Violence against youth is a major cause of death in this age. Youth who have been victims of violence are more likely to be hurt by someone else again. Much of the research in preventing violent injuries in youth have focused on schools and community programs. This research study aims to see if we can prevent youth (age 12-17 years old) from being victims of violence by focusing on general pediatrician clinics. The research team will randomly allot youth to either receive their standard care or to also receive violence screening in their pediatrician appointment. We will then track the youth for the next year to see if they have had any injuries compatible with violence.
This project is jointly funded by a IMPaCT Health Research BC Training Award. This is a British Columbia based project. The Principle Investigator is Dr. Tanjot Singh, a pediatrician and early career researcher.
Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are one of the most common bacterial infections in young infants. Many babies under one month of age are treated with antibiotics, but doctors are still uncertain about whether oral antibiotics work as well in newborns as they do in older children or adults. This is because a newborn’s digestive system is still developing, and that might prevent the body from properly absorbing the medicine—possibly leading to serious complications like kidney damage.
As a result, many infants currently receive long courses of intravenous (IV) antibiotics in hospital. This approach, while cautious, can be painful and stressful for babies and their families, and adds to hospital costs.
My project focuses on improving this situation. I aim to study how well oral antibiotics are absorbed in young babies, especially after they have received a few initial days of IV treatment. By collecting small samples of blood, saliva, and urine, we can measure how much of the oral medicine actually gets into a baby’s system. This is called pharmacokinetic (PK) research—it helps us understand how medicine moves through the body.
This knowledge could make a big difference. If we know that babies can absorb enough of the medicine through their mouths, we could safely switch many infants to oral antibiotics sooner—allowing them to go home earlier, reduce the need for painful procedures, and limit the risk of hospital-related complications.
I will work closely with a team of nurses, pediatricians, pharmacists, and medicine specialists to run this study safely and efficiently. We are also partnering with psychologists and parent advisors to understand the impact of treatment on families and how to improve future studies.
This project is supported by the IMPaCT program, which helps early-career researchers like me develop skills in designing and running clinical trials. Through this support, I aim to help make antibiotic use safer, more effective, and more family-friendly for our youngest patients.
Human milk is the best food for babies in the first 6 months of life. Certain medical conditions can stop families from using human milk for a period of time, a devastating event for many parents. Chylothorax is a post-operative complication from open-heart surgery where long-chain fats accumulate in the chest. The first line treatment is to remove long-chain fats from the diet to allow the body to heal for a period of up to 6 weeks. This therapy currently involves stopping all human milk and switching to a low-fat medical formula in BC. However, our team has created a method to defat human milk in a home setting without specialized equipment. Our study is looking at the safety and ease of using this home-based method with families and children that develop chylothorax. Using defatted human milk protect the benefits a baby receives from human milk and will preserve the family role in feeding.
Fragility fractures of the pelvis are a very common injury in the elderly and are increasing in incidence with an aging population. These injuries are associated with high healthcare costs as well as poor patient outcomes, including decline in function and decreased independence. Historically, older adults with fragility fractures of the pelvis received nonoperative treatment with supportive care because operative management was deemed too invasive for this patient population. However, the development of percutaneous and less invasive surgical techniques has led to an increased frequency of operative stabilization of pelvis fractures in older adults. It is unclear if the increasing use of surgical fixation is improving outcomes for patients with pelvic fragility fractures. A definitive trial is urgently needed to help guide treatment decision making in this injury population.
Dr Sepehri is an orthopaedic trauma surgeon at Vancouver General Hospital who has experience and expertise in conducting research that focuses on challenging acute fractures of the extremities and pelvic ring. Dr Sepehri received funding from the Orthopaedic Trauma Association (OTA) to lead a feasibility study to support and inform the design of a definitive Randomized Controlled Trial evaluating operative treatment of fragility fractures of the pelvic ring. This study is an international collaboration with sites in Canada, USA and Spain. Supported by the CANadian Consortium of Clinical Trial TRAINing Platform (CANTRAIN)-Clinical Trials Training Programs, funded by Michael Smith Health Research BC, Dr Sepehri will receive mentorship from Dr Sheila Sprague, Research Director and Associate Professor within the Department of Surgery at McMaster University. Dr Sprague has expertise in the design and conduct of large RCTs with an established track record for mentoring early career surgeon scientists.
The McNagny and Roskelley research teams are thrilled to receive generous Matching Funds from Health Research BC in support of our 2025 GlycoNet Strategic Initiatives Grant from the Canadian Glycomics Network Centre of Excellence. This critical funding, made possible through Canada’s Networks of Centres of Excellence and Strategic Science Fund programs, will accelerate our mission to develop novel groundbreaking cancer immunotherapies.
