Researchers Under the Scope

Stuart Skinner (MD) knew something was wrong three years ago, when patients started coming to him with vision loss, fever, rashes, and meningitis.

Almost every case could be traced back to untreated syphilis — a sexually transmitted infection with caseloads exploding 1,200 per cent from 2017.  Saskatchewan saw this spike just as Covid-19 entered the picture.

“With the pandemic, testing dropped dramatically,” Skinner said, noting this wave of syphilis entered north-western Saskatchewan from Alberta, often travelling alongside HIV. Syphilis often spreads through sores, and can remain unnoticed for months or years on end, making early detection difficult.

“If...

Yi-Chun Chen is taking a close-up look at some of the body’s hardest-working cells — the ones often processing an overabundance of modern-day food and nutrients.

“From an evolutionary point of view, our cells are not designed to deal with that,” said Dr. Chen, who joined the department of Anatomy, Physiology, and Pharmacology at the University of Saskatchewan last year as an assistant professor.

She said our bodies are pushed into churning out large amounts of insulin rapidly after snacks and meals, “which makes the beta cells work extra hard.”

Raised in Taiwan and inspired...

James Stempien (MD) has navigated some of the most challenging corners of emergency medicine, from the frigid isolation of Inuvik to the bustling corridors of Saskatoon’s emergency departments.  His experience in low-tech outposts has shaped his approach to modern emergency care.

“When things aren’t going well you see it in the emergency department first,” Stempien said. “We’re the front door. We’re always open.”

As provincial department head of emergency medicine, Stempien sees patients on their worst days in hospitals bursting at the seams, struggling to keep pace with Saskatchewan’s...

As the world aims to eradicate hepatitis C (HCV) by 2030, Carrielynn Lund and Dr. Alexandra King’s team created a how-to guide.

 Journeys to Wellness: Prairie Hepatitis C Roadmap is a step-by-step guide to tackling a spike of new infections across the three Canadian prairie provinces.

Hepatitis C (HCV) causes severe liver disease, and was notoriously difficult to treat until the introduction of direct-acting antivirals a decade ago — antivirals which boast a remarkable 95% success rate.

Despite this advancement, Lund and Dr. King say Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba need to know why HCV cases keep ri...

Brianne Philipenko (MD) was midway through her respirology fellowship in Calgary when the Covid-19 pandemic shut down the city.

She started interval workouts at home using Nike’s fitness app — when inspiration struck.

“Coming up with a creative, innovative way to allow people to access an exercise program outside of the typical organized pulmonary rehabilitation in a gym setting was something that I became really interested in,” said Philipenko..

As a respirologist, Philipenko was already frustrated by the lack of ‘mainstay’ guidelines on incorporating exercise into severe asthma treatmen...

In this episode, we gain insight into Dr. Sarah Forgie, the new Dean of the College of Medicine. She discusses her innovative teaching methods, her career as a pediatric infectious disease specialist, and her vision for advancing Saskatchewan’s College of Medicine.

Dr. Forgie also shares the story behind her decision to learn the ukulele.

Born to family physicians, Dr. Forgie grew up in Lynn Lake, Manitoba, a remote fly-in mining community. Her family later relocated to Winnipeg, where Dr. Forgie credits much of her motivation to her mother, who encouraged her to pursue both me...

A behavioural neuroscientist in Saskatoon is uncovering marijuana’s effects on fetal brain development. 

After recently winning a five-year CIHR grant of $960,076 in the spring of 2024, Dr. John Howland’s lab at the University of Saskatchewan is expanding its work examining prenatal exposure to cannabis smoke. Howland’s teams will assess the way cannabis exposure alters higher brain functions like memory and learning in both rats and mice.

Compared to cannabis injections in the past, the professor of Anatomy, Physiology and Pharmacology at the College of Medicine said exposing rodents to high-potency smoke for up to 15 m...

Growing up in Columbia had a profound impact on Dr. Juan-Nicolas Pẽna-Sànchez. In this episode, hear why the former family physician pivoted, becoming Saskatchewan's lead in finding the best ways to treat Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis in rural and Indigenous patients.

