“By improving cancer research, we are helping to improve the lives of cancer patients and their families,” said Health Minster Sharon Blady. “Research like this is vital to providing state of the art care to cancer and blood disorder patients and a vibrant research program also attracts the best and brightest of scientists and researchers.”

The Research Institute of Oncology and Hematology builds upon the success of CCMB and U of M’s original cancer research institution, the Manitoba Institute of Cell Biology, which has focused on molecular biology research since 1969. The RIOH expansion will create an umbrella organization to include all cancer research in the province.

“We are grateful to the University of Manitoba for their committed partnership to the advancement of cancer research in Manitoba,” said CancerCare Manitoba president and CEO Dr. Sri Navaratnam. “RIOH will now enable multidisciplinary teams across the cancer continuum to work more closely together, on more projects that will have greater direct benefit to our patients.”

The expanded cancer research platform at RIOH will includes the entire spectrum of cancer research:

• Discovery Research
• Prevention
• Clinical Innovation/Health Services
• Patient Experience

“We are excited to embark on this new collaborative approach to cancer research in Manitoba,” said Digvir Jayas, Vice-President (Research and International) and Distinguished Professor at the University of Manitoba. “By creating teams working in an interdisciplinary and multi-institutional manner, we are supporting transformational research that is put into practice for better healthcare of Manitobans and Canadians.”

Research Manitoba’s recent award of a $2.5 Million grant to CCMB Leukemia researchers, confirms the integrated, multidisciplinary approach to research planned for RIOH. Led by CCMB Senior Scientist, Dr. Spencer Gibson, the grant is for research into the most common type of leukemia (Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia), and is based on a cluster approach to bring together the best and brightest in research of a particular disease.

Cancer research in Manitoba also receives strong support from Manitobans, particularly through their ongoing fundraising efforts on behalf of the CancerCare Manitoba Foundation. The Foundation has contributed approximately $98 Million to CCMB exclusively, since 2000.

The MICB, located at 675 McDermot Avenue, is a research institute partnership between the university and CancerCare Manitoba.

The lab has a team of 17 senior scientists, including doctors who have developed some of the world’s most effective cancer treatments. They supervise and mentor students doing their MSc or PhD work in cancer genetics and blood disorders.

Today UM Today brings you two additional profiles of graduate students working at that lab — these student researchers talk about what they do and what they love about research at the University of Manitoba.

 ***

Rebecca Dielschneider, PhD candidate, immunology, College of Medicine.

Rebecca Dielschneider, PhD candidate, immunology, College of Medicine

Nova Scotian Rebecca Dielschneider knew she wanted to work in the medical and science research field ever since she saw a presentation on the flu virus in high school. Today, she’s working toward her PhD in immunology at the MICB under Spencer Gibson [PhD/’97].

Rebecca Dielschneider, PhD candidate, immunology, College of Medicine.

Dielschneider [BSc (Hons.)/’11] [EM1] spends her days doing experiments with patient-donated blood, isolating cancer cells and peering through microscopes to study CLL (chronic lymphocytic leukemia). CLL is a cancer of the immune system and is the most common adult leukemia in North America.

“It’s a very interesting disease, both from a cancer-biology perspective, and from an immunology perspective,” Dielschneider said, sitting in an office the scientists refer to as the “Enterprise.” Filled with high-tech microscopic imaging equipment connected to computers, the room resembles the main deck of the Star Trek ship.

“These immune cells just go absolutely crazy and everything that immunologists know about these cells is completely the opposite when they become cancerous.”

Dielschneider is testing different therapies that target specific proteins, parts of the cell, and cell communications that change when they become cancerous. She recently completed a set of experiments on protein bonding, which took months to investigate. She’s on track to publish her first studies this summer.

Dielschneider: ‘I love to ask questions and I love to find answers.’

 

“I love to ask questions and I love to find answers. It’s so rewarding to discover something and to make progress and move a field forward — even one little glimmer of hope is all you need to get through the months of negative data or experiments that don’t work out the way you want them to.”

Besides the challenge of her research, Dielschneider loves graduate studies with the U of M because of the research community.

“The U of M has all the perks of some of the bigger universities in the country, but also the benefits of being in a smaller city — it’s a close-knit community.”

***

Brent Guppy, PhD candidate, biochemistry and medical genetics, College of Medicine.

Brent Guppy, PhD candidate, biochemistry and medical genetics, College of Medicine

Brent Guppy went from managing a painting business with his brother to put himself through his undergraduate degree, to painting petri dishes with cancer cells for his PhD research.

For the last four years, Guppy [BSc(Hons.)/10] has been investigating cancer genetics under the supervision of Kirk McManus [PhD/’04]. The research focuses on finding ways to kill cancer cells without harming a patient’s healthy, normal cells.

It was the hands-on lab experience through a project course in genetics during his BSc (also at the U of M) that inspired him to pursue graduate studies in cancer research.