Led by Prof. Kelly M. McNagny from the School of Biomedical Engineering and co-applicant Prof. Calvin Roskelley, both at the Vancouver Campus of the University of British Columbia, this project merges world-class academic expertise and cutting-edge industrial innovation. We are proud to collaborate with MetaStem Therapeutics (a UBC startup) and iProgen Biotech, two pioneering BC-based companies committed to bringing the next-generation of antibody drug conjugate (ADC) therapies to the clinic. Their invaluable industry expertise and in-kind support will help drive this research forward to meet a critical unmet clinical need in treating patients with metastatic cancer.
Our work builds on groundbreaking insights into the function of the stem cell glycoprotein, podocalyxin, a key driver of aggressive tumor cell behavior and an effective predictor of poor outcomes in most types of solid tumors. From these insights, we have developed a prototype ADC-based immunotherapy engineered to selectively bind and eliminate tumor cells while sparing healthy tissues. Based on these crucial findings, we will now refine and optimize our ADC to enhance its effectiveness against recurrent ovarian and pancreatic cancers, laying the foundation for the rapid transition of this therapy into clinical trials.
Our ultimate goal is to develop more effective, less toxic treatment options for patients battling these devastating cancers. Thanks to this generous support, we are one step closer to making this very novel therapeutic approach available to those patients for which there are currently few effective clinical options.
This project, supported by the 2024 CANTRAIN competition, focuses on developing and evaluating innovative clinical trial designs to enhance efficiency and reliability. Led by BC Principal Investigator Denghuang (Jeff) Zhan, a third-year doctoral student at UBC, this BC-based research integrates modern statistical approaches to address challenges in clinical trials.
The study builds on insights from the THREE-D trial, a groundbreaking study that evaluated treatments for patients with treatment-resistant depression (TRD). Traditional clinical trials, like the THREE-D trial, often require large sample sizes and fixed designs, which can be inefficient and inflexible. This research introduces a Bayesian adaptive design framework, which allows trials to adjust in real time based on accumulating data, improving efficiency and reducing costs.
By employing advanced simulation methods, including plasmode simulation (a technique using real-world data with controlled modifications), this project compares the performance of Bayesian adaptive designs with traditional fixed designs. Key benefits of Bayesian adaptive designs include the ability to stop trials early for efficacy or futility, more precise treatment effect estimation, and reduced sample size requirements without compromising statistical power.
The anticipated outcomes of this work include:
- Improved trial designs that are more responsive to real-world data.
- Practical guidelines for implementing Bayesian adaptive designs in clinical research.
- Enhanced methodologies that could accelerate treatment evaluation in areas like psychiatry and beyond.
This research will not only advance statistical methodologies but also contribute to the broader goals of Learning Health Systems (LHS), enabling healthcare systems to learn and adapt quickly to new evidence. By making trials faster, more flexible, and cost-effective, this work has the potential to improve healthcare delivery and patient outcomes.
Sleep is essential to our health and well-being. Poor sleep quality is linked to chronic health problems, such as heart disease, diabetes, cognitive impairment, and dementia. After a stroke, people often experience difficulties in getting a good night’s sleep. Approximately half of stroke survivors have trouble falling and/or staying asleep. Poor sleep quality among stroke survivors increases the risk of recurrent stroke by 3-fold and the risk of early death by 76%. Hence, stroke survivors need strategies to promote better sleep. Fortunately, evidence shows that exercise can improve sleep quality even among those with sleep problems. Whether exercise training can improve sleep quality in adults with chronic stroke (i.e., at least 12 months since their stroke) and poor sleep quality is unknown. This study will investigate the effect of twice-weekly exercise training on sleep quality over a 6-month period in persons with chronic stroke (i.e., had a stroke more than 12 months ago) and poor sleep quality. We will also investigate the effect of exercise training on sleep duration, time spent in physical activity and sitting, thinking abilities, cardiovascular health, mood, and quality of life. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research funds this BC-based research to principal investigator Professor Teresa Liu-Ambrose, a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Healthy Aging at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Professor Liu-Ambrose’s research program focuses on the promotion of mobility and cognitive outcomes in older adults with chronic stroke and mild cognitive impairment through lifestyle interventions. Postdoctoral fellow Guilherme Moraes Balbim has received the StrokeCOG & Michael Smith Research BC Postdoctoral Fellowship to assist with recruitment, personnel training, manage participant flow and the study timeline, oversee data management and quality, conduct data analysis, lead the writing of scientific articles and knowledge translation materials, and present findings in scientific conferences and knowledge translation initiatives. Our proposed research will inform how to get better sleep after a stroke to promote recovery, long-term health, and well-being.