Even as a teenager, Juan-Nicolás Peña-Sánchez could see stark differences in health for those who had medical coverage — and those without, thanks to his stepfather, an emergency department physician.

“I used to go with him sometimes on shifts to learn and shadow him,” said Peña-Sánchez said. “T...

"When I got into medical school, the last thing in the world I wanted to be was a surgeon because I couldn't stand the sight of blood," said Dr. Mike Moser.

Fast-forward to the present day, where Moser is now one of Saskatchewan's top kidney transplant surgeons, winning last year's Golden Scalpel Award for Pre-clerkship Education, the 2022 Logan Boulet Humanitarian of the Year Award, and numerous teaching awards.

In this episode, the professor of general surgery at the University of Saskatchewan's College of Medicine takes us back to one pivotal day where everything changed, propelling...

As an undergrad, Daniel Fuller didn’t have a car, nor was he keen on taking the bus.    “I rode my bike to university every day in the fall and then just kept on going and never stopped,” said Fuller, a former national and international canoe/kayak athlete.   As he pedaled, Fuller watched the way people used trails, sidewalks and roads.   “I really started to get into active transportation, how people move around cities and how we can get people active -- outside of the sport environment,” said Fuller, now an associate professor in Community Health and Epidemiology at the University of...

From the laboratory to saving lives, this episode brings together three outstanding researchers from the University of Saskatchewan’s Department of Anatomy, Physiology, and Pharmacology (APP) as they discuss their work and its implications for cardiac care.   Dr. Michelle Collins, Dr. Scott Widenmaier, and Dr. Changting Xiao are all recent recipients of research grants from Heart & Stroke (formerly the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada).   In Canada, one per cent of newborns have congenital heart defects. Thanks to advances in cardiac care, up to 85 per cent of these infants now survive to adulthood.   Meredith Rhinas is one of those survivors. Diagn...

"Pushing politicians to do what is good for the health of the people, there's no way around it," said Dr Jacob Alhassan.

Born and raised in a rural Ghanaian village, Alhassan grew up without electricty and paved roads. He watched women die in childbirth. He grew resentful of health systems that left the poorest people to fend for themselves, while the rich thrived.

Alhassan decided to take action.

At first, he thought he would study hard to become a local hospital administrator. Partway through his university years, Alhassan began to dream even bigger.<...

Dr. Sabira Valiani was one of the frontline physicians working inside Saskatoon’s critical care units four years ago, during the initial lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It was really weird,” said Valiani.

Valiani said ‘a lot of light bulbs went off in my head’ amid the automated stillness of the unit, as she watched ventilators breathing for heavily sedated patients.

Covered in head-to-toe personal protective equipment, staff in the intensive care unit struggled to simultaneously treat patients, communicate with family members, and enforce hospital policies. 

Daphne Yau can trace her interest in endocrinology back to a beta-cell physiology experiment during her master’s degree,  working with laboratory mice with Type 2 Diabetes.

“It was the part of the pancreas that makes insulin,” she said. “It was fascinating. It also made me realize that maybe pure laboratory research wasn't quite for me."

From there, her interest in hormones and fluctuating blood sugar levels grew.

Yau is no stranger to medicine. Her mother was a pharmacist, while her father and aunt both worked as physicians. Following in their footsteps, Lou completed her pediat...

Haissam Haddad inadvertently horrified his family when he signed up for engineering courses in his first year of university.

The teenager returned the next day to change his major to medicine -- a move he's glad he made.

Dr. Haddad practiced family medicine in Syria for three years, then arrived in Canada in 1986 to visit his wife's family, who urged him to stay.

Haddad faced an uphill battle when he investigated the possibility of becoming a Canadian doctor. One colleague even told him he’d be better off opening a Syrian grocery store.

In this episode, we meet Dr. Stacey Love, Director of Virtual Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation at Saskatchewan's Virtual Health Hub, and an Assistant Professor at the University of Saskatchewan's School of Rehabilitation. She's also involved with the Saskatchewan Centre for Patient Oriented Research.

