Research Infosource Inc., a Canadian R&D consulting firm, has released its annual ranking of Canada’s top 40 research hospitals. The Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute (VCHRI), combined with Providence Research, is ranked fifth, with $164.7 million in research funding for 2021.

Researchers at the International Collaboration on Repair Discoveries (ICORD) are part of a new, multidisciplinary team working to better treat people with spinal cord injury (SCI). Their project, Mend the Gap, is investigating the use of biomaterials — soft gels in particular — to heal SCI.

The idea of 3D printing a patient’s stem cells to develop and test personalized treatments is one step closer to becoming a reality. In her pioneering study, Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute researcher Stephanie Willerth lays the groundwork for a personalized medicine approach that could be applied to finding treatments for neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

For the first time, researchers have identified a link between the Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay (MIND) diet and a later onset of Parkinson’s disease. 

“We were really astonished by the results that we saw,” says Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute scientist, Dr. Silke Appel-Cresswell, who led the study published in the journal Movement Disorders. 

Vancouver, B.C. – Researchers at the Vancouver Prostate Centre (VPC) have engineered the fastest, artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled technology of its kind to identify novel medications for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The team’s published study explains how they were able to supercharge the computational screening for potential antiviral compounds more than 100-fold, opening the door to the rapid development of medications to treat infected individuals.