“You could say that cancer is really a genetic disease,” Guppy said over the sound of an autoclave sterilizing lab equipment behind him.

“There’s familial components to cancer, and then there’s non-familial components where something just happens to your genes and it sets the stage for cancer.”

He’s passionate about his research and describes it as a “perfect fit.”

Guppy is passionate about his research and describes it as a ‘perfect fit.’

 

Brent Guppy.

He recently received the university’s 2014 Emerging Leader Award in the graduate student category. The Life Science Association of Manitoba also presented him with the Most Promising Life Science Student award in February.

Guppy serves on the U of M Graduate Student’s Association (UMGSA), and has advice for students who are thinking about pursuing grad studies at the U of M: come out to UMGSA events to help balance the stress of long days spent working and studying with fun and socializing.

But there’s not much that can keep him out of the lab.

“Every day, I get excited,” he said. “There’s times when I’m at home and thinking ‘I wonder what’s going on’? Then I get up in the morning and I’m excited to see what happened to the experiment because I’m really interested in finding out — it sounds so cheesy, but it’s almost like Christmas day, like ‘what did Santa bring?’”

Located at 675 McDermot Avenue, the MICB is a research institute partnership between the university and CancerCare Manitoba.

The lab has a team of 17 senior scientists, including doctors who have developed some of the world’s most effective cancer treatments. They supervise and mentor students doing their MSc or PhD work in cancer genetics and blood disorders.

UM Today sat down in the lab with some students to find out more about what they do and what they love about research at the University of Manitoba.

Here’s one of the student profiles. We’ll feature two more later this week.

Yueqin Zhou, PhD candidate, biochemistry, College of Medicine

PhD student Yueqin Zhou presents her research at a Health Sciences Poster Competition.

Yueqin Zhou recently made an amazing discovery in the course of her research on cancer genetics with Geoff Hicks (PhD/’91) — she helped find a gene related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS; also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease) that helps to slow down the progression of the disease.

ALS is a muscle-wasting disease that locks a person inside their body as their ability to move, breathe, and swallow decreases until they are paralyzed. Patient prognosis is not good — 80 per cent of people die between two to five years after being diagnosed.

Zhou’s impressive findings were published in the medical journal PLOS Genetics in October 2013, and the media picked up on her discovery.

“I went home that night and watched the news on TV,” Zhou [MSc/’05] told UM Today, sitting on a stool in the lab surrounded by racks of test tubes and measuring instruments.

“I saw this man on the news who said he’d been diagnosed with ALS five years before, and hadn’t had any good news since then.

Zhou: ‘He told the reporter that my discovery was the first good news he’d heard in five years.’

“He told the reporter that my discovery was the first good news he’d heard in five years.”

Thanks to the media coverage, a woman in another province heard about Zhou’s research.

The woman’s husband had ALS and the family was so moved by the possibilities of Zhou’s research, the woman called Zhou at the lab to tell her just how much her research meant to ALS patients.

“I was so surprised when she called — I asked her how she got my phone number, and she said she Googled me!” Zhou said with a laugh.

Zhou: ‘I’ve never met these people, but it showed me that what I’m doing is really helping people.’

 

“I’ve never met these people, but it showed me that what I’m doing is really helping people.”

Zhou counts the excitement of publishing papers, recognition from her peers, and hearing from people with the disease as her favourite parts of doing graduate research with the University of Manitoba.

–Erika Miller, Intern

Students work with faculty to prepare samples for the ISS // Photo by Daniel Gwozdz

It all started a year ago, when students at tiny Brant-Argyle School in rural Manitoba were learning about cancer as part of a project on Terry Fox. Their school project has really boosted them upward to success, as next month, three of the students will travel to Virginia where they will watch their experimental project get launched into space for installation aboard the International Space Station.

There are only about 40 students in the entire four-room, K-8 school that is a brick heritage building in the hamlet of Argyle northwest of Winnipeg. The school has multi-level classes, which means it’s basically a 21^st century “one-room schoolhouse” that didn’t even have reliable wifi until recently.

Despite these apparent drawbacks, the school has teachers with great determination and passion for creating educational experiences for their students. Every year, for example, the entire school participates in a Terry Fox run to support cancer research and engage in cancer-related educational activities. Teachers in the Interlake School Division, many of whom are University of Manitoba graduates, are helping their students reach for the stars.

Leslie Fuerst (BSc/97, PBDipEd/08) at Brant-Argyle School was trained by her colleague Maria Nickel (BPE/92) about a competition sponsored by the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) operated by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE). SSEP allows schools in North America to design and propose real experiments that can be done on the International Space Station (ISS).

