UNews - Bruce McNaughton

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge researchers awarded more than $2.3 million in NSERC, CFI funding support

trevor.kenney — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 22:07:42 +0000

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge researchers across a breadth of disciplines have earned more than $2.3 million in funding support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), as announced by the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science, and Industry, and the Honourable Mark Holland, Minister of Health in Edmonton today.

The funding support is part of a $960-million investment by the federal government in research activities across the country.

“This funding is an integral part of the research process and supports our faculty members and their teams in multiple ways, from hiring essential personnel to training graduate and undergraduate students, to acquiring essential equipment and more,” says Dr. Dena McMartin, ULethbridge vice-president (research). “This support allows our researchers to continue to pursue the solutions to a host of issues facing society today and in the future.”

“My best wishes to all the recipients of these grants, awards and scholarships,” adds Minister Holland. “The government is pleased to invest in your diverse array of health, natural sciences and engineering research projects because we know that your ideas, passion and hard work, as well as the evidence you uncover, are instrumental in improving the health and quality of life of people in Canada, and your findings contribute to the international research effort around the world.”

In all, nine ULethbridge researchers were successful in their NSERC grant applications, which included funding for projects in neuroscience, biological sciences, chemistry & biochemistry and mathematics & computer science. As well, Drs. Majid Mohajerani and Stacey Wetmore earned CFI John R. Evans Leaders Fund (JELF) awards.

Among the projects are Dr. Roy Golsteyn’s (biological sciences) work investigating human cell division and utilizing beneficial chemicals in Canadian prairie plants, which was funded at $300,000 ($60,000 per year over five years). As well, Dr. Bruce McNaughton (neuroscience) receives $420,000 over five years for his study to understand the neural basis of long-term, episodic memory, and Dr. Robert Benkoczi (mathematics & computer science) is receiving a Discovery Development Grant valued at $40,000 over two years as he conducts fundamental research into finding new and more efficient algorithms for planning large scale evacuations.

“The projects our researchers are involved in cover a wide range of topics, all of which are focused on bettering society while providing excellent mentoring and training to undergraduate and graduate students,” adds McMartin. “These funding awards give just a glimpse of the breadth of research activity taking place daily across our campuses.”

Following are details on today’s grant announcements.

NSERC

Discovery Grant (5 years)

Dr. Roy Golsteyn (biological sciences) — Natural products as novel tools to investigate human cell division ($300,000) — Our research uncovers how human cells divide and seeks beneficial chemicals in Canadian prairie plants. From potential cancer treatments to sustainable practices, we are supporting scientific and economic innovation, while fostering cultural exchange with southern Alberta Indigenous communities.

Dr. Igor Kovalchuk (biological sciences) — Transgenerational response to stress in Arabidopsis ($255,000).

Dr. Marc Roussel (chemistry and biochemistry) — Delays in gene expression models: methodological developments ($225,000) — Development of methods for building and analyzing mathematical models of gene expression systems, where transcription, translation and splicing may play a significant role in the timing of events.

Dr. Bruce McNaughton (neuroscience) — Consolidation of cortical memory representations into hippocampus-independent form: neural ensemble dynamics and mechanisms ($420,000) — We are attempting to understand the neural basis of long-term, episodic memory, and its integration into generalized knowledge encoded by brain cells in the cerebral cortex.

Discovery Development Grant (2 years)

Dr. Olga Kovalchuk (biological sciences) — Exosomes - important mediators of direct and bystander radiation effects on the brain ($40,000).

Dr. Robert Benkoczi (mathematics & computer science) — Models and algorithms for facility location ($40,000) — This award supports fundamental research into finding new and more efficient algorithms for planning large scale evacuations.

Dr. Shahadat Hossain (mathematics & computer science) — Efficient computation with sparse and structured matrices – mathematical derivatives and beyond ($40,000).

Research Tools and Instruments (1 year)

Dr. Trushar Patel (chemistry & biochemistry) — Isothermal Titration Calorimetry for Studying Macromolecular Interactions ($150,000) — The installation of ITC (Isothermal Titration Calorimetry) at ULethbridge strengthens the biochemical and biophysical infrastructure as well as the research programs aimed at examining communication events that are at the heart of viral infections and cancer.

