indian Reservation and home to Salish Kootenai College, which hosted the conference. They also participated in the annual AUC workshop at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Montana.

Both students decided to continue their practical work experience at ULethbridge this fall. Good Rider, a kinesiology major, is doing a co-op work term with the Building Brains Together team, teaching traditional Indigenous games to children. Crowshoe will continue his work in Demeler’s lab and has decided to switch his major to biochemistry. He’s also a recipient of an I.D.E.A.L. Scholarship through BioTalent Canada. The scholarship is designed to promote inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility leadership in STEM studies in Canada.

“This fall, I’ll be able to be in charge of my own project, with a little supervision, and run experiments in the AUC, continue my career in the lab,” he says. “Crohn’s disease can actually attack everything in your body; it’s not just your gut. They don’t really know the cause of it; it hasn’t really been researched that much, so maybe for my PhD, I can pursue that as research.”

Good Rider chose kinesiology after learning that her grandfather had once been diagnosed with diabetes and how his walking habits, from one side of the city to the other, contributed to the reversal of his diabetes.

“That’s when I started thinking about First Nations health and kinesiology,” she says. “There are so many unanswered questions around Indigenous health that I would like to explore.”

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge researchers awarded federal research grants worth more than $3 million

caroline.zentner — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 21:50:59 +0000

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge researchers are among the successful applicants for federal grants announced by The Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Industry and Minister responsible for Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions, and the Honourable Marjorie Michel, Minister of Health.

The more than $1.3 billion in funding supports over 9,700 researchers and research projects in Canada through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

“From brain plasticity and the mechanism of low-dose radiation to supporting newcomers through mentoring, these grants illustrate the diversity of research being done at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge,” says Dr. Dena McMartin, vice-president of research. “This funding not only helps established researchers continue their work but also helps our early career researchers build their research programs. Ultimately, our students benefit with increased opportunities to engage in research throughout their post-secondary careers.”

In total, ULethbridge received funding from NSERC for nine Discovery Grants and two Discovery Development Grants. The Discovery Grants will bring in nearly $475,000 a year for the next five years. The research projects include the following:

Dr. Gerlinde Metz (Neuroscience) will receive $96,000 per year for a study looking at the social determinants of experience-dependent brain plasticity.
Dr. Stacey Wetmore (Chemistry & Biochemistry) will receive $89,000 per year for a project involving computer modelling of modified RNA.
Dr. Olga Kovalchuk (Biological Sciences) was awarded $55,000 annually to study the fundamental mechanisms of low-dose radiation.
Dr. Borries Demeler (Chemistry & Biochemistry) is set to receive $47,000 yearly for solution studies of interacting biopolymer systems.
Dr. Hadi Kharaghani (Mathematics & Computer Science) will receive $32,000 a year for his project on special orthogonal matrices.

The remainder of the NSERC recipients are four early career researchers, each of whom received a Discovery Launch Supplement of $12,500 in addition to their Discovery Grant.

Dr. Corina Birghila (Mathematics & Computer Science) was awarded a yearly amount of $31,000 for a project titled Optimal Decision under Uncertainty.
Dr. Jessica Willi (Chemistry & Biochemistry) will receive $44,000 annually for a project on ribosome functions through synthetic biology.
Dr. Vineet Rathod (Chemistry & Biochemistry) will receive $38,000 annually to examine the structure-function relationship of natural and engineered amyloid proteins.
Dr. Dylan Girodat (Chemistry & Biochemistry) will receive $42,000 per year for a project on the structural dynamics of ribosomes during translation.

In addition, Discovery Development Grants, worth $22,000 each, were awarded to Drs. Christopher Hopkinson (Geography & Environment) and Marc Bomhof (Kinesiology and Physical Education).

Hopkinson will use remote sensing to model vegetation and snowpack response to wildland fire in headwater basins.
Bomhof intends to look at the interplay between exercise and dietary factors on appetite regulation.

ULethbridge social science and humanities researchers were awarded $645,000 in SSHRC Insight Grants.

Dr. Daniel O'Donnell (English) will work on a project involving Research Data Management and Research Data Infrastructure by humanities researchers.
Dr. Scott Rathwell (Kinesiology) wants to enhance sport participation, promote physical activity and improve health outcomes for aging adults by establishing a framework for effective sport programming in middle-aged and older adults.

Several ULethbridge researchers are the recipients of Insight Development Grants totalling more than $291,000.