You can see more of her recent publications here, along with links to her labs:

Musculoskeletal Health and Access to Care: https://cchsa-ccssma.usask.ca/mhac/ Virtual Care and Remote Presence: https://research-groups.usask.ca/remote-presence/index.php#Healthcare

Stacey Lovo remembers the bitterly cold day in December 2012, when two Indigenous wo...

Dr. Angelica Lang knows most of the people she sees have to keep working, even if they have shoulder pain.

As an assistant professor at the University of Saskatchewan and director of the Musculoskeletal and Ergonomics Lab at the Canadian Centre for Rural and Agricultural Health, Lang’s goal is to reduce that pain — keeping patients on the job.

“A lot of daily life has to be done with your hands,” she said. “The base of that is your shoulder. It allows you to position your hand in all these different ways.”

Dr. Munier Nour said osteoporosis is often seen as a disease that affects older adults. But compared to their peers, kids with Type 1 diabetes grow into adults eight times as likely to suffer bone fractures.

“Osteoporosis may actually have its origins during pediatric years,” he said. “Because Type 1 diabetes occurs so early in life ….. it influences that bone development that occurs during your peak growth.”

Now, Nour is a co-lead on a national team trying to figure out why.

The pediatric endocrinologist has always taken a logical approach to p...

In the heart of the Health Sciences Building, Dr. Amanda Hall studies a tray of organoids under a microscope.

“They do need a lot of attention and a lot of feeding,” she said, pointing to dot-like points in a gel solution. 

The pediatric surgeon and assistant professor of pediatric general surgery will use those dots to identify factors that help infants overcome short gut syndrome.

The rare condition affects roughly 24 in every 100,000 babies born in Canada, presenting a profound challenge for infants born with insufficient intestinal length or compromised absorptive capacity.

“It’s a ve...

Valerie Verge was in her early twenties when she landed her first job, doing neuroscience research and she loved it. But 43 years ago, her research journey began to take a twist.

"I developed an allergy to rats and mice,” she said. “I was using a box of Kleenex a day.”

She reluctantly had to admit that this may not be her career path, and spent her evenings earning a ‘back-up plan’ degree in computer programming at McGill. She refused to give up laboratory work, and went on with her colleagues to code and create an i...

Dr. Evyn Peters has created pivotal changes for patients arriving at Royal University Hospital's mental health short stay unit, and its emergency department.

With 33 publications and interests spanning psychiatry, psychopharmacology and mood disorders, Peters is often one of the first physicians patients see when they’re experiencing a mental health crisis.

Peters was finishing his residency at RUH and the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Medicine in 2017, when he and his colleagues first proposed ketamine for short-stay patients who had tried multiple antidepressants without success.

After studying best practi...

By the end of her Grade Eight year in Saskatoon, Wendie Marks was sure about one thing: she knew she wanted to study health and the way early-life development affected the human body.

“I spent a lot of time in the library reading books,” Marks said. “I was always kind of the nerdy type.”

Marks enrolled at the University of Saskatchewan and thrived, earning her PhD in psychology. Her interests evolved towards behavioural neuroscience, focusing on the mechanisms behind behaviour, stress, and their effects on mental and physical health.

“I w...

When Justin Botterill first arrived at the University of Saskatchewan, he took what he described as a 'shotgun approach' to choosing classes.

Midway through his second year, his psychology professors introduced him to neuropsychology, and to psychiatric and neurological disorders.

He was hooked.

Botterill soon began working with rodent models, later focusing on the hippocampus and pathways involved in forming memories and spatial navigation.

"The hippocampus is widely implicated in a variety of neurological as well as psychiatric disorders," said Botterill. "It's a really important and critical structure."

After...

When Bruce Gordon's relatives descend on Saskatoon this month, his wife will put them to work.

Bruce Gordon was a police officer and a lawyer, who competed as a triathlete and in the Crossfit Games. He was a fierce competitor until he was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer at age 54.

Hear his story in Episode 43.