Dr. Matthew Tata (neuroscience) — Critical Refit and Upgrade to Electroencephalography Lab at ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge ($149,140) — This upgrade includes state-of-the-art electroencephalography systems to study how brain regions communicate with each other while solving the computational problems of perception and cognition.

CFI

John R. Evans Leaders Fund

Dr. Majid Mohajerani (neuroscience) — Innovative brain imaging techniques for aging-associated diseases ($563,466).

Dr. Stacey Wetmore (chemistry & biochemistry) — Tools for modeling the chemistry of modified nucleic acids ($139,702).

U of L researchers earn $918,000 CIHR grant to test a new idea in memory formation

caroline.zentner — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 23:15:32 +0000

Drs. Bruce McNaughton and Robert Sutherland, neuroscientists from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge’s Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience, will explore a hypothesis about memory formation thanks to a grant of $918,000 over five years from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

“The U of L’s nexus of research and academic programming in neuroscience is internationally renowned,” says Dr. Robert Wood, vice-president (research). “Our ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ’s reputation and impact in this area is a direct reflection of foundational and novel research being conducted by talented neuroscience colleagues such as Dr. McNaughton and Dr. Sutherland. The strength and importance of this project is further reflected in the fact that only about 15 per cent of applications in the national CIHR competition were successful.”

As age-related memory problems are on the rise, McNaughton and Sutherland are looking to unlock some of the mysteries of the memory-making process and, if successful, their research could open up new avenues for therapeutic treatments.

“The main point of the project grant is to test an idea about the organization of long-term memory that’s never been directly tested before,” says Sutherland. “We have had a long, long interest in trying to understand this particular process. It’s relevant to aging, dementia and almost any kind of failure of long-term memory.”

Two systems are involved in the memory formation process, one in the hippocampus and one in the neocortex. New information is replayed in the hippocampus during short-term memory storage while replay in the neocortex is involved in long-term memory storage.

“The real trick in trying to understand how long-term memories work is trying to understand how these two systems interact,” says Sutherland. “We know, for example, that when the interaction between the cortex and the hippocampus becomes rather weak, there’s a correlated memory problem. So, it could well be that this is an early problem in age-related memory decline or perhaps even some dementias.”

In the McNaughton lab, researchers observed a replay phenomenon in the hippocampus of rodents called sharp wave ripples. This distinct pattern of brain activity occurred after the animals had learned a certain task and while they were at rest or sleeping. For example, if the animal was running from one room to another during the learning task, the hippocampus, during rest or sleep, repeats the same sequence of activity during sharp wave ripple events.

“Anytime the brain is not busy processing input, it could be emitting sharp wave ripples,” says McNaughton. “They do occur sporadically when an animal is sitting there eating, which is kind of a reflexive, non-attentive behaviour. The hippocampus seems to have two modes. It has acquisition mode where it processes external input and it has replay mode.”

“The idea that’s been kicking around for quite a while in various models of how long-term memory could work is that somehow that replay strengthens the representation of information outside the hippocampus, and in particular, in other parts of the cortex,” adds Sutherland.

The specifics of an episode, what you ate for breakfast, for instance, are replayed in the hippocampus during rest or sleep. In the neocortex, the memory system extracts the information and interleaves it with other information about what you are likely to eat for breakfast. This neocortical memory is called semantic memory and can be thought of as general world knowledge.

“The long-term memories stored in the cortex are partly distinct memories, but more often than not, it’s kind of a semantic or schematic representation of how the world works,” says McNaughton. “We hypothesize this storage of general knowledge about the world is constructed by amalgamating and extracting the gist of many episodes.”

Associated with replay in the neocortex is a distinctive pattern of brain activity called the K-complex, which can be easily detected with microelectrodes.

“These cortical and hippocampal replays are thought to be shuffled together during rest and sleep, like a deck of cards, except that the number of old patterns exceeds the numbers of recent ones, of course,” says McNaughton. “What’s happening during this replay is the cortex is kind of re-evaluating its assumptions about the world.”

While scientists know that interfering with sleep can interfere with memory storage, testing to see if these patterns of activity are necessary for memory formation is more difficult. But McNaughton and Sutherland have devised a way to test it out in rodents by disrupting the sharp wave ripple and K-complex patterns using weak electrical stimulation of brain circuits.

“We don’t know for sure whether these two processes do the work that we just described,” says Sutherland. “If we do know that’s how new episodic memories are stored together with older memories, then those become very significant targets for therapeutic intervention.”