Dr. Toupey Luft (Education) has designed a project to address the gap in understanding how arts-based mentorship may enhance a sense of belonging for newcomer young adults.
Dr. Kenneth Holyoke’s (Geography & Environment) project investigates the nature and scope of climate impacts on the Wolastoqiyik and Wabanaki archaeological record in New Brunswick.
Dr. Justin Raycraft’s (Anthropology) objective in this project is to increase understanding of the social dimensions of human-carnivore coexistence in the Tarangire ecosystem of northern Tanzania.
Dr. Jeffrey MacCormack (Education) will develop a professional development intervention consisting of a community of practice for teachers and principals where they learn evidence-based practices to support students with profound and multiple disabilities.
Dr. Miranda Leibel (Liberal Education) will examine how the creation and maintenance of postal services are an important component of Canadian state- and nation-building.

High school students explore research through HYRS and new InSRA summer programs

trevor.kenney — Mon, 04 Jul 2022 21:24:29 +0000

It’s a model proven to be successful, leading the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge to expand its annual High School Youth Researcher Summer (HYRS) program and add a complementary cohort for 2022 — the Indigenous Summer Research Academy (InSRA).

The HYRS initiative, now in its fifth iteration, is a summer research program for students who have just completed Grade 11. Offered at the Universities of Lethbridge, Calgary and Alberta, it provides students with a stipend of $3,000 over six weeks and the opportunity to work on multidisciplinary, hands-on research projects in fields such as genetics, neuroscience, bioengineering, molecular imaging, recreational therapy, health-care policy and more.

“To see this program expanding and involving more students is outstanding,” says Zaynab Enayetullah, a third-year public health student, program coordinator and HYRS graduate from 2018. “The new InSRA program is distinct from HYRS but also complementary and the students will be doing many of the same activities and have access to the same guest speakers. Adding InSRA is about creating opportunities for Indigenous students specifically and providing pathways to post-secondary studies.”

Students are required to apply to the program, provide references and write an essay on their areas of interest. Once accepted, they are matched with faculty mentors participating in the program. A total of 10 students have been accepted to HYRS for 2022, with two students debuting the new InSRA program.

“In my experience, high school youth participating in the HYRS program are full of curiosity and are open to learning. If directed properly, we can attract students to STEM fields and open their eyes to the wonders of nature and provide the tools and experience necessary to be successful at research,” says Dr. Borries Demeler, Canada 150 Research Chair for Biophysics and director of the Canadian Center for Hydrodynamics at ULethbridge. “I enjoy being able to help a student open the door to research and science and help them on their way to a successful post-secondary career.”

Demeler came to ULethbridge from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Texas (San Antonio) where he participated in a similar program, which also had a focus on underserved minority populations. InSRA, funded by the MasterCard Foundation and EleV, looks to create similar opportunities.

“Many of the high school students I worked with in San Antonio ended up with publications in scientific journals and prestigious scholarships to attend some of the finest colleges in the U.S. and abroad,” says Demeler, who will be participating in HYRS for the second time. “Opening the doors for students to such opportunities is highly valuable to them, and deeply satisfactory to us who helped them. The HYRS and InSRA programs are crucial steppingstones along this path.”

This year’s program runs from July 8 to August 19, with a final poster presentation of the students’ work to be held August 18.

U of L master’s student helps develop a better way to measure drug loading, enhance vaccine efficacy

caroline.zentner — Wed, 07 Apr 2021 19:53:44 +0000

In a recently published article in ACS Nano, a high-impact nanoscience and nanotechnology journal, ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge master’s student Amy Henrickson (BSc ’17) and her collaborators at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of British Columbia have devised a better way of measuring drug loading in lipid nanoparticle formulations (LNPs) using analytical ultracentrifugation (AUC).

These formulations are typically used in gene therapies and, more recently, in the development of some COVID vaccines. Lipid nanoparticles are very small and can be thought of as a capsule for delivering a treatment. Lipids occur naturally in the body in the form of fats, hormones and certain vitamins. In the case of the COVID vaccines, lipid nanoparticles are loaded with RNA that instructs the human body to recognize the spike proteins on the SARS-CoV-2 virus and thus build immunity.

For the quality control of these formulations, researchers need an accurate way of determining the RNA loading state of LNP formulations, because only a narrow range of RNA loading leads to the desired biological effect and assures patient safety; empty or overloaded LNPs are ineffective and can increase the potential for allergic reactions.

