Challenge: Neurological and psychiatric diseases and disorders affect more than half the population, causing a huge burden on health care costs, lost productivity, and reductions in quality of life. These disorders of the nervous system can span a range of illnesses, including autism spectrum disorders, manic disorders, Parkinson’s disease, stress, depression, and anxiety. Many of these…
Challenge: Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) are two of the most common and devastating neurodegenerative diseases, affecting one in 50 Canadians over 65 years old. A major roadblock to new drug development in neuroscience is the limited access to human neurons from affected patients. This limitation is now being addressed through the use…
Challenge: Neuropathic pain is a chronic pain disorder that can develop as a result of nerve damage caused by various medical conditions. Available treatments are very limited, and patients resort to using opioids to manage their pain, leading to dependence, tolerance and the so-called opioid-induced hyperalgesia, which is characterized by an increased pain after prolonged use…
Challenge: Chronic pain affects at least 20% of the population and its societal costs exceed those of cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes combined. Most chronic pain patients report many significant side effects from the current opiate-based treatments, including opioid addiction, and these treatments are not highly effective. New, non-opioid therapeutics are therefore needed. Solution: Professor Séguéla,…
Challenge: Showing architectural similarities with the real human brain, brain organoids offer a promising avenue for understanding human biology, disease processes and for the development and validation of drugs to treat brain-related diseases. By engineering personalized organoids from the reprogrammed cells of patients, scientists can study disease in a very individualized way. However, brain organoids are…
Challenge: Pancreatic islets play a critical role in diabetes development with about 50% of their function being lost by the time pre-diabetic patients are diagnosed. Levels of pancreatic ß-cells are currently approximated through measurements of blood glucose, C-peptide, and insulin levels. There is therefore an urgent need to develop biomarkers that more accurately monitor the physiological…
Challenge: Blood level of cholesterol-rich low-density lipoproteins (LDLc) is directly correlated with the incidence of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular risk. Statins, currently the most prescribed class of lipid-lowering drugs, reduce LDLc by increasing LDL receptor (LDLR) gene expression. However, while being on maximally tolerated lipid-lowering therapy, a majority of high-risk patients still have uncontrolled LDLc and remain…
Challenge: Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a condition associated with loss of blood vessels in the lungs leading to a gradual increase in shortness of breath and substantial disability and mortality. The development of effective drugs is impeded by the lack of non-invasive tests to detect the disease at an early stage and to follow its progression.…
Challenge: Islet transplantation is an efficient therapy to reverse type 1 diabetes. However, the long-term function of the graft is not ensured, and the problem of autoimmunity remains. An interesting alternative consists of a bioartificial pancreas in which islets are encapsulated. However, the islet environment within such a pancreas still needs to be improved to better…
Competition:SynergiQc 2017Funding:$683,665 / 2 yearsBeginning:July 2017 Challenge: Type 2 diabetes (T2D) affects 1 in 11 individuals worldwide and leads to severe complications such as diabetic nephropathy (DN) that is present in about 40% of T2D patients. DN progresses from subclinical disease (microalbuminuria) to overt nephropathy, end-stage renal disease requiring dialysis or transplantation. Identifying T2D patients at…