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Outsmarting Cancer and Autoimmune Disease

May 13, 2013
Edmonton…It turns out that some of the biological tricks used by the flu virus are important for understanding a range of serious health problems we are trying to solve. A new discovery by University of Alberta Faculty of Science researchers may help us learn more about these mechanisms—helping to generate new therapeutics for cancer and inflammatory disease. Read the rest of this entry »

The Alberta Glycomics Centre

The Alberta Glycomics Centre (formerly known as Alberta Ingenuity Centre for Carbohydrate Science, AICCS) comprises a team of highly motivated individuals whose research interests span a multidisciplinary array of biological processes and technologies specific to carbohydrate research. The fields of chemistry, biology, medicine, and engineering are dynamically integrated as experts in areas such as carbohydrate synthesis, protein-carbohydrate interactions, glycoengineering, drug discovery, vaccine development, mass spectrometry, and X-ray crystallography work together to explore carbohydrate science. Currently, nine principal investigators and two associate members conduct their research as part of the Glycomics Centre.

Glycomics is the study of the role of carbohydrates and carbohydrate-containing biomolecules in biological systems. Carbohydrates play a critical role in many biological processes including biological recognition, cell-to-cell interaction, immune response, infection and inflammation. It is anticipated that the Glycomics field will lead to the development of new drugs, vaccines and diagnostics.

Examples of Centre’s research are:

New therapeutics against C. difficile infections (CDI). CDI arises in approximately 1 in 10 of all patients hospitalized in North America and Europe, leading to hundreds of thousands of cases and a cost of tens of billions of dollars per year. In the Calgary Health Zone alone, treating about 3,000 CDI cases per year at an estimated cost of $120,000 per case represents an additional annual cost of $360 million to Alberta Health and Wellness in just one of its nine Health Zones.
New vaccines and diagnostics for tuberculosis (TB). It is estimated that 1.7 million deaths resulted from TB in 2009 (World Health Organization statistics) with drug resistant strains of TB emerging rapidly. It is believed that a third of the world’s population is infected with M. tuberculosis. A resurgence of the disease is also observed in Canada (particularly in aboriginal populations); in 2004, expenditures directly attributed to care of patients with active TB totalled $31million.
Nanomaterial to facilitate heart transplant across blood group barrier through the induction of tolerance.The “tolerogens” increase the probability for an infant to receive successful heart transplantation.
Diagnostics for detection of foodborne diseases.  Such diagnostics could prevent, for example, deadly E. coli outbreaks like the one that happened in Europe in summer 2011.