“The new method we developed is able to tell us the ratio of RNA to lipid,” says Henrickson, who studies under biophysicist Dr. Borries Demeler, a Canada 150 Research Chair. “There are advantages and disadvantages to all techniques, but many other methods involve low resolution bulk observations that lack the necessary detail. This method is able to tell if any LNPs are empty and if everything’s properly loaded with the preparation.”

The method, developed over the past two years at the Canadian Center for Hydrodynamics at the U of L, uses multi-wavelength AUC to measure the spectral profile of nanoparticle preparations, quantifying the RNA contained in the LNP. They also use heavy water to measure densities of preparations, which is sensitive to the RNA load. The work was done in collaboration with Pieter Cullis’ group at UBC, where they are working on developing lipid nanoparticles for gene therapy.

“In her short time as a graduate student in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, Amy has already amassed 10 publications, including first-author contributions like the ACS Nano publication,” says Demeler. “Amy is a star student who has helped our group make significant and high-impact progress in many important fields, contributing novel discoveries to gene therapy and vaccine development.”

The Canadian Center for Hydrodynamics has also received a grant from the Biomolecular Interaction Technologies Center organization, which is based in the United States. The grant is to develop viral vector characterization in adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) using AUC, which forms the basis of Henrickson’s PhD work.

AAVs, which are not known to cause disease, are small viruses that can be used for gene delivery in the treatment of a variety of human diseases. Preparations made with AAVs tend to exhibit a mixture of loaded and unloaded viral capsids (the protein shell of a virus).

“Many methods currently in use can’t differentiate between different components in a preparation,” says Henrickson. “I’m trying to use AUC to create two or three different methods that will all be able to characterize an AAV formulation and tell you if there’s any free DNA, empty AAVs, loaded or partially loaded AAVs, or aggregates in the preparation.”

Early research opportunities lead to publications for U of L students

caroline.zentner — Mon, 11 Jan 2021 21:43:16 +0000

Two ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge students can add publications to their resumés after they took advantage of getting involved in research early in their university education. Not only have they published papers in major journals, they’ve also collaborated with other departments within the U of L and internationally.

From left to right are Dr. Borries Demeler, Amy Henrickson and Marielle Stoutjesdyk.

Marielle Stoutjesdyk, an undergraduate student in the Department of Physics, and Amy Henrickson (BSc ’17), a master’s student in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, work in Dr. Borries Demeler’s lab. Demeler is a Canada 150 Research Chair for Biophysics and director of the Canadian Center for Hydrodynamics, which uses analytical ultracentrifugation to analyze molecules in solution.

Stoutjesdyk has been the first author on two scientific papers published in an international journal, all while working on her undergraduate degree. Her first project involved testing out a new, highly technical analytical ultracentrifuge, specifically measuring how much its titanium rotor stretched when spinning at 60,000 revolutions per minute.

“Imagine being on a merry-go-round and spinning so fast you feel gravity pushing you 300,000 times stronger than usual,” says Stoutjesdyk. “The 12-pound titanium rotor in the ultracentrifuge experiences these forces and, as a result, it begins to stretch out. This causes errors in the analytical software that’s collecting data on the molecules being spun. My job was to correct this error so I designed a novel centerpiece that measures the stretching of the rotor and errors from the optical systems.”

Her paper was published in the European Biophysics Journal and earned her first place in a poster presentation in the 2019 Chinook Symposium for Chemistry and Biochemistry. She also presented her research at national conferences in Toronto and Montreal.

“I went on to study the compression capabilities of the ultracentrifuge,” she says. “We found liquids would experience some compression when we spun them as fast as we could. This demanded further inspection as the compressibility of liquids is an important parameter when investigating molecules in a solution.”

The paper that resulted from this work was recently published, also in the European Biophysics Journal, with Henrickson and colleagues from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Montana as co-authors.

Henrickson has been involved in multi-wavelength analytical centrifugation, a new technique that provides improved resolution and is only available at the U of L. It’s used for studying solution interactions where the interacting molecules contain different spectral properties. Through a collaboration with Dr. Renwick Dobson at New Zealand’s ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Canterbury, three graduate students came to the U of L to learn how to design, run and analyze data using analytical ultracentrifugation. Henrickson helped teach the students about multi-wavelength techniques.

“From these collaborations, we have had the opportunity to publish a paper in the European Biophysics Journal and we are in the process of undergoing reviews of a second paper,” says Henrickson. “Collaborations within science are of significant importance as they allow research groups to gain experience and expertise in fields they normally wouldn’t have access to.”

