Research Activity – Thunder Bay Regional Health Research Institute

June 2024 Update

Dr. Jingiang Hou and Postdoctoral Fellow, Wenjie Liu received the Mitacs Elevate Postdoctoral Fellowship. The team was awarded $120,000 over the next two years for the development and evaluation of novel small molecules targeting lysophosphatidic acid receptor 1 for the treatment of triple-negative breast cancer.
Dr. Mitchell Albert was awarded the NSERC Discovery grant. Over the next five years, $145,000 will go towards the Hyperpolarized Xenon MRI Biosensor Development Program.
INOVAIT provides Canada’s image-guided therapy (IGT) industry and academic institutions with targeted non-dilutive funding for commercialization-focused R&D projects involving the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into IGT technologies. The INOVAIT grant was recently awarded to Michael Waterston and Dr. Mitchell Albert for their work on Intelligent PET Low-Dose Brain Imaging. The project will receive $1,985,330.94 over the next two years. Dr. Albert was also awarded the NSERC Discovery grant. Over the next five years, $145,000 will go towards the Hyperpolarized Xenon MRI Biosensor Development Program.
Dr. Alla Reznik, Harutyun Poladyan, Janos Rado, Mikhail Vostokov, Galina Nagicheva and Anirudh Shahi were awarded the Mitacs Accelerate Proposal for advanced technologies for breast imaging. The team will receive $360,000 over the next two years.
The Northern Ontario Academic Medical Association grant was awarded to Dr. Barbara Zelek and Dr. Brianne Wood for their work on Integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Primary Care: Assessing Needs and Enhancing Education and for Family Physicians in Northern Ontario. Over the next year, their project will be funded $58,670.
Four applicants with teams from Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre (TBRHSC), Thunder Bay Regional Health Research Institute (TBRHRI) and the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM U) were awarded the 2024/2025 Research Seed Funding Competition.
Andrea Raynak (Director, Nursing Practice, TBRHSC) and Co-Investigators, Dr. Brianne Wood, Holly Freil (Registered Dietitian and Interprofessional Educator, TBRHSC), and Brittney McLaughlin (Registered Nurse and Interprofessional Educator, TBRHSC), were successful in their application for “Understanding the perceptions of Regulated Health Care Professional’s current workload and associated/influencing variables in a hospital setting in Northwestern Ontario: An interdisciplinary perspective”.
Dr. Adrien Chan (Medical Oncologist, TBRHSC and Assistant Professor at NOSM U) along with Co-Investigators Dr. Olexiy Aseyev (Medical Oncologist, TBRHSC and Associate Professor, NOSM U) and Samantha Ribey (NOSM U) were awarded seed funding for their research entitled “Examining the Rate of Inflammatory Breast Cancer within a Northwestern Ontario Population”.
Dr. Jubin Payandeh (Orthopaedic Surgeon, TBRHSC, and Assistant Professor, NOSM U) along with Co-Investigator Dr. Neil Thomas (Orthopaedic Surgery Resident, NOSM U), Dr. Michael Riediger, (Orthopaedic Surgeon, TBRHSC and Assistant Professor, NOSM U), Sacha Dubois (Assistant Professor, NOSM U), Rabail Siddiqui (Acting Research Development Coordinator, TBRHRI) and Lahama Naeem (Acting Orthopaedic Research Development Officer, TBRHRI) were successful for their work, “Opioid Sparing Effects of Regional Blocks in Outpatient Rotator Cuff Surgery: A Prospective Cohort Study”.
Dr. Joseph Del Paggio (Medical Oncologist, TBRHSC, and Assistant Professor, NOSM U) and Co-Investigator Dr. Jordan Green (Gastroenterologist, TBRHSC and Assistant Professor, NOSM U) were awarded for their work entitled, “The Incidence and Risk Factors of Hepatocellular Carcinoma in Northwestern Ontario: A Retrospective Cohort Study”.