U of L researchers' work in memory highlighted

caroline.zentner — Wed, 08 Apr 2020 15:40:55 +0000

A group of ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge neuroscience researchers have had their work in memory published in the prestigious Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, highlighting the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience’s (CCBN) expertise in memory research.

“That ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge researchers have contributed four research papers to this special issue on memory reactivation demonstrates our excellence of research and strength in this field,” says Dr. Masami Tatsuno, a neuroscience professor involved in the research.

“Our research in memory is helping us understand how memories are formed in the brain and our findings will help unravel the roots of memory disorders like dementia,” says Dr. Bruce McNaughton, director of the CCBN’s Polaris Brain Research Group.

Memories are formed as result of interactions between different areas of the brain, with the hippocampus and neocortex among the most important structures for memory processing. Evidence also suggests that neural activity patterns of recent experiences in these structures are reactivated during rest, including sleep.

Tatsuno’s research focuses on memory formation and storage during sleep. In one study, Tatsuno and his team analyzed neural activity in the medial prefrontal cortex of rats trained to run a spatial-sequence memory task. They found that reactivation of recent experience preferably occurred during a specific period of the UP state (elevated cortical activity) in slow-wave sleep (SWS). This reactivating in the UP-state period was often preceded by another UP-state period that was not related to recent experience. If the non-reactivating UP-state period is related to remote experience, the transition may help recent experience be gradually integrated with pre-existing memories.

In another study, Dr. Michael Eckert, a U of L post-doctoral fellow who works with Tatsuno and McNaughton, investigated reactivation of motor memory by recording the activity of cells in the rat’s motor cortex. They showed that reactivation occurs not only in SWS but also in rapid-eye-movement sleep (REM). Their results provide the first demonstration that reactivation of motor-skill memory occurs in REM sleep. They also showed that animals learned the skill better when SWS reactivation and REM reactivation occurred on the same day, suggesting that coordinated reactivation in both sleep stages is beneficial for motor learning.

McNaughton and his team investigated how new memories are integrated into the neocortex of the brain without interfering with the memories already there. In complementary learning systems theory, integrating new memories depends on a gradual learning process where new items are interleaved or interspersed with previously learned items. Studies have shown that new information that is consistent with prior knowledge can be integrated quickly. Using an artificial neural network resembling the workings of the neocortex, the researchers set out to understand the role of consistency with prior knowledge to learn more about when integration will be fast or slow and how it might be made more efficient if the items to be learned are structured in a hierarchical way. Their research has shown that the speed of integration depends on its consistency with prior knowledge. Information that had few consistencies with prior knowledge took longer, requiring more gradual interleaved learning.

McNaughton’s group also examined activity in the retrosplenial cortex (RSC), an area of the brain involved in learning and navigation. Their findings indicate that the RSC is involved with processing spatial information during rest, confirming the idea that the brain likely uses off-line periods to consolidate recent memories.

The takeaway message is pretty simple.

“A good night’s sleep is essential for a good memory,” say Tatsuno and McNaughton.

CCBN to create dynamic imaging research program

trevor.kenney — Wed, 02 May 2018 17:14:28 +0000

Researchers surmise that Alzheimer’s disease can start 20 or 30 years before any signs or symptoms appear, but they don’t know exactly what’s going on in the brain in those early stages of the disease.

Dr. Robert Sutherland is the principal investigator for the program that is designed to capture Alzheimer’s disease in its earliest stages.

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge neuroscientists want to track the gradual emergence of Alzheimer’s disease through a state-of-the-art imaging research program that could ultimately lead to earlier diagnoses, prevention strategies and evaluation of new treatments.

Dr. Robert Sutherland, principal investigator, and co-investigators, Drs. Robert McDonald, Bruce McNaughton and Majid Mohajerani, will primarily use rodent models to understand the underlying biological processes associated with the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

“Alzheimer’s disease appears to be the result of the interaction of positive and negative risk factors, such as education, smoking and hypertension,” says Sutherland. “We want to know the precise mechanisms at work between these early risk factors and the development of Alzheimer’s disease.”