Nickel, who teaches at Woodlands School, has a special interest in space and astronomy and even runs a “space club” for students in grades six to eight. She had developed a SSEP proposal that involved all of the Interlake School Division’s 450 students in grades five and six from eight elementary schools. Nickel and Fuerst were among 17 teachers who attended an in-service on how to complete the experiment writing process and enter the competition. Fuerst drafted a proposal in which several of her students would assemble an experimental package that could go into space to test whether cells can be prevented from mutating into cancerous cells.

Yeast in space

Fuerst contacted researchers at the Manitoba Institute of Cell Biology (MICB) for assistance in designing an experiment that could work well on the ISS. With their input, Fuerst and her students formulated an experiment titled: “Will cosmic radiation increase the rate of mutations in yeast’s DNA? Will an antioxidant from green tea decrease the rate of mutations in DNA?” In space, astronauts are subjected to increased levels of cosmic rays that can cause mutations in the cells in their bodies. Fuerst and her students wanted to know if astronauts can decrease their risk of cancer by taking an antioxidant supplement said to prevent cell mutations. Since yeast cells are similar to human cells, a study of the effects of cosmic rays and antioxidants on yeast cells may be useful in finding ways to keep astronauts safe in space, and also test whether antioxidants really can prevent cancer.

The Argyle proposal won the SSEP competition out of 16 finalists in Manitoba, placing first in front of two finalists from Woodlands, and was selected to move on to the final phase of competition. The Manitoba proposal was selected from 51 international entries and was the only Canadian entry selected. Fuerst and three of her students will be travelling to Virginia in December, where they will be guests of US Ambassador Gary Doer (former premier of Manitoba) who will take them on a personal tour of the Canadian Consulate. They will then travel to Wallops Island where they will watch their experiment get launched into space aboard a Cygnus transport vehicle on the Antares rocket on its way to docking with the International Space Station, currently scheduled for December 15, 2013.

Argyle School students did much in-class preparation before arriving at the U of M to handle yeast they will send to the ISS.

In preparation for the launch, Fuerst and her students have had to design and build their experimental package. After many hours of in-class preparation, this week, she and three students visited the Manitoba Institute of Cell Biology where they were taught how to handle test tubes and syringes, operate a centrifuge and dilute samples.

On Friday, November 8, 2013, Fuerst and her grade six students Ethan Enns, Ryan Petricig and Avery Good will head to the laboratory of Dan Gietz and Liz Henson (BSc/92, MSc/95) in the University of Manitoba department of biochemistry to prepare and package the yeast samples, then deliver them to Magellan Aerospace in Winnipeg. There, the samples will undergo final preparation for transport to NANORACKS LLC in Houston, Texas, which will then transport them to the NASA MARS (Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport) facility. Barring another scrub (this is the seventh launch attempt), the yeast samples will head to space on December 15, 2013 and remain in orbit for more than 10 weeks. When the samples return to Earth, Ethan, Ryan and Avery will compare the number mutated yeast colonies and determine if green tea can indeed prevent DNA damage.

Professor Geoff Hicks

A team of researchers at the University of Manitoba have discovered a mechanism by which a mutated gene called TLS/FUS causes amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). This is the first report describing how, at the molecular level, genes such as TLS/FUS cause ALS, and opens up avenues to possible new treatments.

Geoff Hicks and a team of graduate students and fellows in the Manitoba Institute of Cell Biology and the Regenerative Medicine Program at the University of Manitoba have found that the mutated gene TLS/FUS creates a “runaway train” effect that produces too much protein within cells.

DNA

TLS/FUS is a frequently mutated gene in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is characterized by a progressive degeneration of motor neurons. The team discovered that when healthy cells make enough TLS protein, some of it travels back into the nucleus to tell the cell to stop making more protein. This auto-regulation controls how much is being made so that the cell doesn’t make too much. In people with ALS, the genetic mutation prevents the protein from traveling back into the nucleus so the cell keeps making more and more protein. The extra proteins build up in the cell in large clumps, disrupting normal cell function and leading to cell death of the motor neuron. A person with ALS slowly loses function in the arms and legs, then eventually the throat and diaphragm.

As many as 80 per cent of people diagnosed with ALS will die within two to five years after diagnosis. A notable exception is astrophysicist Stephen Hawking who has lived into his 70s with it, defying all the odds and every medical explanation.

The discovery is reported in the latest issue of the journal PLoS Genetics, and is the first time that a mechanism causing cell damage and neuronal death in ALS has been traced to changes in gene splicing. In their laboratory, Hicks and his team also created a small molecule that can be introduced into the cell to correct the splicing error and help reduce the protein aggregation seen in ALS cells. This experimental process opens up the possibility of a new treatment that could slow the progression of the disease.

Regenerative Medicine Research Group

In addition, Hicks and his team note that TLS mutations also play a role in cancer, so the splicing mechanism they describe might have a role in leukemias and neuronal tumours.

For media wanting more information, please contact Dr. Geoff Hicks, Director, Regenerative Medicine Program, University of Manitoba, at: 204-318-5287, or email: hicksgg@cc.umanitoba.ca