After Bruce died in 2017, Chris Gordon became one of the chief organizers of the 'Be Like Bruce' fitness festival -- an athletics-driven fundraiser for pancreatic cancer research that's now raised more than $60,000 dollars in his memory.

...

Midway through his undergraduate degree at the University of British Columbia, a laboratory 'help wanted' poster caught Jeff Dong's eye.

He applied, gaining invaluable practical experience that summer in Stephanie Borgland's lab.

"She really supported me in understanding what research is about," said Dong, who went on to complete his PhD through UBC's Department of Microbiology and Immunology, moving to Calgary for post-doctoral work at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute. "That process was really exciting for me."

He accepted a faculty position last year as an assistant professor in the University of Saskatchewan's Department...

Before we’re even born, our bodies begin to grow and train an army of spies and assassins, creating a crew of immune system fighters in the upper chest's thymus gland. While this production is dominated by T cells, other immune cells such as B cells and plasma cells can be generated within the thymus, albeit at a very low level.

After adolescence, the thymus reduces production at its 'spy and assassin' factory to a trickle. This has consequences because as we age, our immune system makes mistakes, leading to mutations in our DNA; changes in...

Like a lot of kids, Anurag Sakharkar used to dream about being a doctor, or an astronaut. His parents, both academics, encouraged him to follow his dream.

In high school, he began spending evenings and weekends working at the University of Saskatchewan’s biomedical labs, perfecting advanced research methods, western blots and PCR analysis . He began learning about Parkinson’s disease with Dr. Changiz Taghibiglou, then started examining novel cancer treatment approaches with Dr. Franco Vizeacoumar.

The Covid-19 pandemic brought Anu’s in-person laboratory time to an abrupt halt. Undeterred, he began to...

When Dr. Rachel Asiniwasis returned to the prairies after her dermatology residency in Toronto, she noticed a pattern among many of her pediatric patients.

Hundreds of them were coming to her with itchy, raw patches of skin, the result of atopic dermatitis — eczema.

“One of the biggest frustrations for me is when people say ‘oh, it’s just a skin problem’,” said Asiniwasis. “Itching in many ways is just as impactful as chronic pain,”

Atopic dermatitis is the most common chronic skin inflammatory disease. The vast majority of cases start in children under the age of five...

Patients in intensive care units often move to a regular ward before they're discharged, and sent home.

But increasingly, hospitals are skipping that step, sending a handful of ICU patients directly home.

"We were really looking at analyzing the data of safety in terms of discharging patients home safely in terms of outcomes such as mortality, or a re-admission to hospital," said Ryan Donnelly, who's currently finishing his first year of residency in Regina. 

He said for young patients without serious co-morbidities, direct discharges to home are an option. 

"If you ha...

For decades, families have watched Alzheimer's disease steal their loved ones' cognitive function. It's the most common form of dementia; one that affects a third of people over the age of 85.

It's a disease Dr. Ron Geyer and Dr. Andrew Kirk want to tackle.

Right now, most pharmaceuticals target the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, without addressing its root cause. Most lose their effectiveness after three months. 

Geyer, a biochemist and professor of pathology at the University of Saskatchewan's College of Medicine, said a novel protein could change that.

"They did a f...

Debra Morgan grew up on a farm and continued farming with her husband, initially working in nursing in the winter.

Nursing shifts took her from neurosurgery to pediatrics, to orthopedics, then to Saskatoon's geriatric units at City Hospital and Royal University Hospital.

"I just found that I really enjoyed working with older people," Morgan said.

She soon followed her passion for research, opting to study geriatric care as she earned her masters' and doctoral degrees in nursing. 

Today, she's a professor and chair of rural health delivery at the Canadian Centre fo...

If you've ever sat through a bad date at a restaurant, unsure of what to order, you're still doing better than a typical zebrafish date.

Dr. Michelle Collins said without safety precautions, a zebrafish male and female left together overnight often eat their embryos.

The assistant professor of Anatomy, Physiology and Pharmacology at the University of Saskatchewan's College of Medicine has studied zebrafish for years, using them as a model to examine genetic factors in cardiac development.