Building on the specialized infrastructure already available at the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience, the research program will focus on the trajectory of Alzheimer’s disease on functional and physiological processes in an effort to understand how the interactions between genetics, epigenetics and physiology produce key pathology. The group of researchers will conduct experiments on rodents from adolescence to old age, roughly six weeks to six months of age, looking at genetic makeup, environmental interventions and potential drug therapies while measuring behaviour, biological markers and imaging the brain. Among the factors to be evaluated are circadian rhythms (sleep/wake cycles), cognitive reserve (the capacity to maintain normal cognitive function in the presence of pathology) and early life stress.

“Knowledge of the mechanisms at work in Alzheimer’s disease will be extremely useful for finding early diagnostic methods, discovering interventions that are effective earlier in the course of the disease, and for finding new preventive strategies,” says Sutherland.

The research team expects to develop an animal platform that will quickly predict which treatments and preventive measures will be effective in Alzheimer’s disease, thus giving drug and academic labs and international partners the chance to test candidate therapeutics before clinical trials.

“Our proposal will lead to faster and more predictable development of treatments for Alzheimer’s disease,” says Sutherland. “In addition, our work will identify the independent importance of positive and negative risk factors in Alzheimer’s disease.”

Seed funding was provided through the Hope for Tomorrow Dementia Research Catalyst Grant from the Alzheimer Society of Alberta and Northwest Territories. The grant is a one-time funding opportunity providing $1 million. The funds must be matched for a total $2-million investment to advance dementia research in Alberta.

“We are pleased to award the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge team funds from the Hope for Tomorrow Grant to further their research,” says Chris Lane, president of the Board of Directors, Alzheimer Society of Alberta and Northwest Territories. “Ongoing research brings hope to those living with the disease and highlights the importance of quality dementia research right here in Alberta.”

The $500,000 grant awarded to the U of L has been matched by the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, Polaris Award fund, CAIP Chair Award in Brain Aging & Dementia, Harley Hotchkiss Memorial Fund, Bette Beswick and an anonymous donor.

“We are very grateful to the Alzheimer Society of Alberta and Northwest Territories for this grant and to our generous donors who have provided matching funding,” says Sutherland. “This grant will enable us to gain an understanding of the mechanisms at work in the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s disease.”

U of L neuroscientists awarded nearly $2 million for research into Alzheimer's disease

caroline.zentner — Mon, 12 Mar 2018 22:20:23 +0000

Drs. Bruce McNaughton and Majid Mohajerani will investigate brain neurobiology related to Alzheimer’s disease thanks to two grants worth nearly $2 million over five years from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR).

Dr. Bruce McNaughton

“We are extremely pleased about the success of the applications for these two research projects,” says Dr. Erasmus Okine, vice-president (research) at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge. “The number of people with Alzheimer’s disease is expected to triple by 2050 and the costs of care will skyrocket. More than ever, we need to conduct research that will identify the mechanisms at work in Alzheimer’s disease to allow for the development of effective treatments.”

McNaughton, along with Mohajerani, Drs. Robert Sutherland and Boyer Winters (��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Guelph), received more than $1.2 million to help determine the neural basis of cognitive reserve (CR), the main source of resilience against dementia and normal age-related cognitive decline. In humans, behavioural evidence indicates that CR is related to how much knowledge a person acquires over his or her lifespan. People who are bilingual and have a higher education status, school grades, occupational achievement and vocabulary show fewer symptoms of dementia. But the link between enhanced knowledge and CR needs to be experimentally established and the underlying neural mechanisms need to be determined.

In the mouse model, cognitive reserve is created by exposing mice to enriched environments where they can play, socialize and learn. The researchers will use state-of-the-art imaging technology to measure brain activity at rest and during encoding and retrieval of information, and the ways new and old memories interact in the brain. The measures will be correlated with measures of CR, age and the amount of amyloid deposits, or plaque, in the brain.

“We expect new and unanticipated insights into how the brain creates CR. This will help us establish a basis for comparison with abnormal brain dynamics that may be associated with normal aging and age-related dementia,” says Sutherland. “We’re taking this project forward in other awards in the direction of applying the same neuroscience information to aging humans in collaboration with the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of California Irvine and the U of L.”

In the other project, Mohajerani, along with Dr. Robert McDonald and McNaughton, received nearly $700,000 to probe the link between amyloid deposits in the brain and functional alterations of specific brain networks.

Dr. Majid Mohajerani

Amyloid deposits, made up of amyloid beta peptide, are plaques that form between brain cells and are a feature of Alzheimer’s disease, as is the presence of tangles, made up of tau proteins that form inside brain cells.