The accomplishments of these students demonstrate the opportunities for research that U of L students can access early on in their university careers.

“Marielle and Amy have already built impressive resumés as students and that will help them in their careers,” says Demeler. “Their achievements as students demonstrate their strengths as scientists and open up many opportunities for their future work.”

Canada Foundation for Innovation funding will help U of L researchers pursue a drug treatment for COVID-19

caroline.zentner — Fri, 06 Nov 2020 17:26:14 +0000

Two U of L researchers have received a $200,000 grant from the Exceptional Opportunities Fund of the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) for infrastructure to aid them in their search to find a drug to treat the SARS-CoV-2 virus that’s responsible for the COVID pandemic.

The funding is part of nearly $28 million in research infrastructure support announced by Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Navdeep Baines. The funding will support 79 projects across the country and covers the urgent need for equipment for ongoing research related to COVID-19.

“Canadian researchers and scientists are helping to protect our health and safety and are key to finding our way out of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Baines. “With this funding through the Exceptional Opportunities Fund, the Government of Canada is ensuring these talented Canadians have the equipment and tools to support them in their very important work.”

The CFI funding bolsters two grants received earlier this year by Drs. Trushar Patel and Borries Demeler (Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry). In July, they received a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Research Tools and Instruments (RTI) grant of $150,000. A short time later they received a MITACS Accelerate grant, in partnership with Applied Pharmaceutical Innovation (API), for $210,000 to develop a drug treatment for the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

“Despite extreme efforts by health agencies and governments worldwide, effective treatments or vaccines will still take months or years to develop, and there is always the potential that some will fail,” says Demeler. “Therefore, it is important that multiple and unique strategies are pursued in parallel. While there has been a major focus on the development of new vaccines, the development of novel therapeutics represents a critical need as well.”

Specifically, they are looking to inhibit the ability of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to replicate by targeting the interactions between viral proteins and the human host cell machinery responsible for replicating the virus. Their goal is to create a drug treatment capable of preventing these interactions.

Patel and Demeler plan to establish a suite of equipment that will allow them to conduct structural biophysical studies. The Biomolecular Characterization Suite or BCS is comprised of four pieces of equipment that work together to provide information about biomolecules’ size, shape, concentration and how they bind together. With the funding from CFI, the suite is now complete.

“The CFI grant gives us the funding to build that suite and buy a computer cluster to study the structures of human proteins in complex with coronavirus proteins,” says Patel. “I’m pretty excited because this infrastructure not only provides us with the capability to work with the coronavirus system, but, in fact, my lab can now prepare viral nucleic acid and host protein complexes based on zika, encephalitis, hepatitis B and C, and hanta viruses. We are not using this to study one virus system, but we can expand it to many other protein nucleic acid studies that are at the heart of viral infections.”

U of L Students will also benefit as they receive additional opportunities for further training in biophysics and biochemistry and gain skills they’ll need in their future careers.

“The combination of that characterization suite with the computational capability will provide interdisciplinary training to students with both wet lab techniques and the computational modelling packages,” says Demeler.

“The success of this important grant application by Dr. Patel and Dr. Demeler reflects their stellar potential as a team, as well as the significance of their research as it relates to solving the problems of the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Dr. Robert Wood, vice-president (research.) “Their scientific contributions will serve the greater good of our society.”

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge – API partnership receives substantial grant from MITACS to develop COVID-19 treatment

caroline.zentner — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 17:38:56 +0000

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge researchers, in partnership with scientists at Applied Pharmaceutical Innovation (API), received funding from MITACS to develop a drug to treat the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.

The research team includes U of L’s Drs. Trushar Patel and Borries Demeler (Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry), ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta’s Neal Davies (Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences), and API’s Rakesh Bhat (Director of Laboratory Science). API is an Edmonton-based, non-profit organization that partners with industry and supports researchers and start-ups. These researchers are combining forces to make the best use of their equipment and expertise in a bid to develop a new treatment for COVID-19.

Dr. Borries Demeler

“Despite extreme efforts by health agencies and governments worldwide, no effective treatments or vaccines are available yet,” says Demeler. “While there has been a major focus on the development of new vaccines, the development of novel therapeutics represents a critical need as well. SARS-CoV-2 has shown unprecedented mortality, with over 500,000 deaths worldwide so far, and unfavourable long-term outcomes are observed in recovered patients. Therefore, our focus is on the development of a treatment for COVID-19. API provides complementary technology not available at the U of L to further enhance the capability of our research endeavour, and serves as the industrial partner required for our joint MITACS grant.”