"They're actually quite beautiful," she said. "The embryos look almost like a crystal ball."

...

Diagnosing pulmonary diseases ilike asthma in young children is still largely a matter of trial and error, according to Saskatchewan’s top pediatric respirologist.

As viruses and colds tear through schools and daycares across North America, Dr. Darryl Adamko wants to change that.

“If you have asthma this year and you're not taking your inhaled steroids, well you're rolling the dice,” said Adamko, who’s watched an influx of young patients over the past few months at the Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital in Saskatoon.

In children, problems with...

May this holiday season find all our Researchers Under the Scope listeners feeling cozy, festive and warm. 

In the spirit of giving, the Office of the Vice-Dean of Research at the College of Medicine has once again teamed up, to make a donation to students and staff at King George Elementary School in Saskatoon. This is where you can scroll down and find the details you need to make an e-transfer donation.  

And in the New Year, we resolve to bring you an episode for parents of young children. With Influenza A, RSV, and Covid-19 rip...

When Scott Widenmaier left high school, he wasn't sure what career path he wanted to pursue.

He grew up in Alameda, Saskatchewan, and soon found work on oil rigs. But by the time he was in his early twenties, he knew it was time for a change.

"I realized that winters are just too cold to continue doing that," said Widenmaier. "I wasn't sure what I was going to do with my life, but I was interested in biology and human physiology."

In his third year as a science major at the University...

As a high school student growing up in Melfort, Sask.. Linda Chelico knew she wanted to work in health sciences.

She enjoyed biology class, and took an interest in watching nature heal itself. She wanted to find environmentally friendly solutions to health problems.

Then, she read a National Geographic magazine about landfills filling up.

Chelico began thinking about the environmental footprint of garbage, and about the organisms that could help break down piles of refuse. The idea turned into her Grade 11 science project, where she showed ways micro-organisms could degrade some o...

Colour-changing reactions and small explosions punctuated life at Dr. Oleg Dmitriev's home, when he was a boy. He loved trying out chemical reactions, and experimenting. As a teenager, he was fascinated by the science fiction novels his father brought home. 

"It's all about strange worlds and unusual, strange forms of life," said Dmitriev, a protein biochemist. "I started wondering, why is the life on our planet is the way it is? And what is the chemistry of life?"

After earning his PhD at Moscow State University, Dmitriev went on to post-doctoral studies at the University of...

Asmahan AbuArish grew up in Hebron, surrounded by military checkpoints.

She knew she wanted to help people, but she had to give up her dream of being a medical doctor early.

Fortunately, AbuArish is no quitter.

She discovered physics — and later its very real applications in curing inflammatory pulmonary diseases such as cystic fibrosis (CF) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Last year, Dr. AbuArish arrived at the University of Saskatchewan to open her own lab, landing $175,000 through the Canada Foundation for Innovation's John Evans Leaders Fund. 

Today, Dr. Asm...

As a pediatric neurologist, Dr. Richard Huntsman sees the children with the most medically complex epilepsy

"It completely disrupts the life of a family," said Huntsman. "Limitations on what the child can do, limitations on what the family can do."

"When the kids have really severe and difficult-to-control epilepsy, It's a huge burden on their parents."

Eight years ago, parents started asking Huntsman about whether they could try treating their childrens' seizures -- with cannabis.

Back then, Canadian health officials allowed doctors to prescribe the medical use of dried marijuana buds...

Researchers in Robert Laprairie's laboratory are hard to miss, wearing tie-dyed lab coats as they oversee mice and lab rats in iPad-sized chambers filled with cannabis smoke.

An associate professor in the College of Pharmacy and Nutrition, Dr. Laprairie and his team are trying to unravel the mysteries of human neurotransmitters and cannabinoid receptors, and their role in neurodegenerative disease. 

"Cannabis is challenging. There's a lot of bureaucracy, there's a lot of stuff that gets in the way. So there was a knowledge gap," said Laprairie.

Still, Laprairie never thought of himself as a...