“Using a second generation of a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease, we intend to determine how early and in what part of the brain the amyloid beta plaques form,” says Mohajerani. “We don’t know in full detail the temporal dynamics and spatial distribution of amyloid plaque formations and how they contribute to neuronal activity and network dysfunction and behavioural and cognitive impairment in Alzheimer’s disease.”

The first symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease in humans are spatial navigation deficits and disorientation. Mohajerani wants to focus on brain neurons that serve as the brain’s compass or navigation system and examine how the formation of amyloid plaques affects those neurons. Preliminary data shows that neurons located next to plaques become either hyperactive or hypoactive. Previous research using functional MRI studies have shown that brain network activity in humans becomes altered 25 years before any cognitive symptoms, such as memory loss, are evident.

“We are very privileged to become one of the centres in Canada to investigate how formation of amyloid beta plaques leads to brain cell death and subsequently to dementia,” says Mohajerani. “An Alzheimer’s crisis is bearing down on us like a tsunami and this is something we need to take seriously. Within 10 years, Alzheimer’s is going to be the costliest disease in Canada and perhaps everywhere in western countries.”

Seed funding for both projects came from Alberta Innovates, the Alberta Prion Research Institute and the Alzheimer Society of Alberta & Northwest Territories.

“If we didn’t have this seed funding, we wouldn’t have gotten to this point,” Mohajerani says.

Epileptic seizure event leads Luczak down new path of discovery

trevor.kenney — Thu, 07 Sep 2017 16:37:41 +0000

The majority of people who are touched by an epileptic seizure event can only endure the terrifying moments and put their faith in doctors to help their loved one. The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge’s Dr. Artur Luczak, however, was in a position to do much more when his infant son suffered a seizure, and what he’s learned about seizures since has flipped the script on understanding how the brain functions during these traumatic events.

When Dr. Artur Luczak witnessed his infant son experience an epileptic seizure, it understandably made an indelible impression both personally and professionally.

When Luczak, a researcher in the U of L’s Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience (CCBN), witnessed his infant son experience an epileptic seizure, it understandably made an indelible impression both personally and professionally. Already deep in research that examines the interaction between neurons in the brain, Luczak turned to look at ictal (seizure) events by applying data techniques to gain a better understanding of how seizures develop in the brain.

“Having my son in my hands when he lost consciousness was the worst experience in my life,” says Luczak of the seizure event. “It really put me on this path to not only do the basic research but also this transitional research, which means in the future we can have a better understanding of the brain and hopefully design some better help for people with epilepsy.”

The prognosis for his son is positive as he fell into that group of infants who sometimes experience febrile seizure events when they develop high fevers. For the many people who are diagnosed as epileptics however, understanding what is happening in their brains is extremely complicated.

Luczak explains the prevailing theory behind ictal events is that the balance between excitatory neurons and inhibitory neurons in the brain is out of line, favouring excitation and a massive excitatory event. Using a unique technique to look at up to 100 neurons simultaneously, including the ability to differentiate between excitatory and inhibitory neurons, Luczak and his research team found that the inhibitory neurons, rather than being dormant throughout an ictal event, were significantly contributing to the seizure.

“This means that it’s not just excitation without check of inhibition but rather there is some complex network problem in which also inhibitory neurons are playing an important role,” says Luczak, whose findings from a collaborative study with the U of L’s Dr. Bruce McNaughton and researchers from Stanford ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ and Ghent ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ (Belgium) were published recently in the top neurology journal Brain. “It means that the picture is unfortunately much more complex than we thought.”

Luczak says the brain’s circuitry is the most complex system known to man, with billions of neurons interacting with each other for even the most basic of functions. Knowing now that inhibitory neurons are not passive throughout an ictal event opens up a whole new avenue of research.

“The first obvious thing is trying to repress these inhibitory cells during an ictal event. What will happen if we switch off those neurons, will it make it worse or will it reduce the seizure?” he asks. “This is the next question we will be pursuing to somehow better understand what is happening.”

Luczak and his team are performing basic research, putting together the building blocks upon which others construct treatments. What his work will turn into down the road is not yet known, and it may not even lead to epileptic treatment but rather shed light on any of a number of other neurological problems.

“We don’t know yet how to help people with epilepsy based on this research but it will steer us to a better understanding of the brain and points out the understanding we had so far is too simplistic,” he says. “We are trying to understand how the basic circuitry of the brain works and hopefully it will eventually lead to designing some better treatments for people with neurological disorders.”