Patel and Demeler are looking to inhibit the virus’s ability to replicate by targeting the interactions between viral proteins and the human host cell machinery responsible for replicating the virus. Their goal is to create a drug treatment capable of preventing these interactions.

Dr. Trushar Patel

As API was beginning its own research projects into treatments for COVID-19, the company approached Demeler and Patel and asked for their assistance. Patel and Demeler offered API access to the U of L’s Canadian Center for Hydrodynamics and its state-of-the-art analytical ultracentrifuges not available anywhere else in Canada. In exchange, API gave Demeler and Patel access to their high-throughput drug screening facility, as well as Bhat’s expertise. The partnership between the U of L and API is made possible through a one-year MITACS Accelerate grant worth $210,000. The MITACS funding is a key factor in this partnered research and allows for student training in biophysics and biochemistry at the U of L.

“As part of this endeavour, students at the U of L will be trained in protein purification and structural studies, characterization of molecular interactions by biophysical methods, computational biology, and drug-screening,” says Patel. “The MITACS Accelerate grant is designed to shorten the time of bringing a therapeutic from bench-to-bedside and help us defeat this insidious virus.”

Grant to enable purchase of state-of-the-art biophysical research equipment

caroline.zentner — Thu, 09 Jul 2020 17:14:36 +0000

Thanks to funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Research Tools and Instruments (RTI) and the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, researchers will soon have access to a suite of equipment that will help them unravel the key communication events in biomolecules.

“The Biomolecular Characterization Suite or BCS will provide us with cutting-edge infrastructure needed for the quality control analysis of a variety of biomolecules and their complexes,” says Dr. Trushar Patel, a professor in the U of L’s Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry. “This is essential for the structural biophysical studies we conduct at the U of L.”

The BCS is comprised of four pieces of equipment that work together to give researchers information about the biomolecule’s size, shape, concentration and how they are bound together.

“As researchers, we need to make sure our molecules are really of good quality,” says Patel. “This cluster of instruments will give us the needed quality assurance of biomolecules and their complexes.”

The BCS will be useful to the U of L team of applicants from the Alberta RNA Research and Training Institute (ARRTI), including Dr. Hans-Joachim Wieden, who works with bacterial proteins for use in his research into antibiotic resistance; Dr. Ute Kothe, who works with yeast proteins; Dr. Tony Russell, who conducts research on the giardia parasite, and Dr. Borries Demeler, who works with biopolymers and nanoparticles.

“This equipment array could be used to make sure we have the right materials for research into drug use and understanding conformations when proteins are bound with nucleic acids,” says Patel. “For example, we need to determine high-resolution structures of proteins for target drug discovery and we can only determine the structures if we have the right quality of protein and this machine will tell us that.”

The addition of these instruments to the U of L’s existing infrastructure will not only attract scientists, but will provide students with valuable hands-on training opportunities.

“Students at the U of L can now get experience with the same biophysical infrastructure that’s available at other highly ranked universities,” Patel says. “Students will receive interdisciplinary training and access to sophisticated equipment that can help them secure high-value jobs in the future.”

The NSERC RTI program has provided $150,000 in support of the acquisition of BCS components.

Partnership gives U of L student one-of-a-kind learning opportunity

caroline.zentner — Wed, 17 Jun 2020 19:29:57 +0000

A partnership between API (Applied Pharmaceutical Innovation) and the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge led to a unique training opportunity for one graduate student.

Amy Henrickson (BSc ’17) started her master’s in January, working under the supervision of Dr. Borries Demeler, a professor in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, in the Canadian Center for Hydrodynamics. She’s focusing her work on adeno-associated viruses (AAVs).

These small viruses, which are not known to cause disease in humans, elicit a mild immune response in the body and that makes them attractive for use in delivering gene therapies. In therapeutic applications, AAVs can be engineered to deliver DNA to target cells. Using AAVs in this manner is an area of growing interest and clinical trials have produced promising results in several diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, hemophilia and cystic fibrosis.

“I wanted to learn how to produce adeno-associated viruses and, since there’s nobody at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge who does that right now, I needed to go somewhere and find out how it’s done,” says Henrickson.

Demeler and Henrickson had already been in touch with Viviana Gradinaru, a professor of neuroscience and biological engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and thanks to funding from API, Henrickson spent 10 days in February at Caltech’s CLOVER (Clarity Optogenetics & Vector Engineering) Center lab.

