Category: Our News

Challenge: When considering drug discovery, the pharmaceutical industry faces many challenges. Indeed, each drug class, namely small molecules, antibodies or peptides-based therapeutics, possesses its own characteristics and comes with its own challenges. While presenting similar features than peptides in terms of activity, selectivity and potency, macrocycle peptides also present enhanced permeability and stability towards proteases.…

Challenge: Extensive characterization of tumors is central to the development of personalized therapies such as immunotherapy, now considered one of the most promising approaches to cancer treatment. The capability to detect a multitude of biomarkers simultaneously on the same tissue section would provide unprecedented headways in the field of cancer research and particularly on tumor…

Challenge: Bladder cancer is 5 th in frequency in Canada. Each year, approximately 80,000 people will be diagnosed with bladder cancer and more than 20 % of them will die from the disease. The treatment of advanced bladder cancer has been revolutionized in the recent years by the impressive clinical success of immune checkpoint (IC)-based immunotherapy. Advanced bladder…

Challenge: Cancer therapy has been transformed in recent years by the impressive success of immunotherapy using immune checkpoint inhibitors. However, the success of immunotherapy in some types of cancers, including prostate cancer (PCa), has been rather limited. A major challenge facing the development of PCa immunotherapy is the identification of tumors that would best respond…

Challenge: Because of their immunosuppressive properties, galectins play a critical role in many diseases, most notably in cancer. Some galectins can suppress the immune response by inducing the death of cells that are protecting against cancer cells development. Galectins can also promote tumor cell growth by preventing tumor infiltration by immune cells. For these reasons,…

Challenge: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder affecting elderly people. There is currently no early diagnostic method available and there is no effective treatment. Better characterization of new animal models is therefore essential to enable the discovery of new therapeutics for AD. Solution: To maximize the information obtained from MRI and PET imaging…

Challenge: Parkinson’s disease (PD) is characterized by motor symptoms, cognition, speech, mood, and behaviour disorders. While PD is currently diagnosed based on motor impairment, the non-motor deficits (the prodromal stage) typically precede the motor symptoms by several years. PD is associated with the presence of Lewy bodies and neurites composed of misfolded fibrillar α-synuclein. The…

Challenge: Glutamate is the principal excitatory neurotransmitter of the human central nervous system (CNS). Disruption of glutamate homeostasis is a central feature of many neurological diseases, including stroke, glaucoma and Alzheimer’s disease. Glutamate levels in CNS are controlled by glial cells which facilitate its recycling and uptake through Excitatory Amino Acid Transporters (EAATs). Consequently, the…

Challenge: Brain disorders such as autism, major depressive disorder and Alzheimer’s disease are among the greatest medical challenges of our era. Many drugs targeting the central nervous system (CNS) have been developed to modulate G-protein coupled receptors, ion channels or transporters, with mitigated success. There remains a shortage of disease-relevant targets that can be harnessed for drug…

Challenge: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) affects millions of people worldwide, causing an irreversible and debilitating loss of neuro-cognitive functions, with no cure currently available. At the moment, AD diagnosis can be confirmed post-mortem or through complex in vivo imaging approaches (Positron Emission Tomography or PET scanner) by observing two AD hallmarks in the brain, the deposition…