U of L students turn research ideas into a company that's generating buzz

caroline.zentner — Wed, 22 Jul 2015 21:02:46 +0000

A group of ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge graduate students is patenting a process that harnesses the power of the body’s own cells to repair scar tissue in the brain – thereby opening up a new world of possibilities for treating stroke and traumatic brain injury.

Aubrey Demchuk and Scott Wong use a transmission electron microscope to obtain an image of a cell nucleus

The students, who just recently formed Nomadogen Biotechnologies Inc., have created a combination genetic and cellular therapy dubbed Nomadocytes, which utilizes patient-derived cells to non-invasively deliver therapeutic molecules to brain cells affected by injury or disease.

The group recently won two of three categories at the Chinook Entrepreneur Challenge presented by Community Futures Lethbridge Region, earning the top award in the Technology and Innovation Business Stream and Student Business Stream.

“This research is very exciting,” says Zak Stinson, a Regina, Sask. native who came to the U of L in 2011 to complete a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in Neuroscience. He is now working on his Master of Science with a major in Neuroscience degree under the guidance of Dr. Bruce McNaughton and is based out of the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of California-Irvine. “Neurodegenerative disorders are devastating to patients, families and the economy. There is massive unmet need for new, better treatments for things like stroke, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's disease, and this need is only going to increase as the population ages.”

The beauty of Nomadogen’s technology is its relative simplicity and non-invasive nature.

“Nomadocytes are a naturally occurring type of brain cell that we can derive from bone marrow cells, modify for our own purposes, and re-administer without any invasive neurosurgical procedures,” explains Aubrey Demchuk, a Lethbridge native who recently completed a Master of Science degree with a major in Neuroscience at the U of L. “We are simply adapting a small communication vesicle produced by these cells so that they are attracted specifically to areas of the brain that are damaged, basically anything with scar tissue from either stroke or traumatic brain injury, and using them to deliver a therapeutic message.”

Zak Stinson

The cells naturally migrate to these damaged areas in the brain before releasing a vesicle that contains a specifically designed DNA molecule. This molecule is taken up by the scar tissue and, when the DNA is expressed, converts the scar tissue back into functional neurons.

The group’s pre-clinical trials in cell culture models have been extremely encouraging and, by fall 2015, testing will move into rodent models.

“If the cells behave in a living brain as we predict they will, the therapeutic potential for Nomadocytes is massive,” says Stinson.

Because the technology they have created is an easily adaptable platform, a litany of other neurodegenerative disorders could potentially be treatable and the therapy could even conceivably be used to target peripheral injuries, such as tissue damage in a limb.

Demchuk, Stinson and partners, Scott Wong and Evan Caton, met as part of the U of L’s award-winning iGEM program and quickly found a synergy in their thinking.

Evan Caton

“The four of us have different but complementary backgrounds in genetics, neuroscience, and biochemistry and together we generated a number of ideas that fit together very nicely,” says Demchuk. “At the end of the iGEM season, we had collectively invested a lot of time and thought into this project and wanted to pursue it further, if only because the research seemed promising. The company was kind of an accident that came out of it.”

She admits that, as scientists, they never thought about the business side of their technology but were encouraged by faculty members within the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience (CCBN) to incorporate and then patent their technology. With guidance from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ-Industry Liaison Office and assistance from technology advisor Bill Halley and the Regional Innovation Network Southern Alberta (RINSA), among others, Nomadogen is generating significant industry buzz.

“It is very exciting because we are already much more successful than we had ever hoped,” says Demchuk. “We came in with very low expectations and so far we have had a lot of people interested and invested in our idea.”

Canada Foundation for Innovation investment to support creation of cutting-edge cellular imaging research centre

trevor.kenney — Fri, 29 May 2015 17:24:48 +0000

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge will embark on the creation of a new interdisciplinary research facility that promises to be Canada’s leading cellular imaging research centre thanks to a $2 million investment from the Government of Canada’s Canada Foundation for Innovation.

The Cell Signaling Interdisciplinary Research Centre (CSIRC) is a facility that will bring together researchers from neuroscience, biochemistry and biological sciences.