“I’m really appreciative of API for this great experience and for Viviana and her lab group to take me on and spend all the time they did training me,” says Henrickson. “They were all really nice and super willing to help — it was great. We did two preparations of adeno viruses while I was there. The person who was teaching me did one, mostly just to show me, and then the second prep, I did by myself with her watching. It was good to have somebody there to walk me through it.”

Once she is able to produce AAVs in the lab, Henrickson will concentrate on developing a new biophysical method using multi-wavelength analytical ultracentrifugation to accurately determine the amount of empty versus loaded viruses in a given preparation. During the production of AAVs, a portion of the viruses will encode without the desired preparation inside them. So far, scientists don’t have a good method to measure them in a preparation.

“In the medical field, empty viruses are considered contaminants,” says Henrickson. “If you were to inject it into a patient, the empty ones wouldn’t be delivering the desired treatment. All they would be doing is increasing the immune response. So, you want to limit the number of empty viruses in a preparation.”

Unfortunately, Henrickson hasn’t had a chance to produce AAVs yet as lab work was halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Without API, I would be a lot further behind in my master’s than what I am know,” says Henrickson. “It would have been a very steep learning curve figuring out how to produce the AAVs on my own. With the help of API sending me to Caltech to learn, I think it’s going to make things a lot smoother when I finally do start.”

API is a non-profit organization based in Edmonton that partners with industry, supports researchers and startups, and helps students bring their research into the world.

U of L students form first international chapter of the Biophysical Society

caroline.zentner — Tue, 22 Oct 2019 17:51:04 +0000

Graduate students in biophysics at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge have joined their counterparts at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Montana in Missoula to form the first student Biophysical Society chapter in Western Canada, and the first that spans borders.

The connection across the Canada-United States border came about since one of the chapter sponsors, Dr. Borries Demeler, a U of L professor, is cross-appointed at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Montana.

Tyler Mrozowich, a PhD student in Dr. Trushar Patel's lab, is the chapter's president.

“We wanted to create a partnership between these two universities and a way for biophysics students to communicate with each other, perhaps to talk about their research, the techniques they have available at each university and how each technique could help the students in their research,” says Tyler Mrozowich, a PhD candidate in Dr. Trushar Patel’s lab and chapter president. “Biophysics is a really under-represented subdiscipline in chemistry and biochemistry and physics as a whole. We want to highlight the different areas of research that biophysics is involved in and get people interested in the field.”

As Mrozowich explains, biophysics concerns the physical properties of biological molecules and how they interact.

“A really simple example is hemoglobin, the protein inside us that carries oxygen throughout the body,” he says. “The oxygen molecule will bind to the hemoglobin but the actual event where they interact, that’s biophysics. That is governed by physical properties of both of these molecules. In order for us to understand how it actually works, we have to study it and know how it interacts.”

Biophysics is an important element of health sciences research and is involved in everything from drug delivery and vaccine development to personalized medicine.

“Drug delivery is a very difficult aspect of medicine,” says Mrozowich. “It’s really easy to put a drug in a closed system and have it interact with a molecule. A lot of drug delivery fails because the body has so many methods of getting rid of the drug. Biophysics can help by determining the strength of interactions and how much should be given to a patient to get it in the right area or to exploit certain unique features of a target, like a cancer cell.”

So far, the club has formed an executive and has roughly 10 members. Membership in the club is open to anyone who’d like to join. Mrozowich says the club plans to bring in guest speakers to share their research and to participate in outreach initiatives that show the community, especially school students, how biophysics impacts daily life.

“When you think about sciences, you think about chemistry, biology and physics,” he says. “There’s so much more out there we want to get people excited about.”

Anyone interested in joining can email Mrozowich, Patel or Demeler.

UNews - Borries Demeler

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U of L master’s student helps develop a better way to measure drug loading, enhance vaccine efficacy

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Early research opportunities lead to publications for U of L students

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Canada Foundation for Innovation funding will help U of L researchers pursue a drug treatment for COVID-19

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��Ѹ�����Դ���߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge – API partnership receives substantial grant from MITACS to develop COVID-19 treatment

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Grant to enable purchase of state-of-the-art biophysical research equipment

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Partnership gives U of L student one-of-a-kind learning opportunity

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U of L students form first international chapter of the Biophysical Society

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��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge students dive into biochemistry

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge researchers awarded federal research grants worth more than $3 million

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge – API partnership receives substantial grant from MITACS to develop COVID-19 treatment