Colorectal cancer is the second most deadly cancer in Canada. Treatment typically involves surgery and chemotherapy, which can be effective but also cause significant side effects and not always prevent the cancer from returning. The DYNAMIC-III/CO.29 study is a major international clinical trial led by BC-based researcher and medical oncologist, Dr. Jonathan Loree based at the University of British Columbia and associated with the BC Cancer Agency. The trial involves 1000 patients who have had surgery for stage III colorectal cancer and is investigating a new approach that identifies fragments of tumor DNA in the blood, called circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), to tailor chemotherapy more closely to each patient’s needs. By checking for ctDNA shortly after surgery, doctors can adjust the intensity of chemotherapy—either increasing it if ctDNA is detected, suggesting remaining cancer, or reducing it if no ctDNA is found, to spare unnecessary side effects.
Assistance from the CANTRAIN-CTTP & Michael Smith Health Research BC Masters’ Studentship 2024 Award Program supports this major clinical trial through Masters’ Student, Michael Diaz-Stewart’s whose work on evaluating colorectal cancer subtypes through artificial intelligence-based screening ties into the wider project. This award contributes to BC-based frontier research aiming to improve our ability to precisely treat colorectal cancers through revised practices and artificial intelligence-informed screening.
The CANSTAT-CTTP & Michael Smith Health Research BC Postdoctoral Fellowship 2024 Award Program supports my year-long fellowship with the CANSTAT program (https://can-stat.ca/). The CANSTAT program is a pan-Canadian platform training statistics graduates specifically for randomized clinical trials. It is primarily funded through the Canadian Institutes of Canadian Research.
I entered the CANSTAT fellowship program after completing my MSc in Statistics at the University of British Columbia in 2024. My thesis was titled “The impact of disease-modifying drugs for multiple sclerosis on hospitalizations and mortality in British Columbia: a retrospective study using an illness-death multi-state model”. I previously graduated from Wilfrid Laurier University with two degrees, a BSc in Data Science and a Bachelor of Business Administration.
I remain at UBC mentored by Drs. Joel Singer, professor emeritus at the School of Population and Public Health, and Jim Russell, professor at the Division of Critical Care, Department of Medicine. As a CANSTAT statistical fellow, this award supports my work on many BC-based projects. So far, this includes drafting statistical analysis plans and power analyses, such as for a trial on studying diet and diabetes, conducting analyses and creating reports, such as for a breast cancer trial, and an ongoing project using predictive modelling as an enrichment strategy for COVID-19 and community-acquired pneumonia trials.
My CANSTAT work impacts the BC health system in two ways. My work during this year generates an immediate impact by working with many teams of researchers on high-quality RCTs. But this fellowship has also trained me for a career in RCTs that will allow me to make an enduring impact throughout my career.
This research is led by Dr. Marie-Pier St-Laurent, a urologic oncology fellow at the University of British Columbia (UBC) who will transitioning to faculty in July 2025, and under the mentorship of Dr. Peter Black and in collaboration with Dr. Bernie Eigl. This British Columbia-based project will investigates a novel and personalized treatment approach for patient with muscle-invasive bladder cancer through a pilot randomized clinical trial.
Invasive bladder cancer is typically treated with chemotherapy followed by bladder removal surgery, or the combination of chemotherapy and bladder radiation While effective, these treatments may often cause significant side effects. Studies and experience have shown that one-third of patients treated with chemotherapy before surgery have no detectable cancer left in their bladder, suggesting that maybe they could avoid invasive treatments. However, current methods cannot reliably identify these patients without removing their bladder.
This project integrates advanced imaging (MRI), repeat bladder biopsies, and novel biomarkers (liquid biopsies detecting circulating tumor DNA in blood, or ctDNA) to identify patients with no residual cancer. The NEO-BLAST trial will assess whether these patients can safely opt for active surveillance (with monitoring) versus the standard definitive bladder therapy (bladder removal or chemo-radiation).
If successful, this study could shift the paradigm in bladder cancer care, reducing treatment burden while improving patients’ quality of life. Supported by funding from the CIHR Catalyst Grant for SPOR Innovative Clinical Trials (iCT), this study could lay the groundwork for a pan-Canadian clinical trial and improve care delivery across BC by reducing surgeries and optimizing healthcare resources.