Today, the Honourable Ed Holder, Minister of State (Science and Technology), announced more than $333 million for new research infrastructure that Canadian researchers will use to advance Canadian knowledge in areas ranging from mood disorders and robotics to food security and the search for new planets.

At the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, the $2,098,277 investment towards Dynamic Brain Mapping: Cell signaling to systems function, will create the Cell Signaling Interdisciplinary Research Centre (CSIRC), a facility that will bring together researchers from neuroscience, biochemistry and biological sciences.

“We plan to create Canada’s leading cellular imaging research centre to make fundamental discoveries on how dynamic regulation of brain and other systems activity determines risk for important diseases,” says lead investigator Dr. Robert Sutherland, Board of Governors Research Chair in Neuroscience. “These discoveries will provide new, key targets for developing prevention and therapy strategies.”

Sutherland, who will work closely with fellow neuroscientists Drs. Aaron Gruber, Andrew Iwaniuk, Bryan Kolb, Robert McDonald, Bruce McNaughton, Gerlinde Metz and Majid Mohajerani as well as Drs. Olga Kovalchuk (biological sciences) and HJ Wieden (biochemistry), explains how the new facility will extend the scope of researchers who are currently studying basic processes regulating brain health, degenerative disorders, infective agents and cancer.

“Gene expression and epigenetics play a key role in answering how cells learn, how they process, store and distribute information acquired during development,” he says. “CSIRC will enable us to make new discoveries in gene expression, epigenetics and therapeutics in cancer, dementia, developmental brain disorders, stroke and infections.”

Dr. Lesley Brown, the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ’s Interim Vice-President (Research), says the CFI investment recognizes the research expertise present at the U of L.

“Our researchers are respected as leaders in their field and the work they do is of great relevance to important areas of public concern such as health care,” says Brown. “This investment from the federal government is an endorsement of the world-class research being conducted here on campus.”

Nearly all of the infrastructure will enable the usersof the CSIRC group to conduct brain-imaging projects with viral vectors and genetically modified rodents. It will allow the group to move forward their activities, such as health-related research, training and partnering with non-academic collaborators, to that of a world leader.

“Today’s announcement will strengthen Canada’s reputation in science and technology by supporting research infrastructure that will attract world-class talent, train a new generation of students and make discoveries that benefit Canadians in remarkable ways,” says Holder.

Neuroscience collaboration to boost research capacity on both sides of border

trevor.kenney — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 17:09:29 +0000

An evolving partnership between the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, Alberta Innovates - Health Solutions (AIHS) and the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of California Irvine (UCI) is poised to enrich collaborative science and training opportunities for North American researchers in the field of brain and memory.

Dr. Bruce McNaughton will now be splitting his time between the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge and ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of California Irvine.

An agreement has been struck that will see renowned neuroscientist Dr. Bruce McNaughton splitting his time between the two campuses over the next four years, leading the development of an international exchange program between two world-class centres of brain research excellence.

“This is an outstanding opportunity to develop a strong research and training link between the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience (CCBN) at and UCI’s Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory (CNLM), centres that have highly overlapping interests and complementary research skills,” says McNaughton, the U of L’s Alberta Innovates – Health Solutions’ Polaris Award winner.

“Multi-centre collaborations are the wave of the future in health research, and this arrangement is a value-add for Albertans,” says Dr. Pamela Valentine, AIHS chief operating officer. “It will enable neuroscientists at both centres to enhance their research support from several private and public sources.”

The arrangement is expected to include support from initiatives such as the Brain Activity Mapping (BAM) program in the United States, which has been funded $150 million per year for 10 years, the European Union's Human Brain Project, and the Human Frontier Science Program, which explicitly supports international collaborations.

McNaughton was recently jointly appointed at UC Irvine School of Biological Sciences as a distinguished professor of neurobiology & behavior. He will be on partial leave of absence from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, having initially arrived there in 2008 as the recipient of the 10-year, $20-million AIHS Polaris Award.

Since McNaughton’s AIHS Polaris appointment, the CCBN has added five junior faculty members with a research focus on neural systems and memory, created the framework for multiple international collaborations and substantially increased its infrastructure to support some of the most advanced systems neuroscience research in the world.

“One of the principal missions of the AIHS Polaris program is to develop major external research collaborations in the field of neuroscience,” says Dr. Dan Weeks, the U of L’s vice-president, research. “Through this agreement, our researchers not only gain access to significant grant opportunities, but to the equipment and expertise that UC Irvine offers.

“UCI faculty and trainees will also have access to CCBN expertise and infrastructure, established through the AIHS Polaris program, that features some of the most advanced instrumentation in modern neuroscience. This arrangement will provide outstanding opportunities to further our mutual goals and provide a platform for inter-faculty collaborative work that we’ve not had previously.”

The intended program initially involves collaborative work on an animal model of memory impairments in dementia developed by UCI, as well as an animal model, under development jointly at CCBN and CNLM, for use in creating devices to help restore memory function in patients with memory impairment due to loss of hippocampal function.

McNaughton foresees the program expanding into a ‘super-centre’ that would include productive links with several similar centres around the world.

2013 Gill Symposium honours neuroscience researcher McNaughton

robert.cooney — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 19:08:50 +0000

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Neuroscience researcher Dr. Bruce McNaughton is receiving a significant award from a major US-based neuroscience research institute located at Indiana ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ, in Bloomington, IN.

As part of the annual Indiana ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ – Bloomington Gill Centre for Biomolecular Science Symposium, McNaughton, the Alberta Innovates – Health Solutions (AIHS) Polaris Research Chair at the Department of Neuroscience and Canadian Center for Behavioural Neuroscience (CCBN), will receive the 2013 Gill Award for his significant contributions to neuroscience research.

He will also deliver a keynote address to the 300 delegates who attend the event each year from around the world.

Dr. Bruce McNaughton was the first scientist to win the $10 million Alberta Innovates – Health Solutions (AIHS) Polaris Award, the richest health research award in Canada.

McNaughton joined the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge in 2008, moving his research program from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Arizona to the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience (CCBN) at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge.

His research focuses on how brain cells process information and form memories, and how those processes are altered by aging, trauma or substance abuse.

McNaughton is the first scientist to win the $10 million Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (now Alberta Innovates – Health Solutions (AIHS)) Polaris Award, the richest health research award in Canada. The AIHS award of $10 million was matched by the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge and the Informatics Circle of Research Excellence (ICORE) for a total investment of $20 million into McNaughton's research and the CCBN.

There are presently 56 researchers on McNaughton’s Polaris team at the CCBN, including principal investigators, doctoral and post-doctoral researchers, masters and undergraduate students, and a team of technicians.

According to Gerry Oxford, executive director of the Stark Neurosciences Research Institute and professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the IU School of Medicine, McNaughton has provided definitive experimental evidence for the concept that consolidation of memory -- in this case the memory of an individual journey in space -- was facilitated by repetitive "replay" of the hippocampal neuronal activity that occurred during the actual experience.

"His scientific accomplishments are extraordinary and broad, but with a relentless focus on understanding cognitive function through the dynamics of functional brain circuitry," Oxford said.

Gill Symposium organizers will also acknowledge the achievements of Dr. Loren M. Frank, associate professor of the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of California San Francisco Center for Integrative Neuroscience and Department of Physiology, who is receiving this year’s Gill Young Investigator Award. His findings have broken new ground concerning memory formation and wakefulness.

For more information about the Gill Symposium or the Gill Center please contact Misty Theodore at 812-856-1930 or mtheodor@indiana.edu.

To speak with Professor McNaughton, contact Amanda Mauthe-Kaddoura at 403-332-4099 or amanda.mauthe2@uleth.ca.

Website: http://ccbn.uleth.ca/people/primary/McNaughton.php

Professor Frank can be reached at 415-502-7357 or loren@phy.ucsf.edu.

For additional information, please visit the Gill Symposium website: http://news.indiana.edu/releases/iu/university-wide/2013/09/2013-gill-awards.shtml

About the Linda and Jack Gill Center for Biomolecular Science

The Linda and Jack Gill Center for Biomolecular Science, which is part of the College of Arts and Sciences at IU Bloomington, was established by a generous gift from Linda and Jack Gill to advance the understanding of complex biological processes and to train the next generation of scientists in biomolecular measurements, especially in the field of neuroscience. Members and collaborators include faculty from IU's departments of Biology, Chemistry, Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, Physics, Psychological and Brain Sciences, Neuroscience and the School of Medicine.

http://www.indiana.edu/~gillctr/symposiums.shtml

UNews - Bruce McNaughton

��Ѹ�����Դ���߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge researchers awarded more than $2.3 million in NSERC, CFI funding support

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