不良研究所

When will we have a COVID-19 vaccine? This question is at the forefront of every discussion about COVID-19. Infectious disease epidemiologist and vaccinologist Dr. Nicole Basta and her team are developing an interactive online COVID-19 vaccine tracker to provide the public with real-time updates about progress towards developing a vaccine. This timely, critical resource will improve understanding of vaccine testing and manage expectations about when a vaccine may be available. It will also provide educational materials about the process of developing new vaccines and making them available to communities around the world. The goal of the project is to increase knowledge about and improve trust in vaccines. The platform will be updated in real-time to keep the public up-to-date.

Isolation is not conducive to health and wellbeing. Upon hospitalization, patients with COVID-19 are physically isolated. Only essential health care personnel interact with these patients, and for restricted periods of time. This isolation, though essential to avoid spreading the disease, can lead to loneliness, depression, anxiety, and fear. Rheumatologist Dr. In茅s Colmegna, internal medicine physician Dr. Amal Bessissow and computer scientist Dr. David Meger are studying whether video calls from isolated patients to their loved ones can reduce negative emotions and whether this strategy can be used post-COVID-19 to combat loneliness and improve mental health in older adults.

Creating new drugs to treat COVID-19 could save lives. Researchers at the University of Alberta have discovered a chemical compound that prevents RSV, a respiratory virus, from being infectious. 不良研究所 chemist Dr. Gonzalo Cosa is partnering with the University of Alberta to investigate whether the compound can be adapted to stop the SARS-CoV-2 virus from being infectious, slowing the spread of the disease. If successful, this new compound could be developed into a drug that effectively treats COVID-19.

Blood thinning drugs may be an important treatment for COVID-19. New evidence shows that those with severe cases of COVID-19 develop abnormal blood clotting that can endanger their lives. Dr. Kristian Filion and his team, which includes several collaborators from Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea, are combing through a Korean health care database to determine whether administering anti-coagulant (blood thinning) drugs to COVID-19 patients eases their symptoms and increases chances of survival. If the research team determines that anti-coagulation drugs are effective, they could be a new tool to treat severe cases of COVID-19.

Can anti-malaria drugs help children with COVID-19? CATCO is a Canada-wide study that is testing the efficacy of anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat adults hospitalized with COVID-19. Now, pediatric infectious disease specialist Dr. Jesse Papenburg and pediatric critical care expert Dr. Patricia Fontela are performing a similar study on children to determine whether the drug can reduce the severity of the COVID-19 infection, and lead to faster recovery and shorter hospital stays. This study will be the first randomized trial in children with COVID-19, and has the potential to save young lives.

COVID-19 presents an increased challenge to the psychological wellbeing of health care professionals. The added strains of caring for patients with COVID-19 and putting themselves at risk to contract the disease take an emotional toll. Affective Psychologist Dr. Jason Harley and Clinical Psychologist Dr. Tina Montreuil will investigate current coping strategies health care workers use to deal with stress, assess their effectiveness and use that information to recommend new measures to protect the mental health of health care professionals. We need frontline health care workers to get through this pandemic, and this study can help ensure their emotional wellbeing.

Quarantine measures put strain on us all. Evidence suggests that self-isolation has negative effects on mental health, including stress, anxiety and PTSD-like symptoms. These problems are worsened by quarantine-specific stressors like fear and financial strain. Dr. Lily Hechtman and her team have identified that the strain of social isolation can particularly affect families. This research project will explore child, parent, and family factors which may influence positive vs negative adaptation to quarantine. This will help identify children and families at risk and develop interventions to help them cope during and after the self-isolation period.

What ethical considerations arise for healthcare providers caring for patients who are enrolled in COVID-19 clinical trials? As researchers push to identify effective treatments for COVID-19, front line health care workers are increasingly involved in caring for patients enrolled in clinical trials. This interface between pandemic research and clinical practice creates a distinctive context of care. Global health ethicist Dr. Matthew Hunt, with Dr. Lisa Schwartz and Rachel Yantzi from McMaster University, is conducting an interview-based study to better understand the moral experiences of front line health care providers in Canada, and in high and lower-resource contexts internationally. The results will help produce resources to support front line staff and promote ethically robust research.

Worldwide, there are many inaccurate beliefs about medicines and preventative measures that are effective against COVID-19. The result is that some people are self-medicating, hoarding potential treatments, not adhering with self-isolation measures or refusing to participate in critical COVID-19-related studies, all of which can be harmful to themselves and others. Bioethicist Dr. Jonathan Kimmelman and his team are comparing how well researchers鈥� estimates of when COVID-19 treatments will be available align to the perceptions of the Canadian and US populations. The results of this study will help develop more effective communications regarding COVID-19 treatments to the Canadian and US public to ensure they have the best and most accurate information.

A vaccine is our end game for the COVID-19 pandemic. During the COVID-19 outbreak, various political leaders, public health officials and news commentators have discussed the prospect of a vaccine to stem the pandemic. Some commentators have hinted at the prospect of a vaccine being available within a year. While numerous advances in immunology, infrastructure, and molecular biology have greatly accelerated the process of identifying and testing new vaccine candidates, vaccine development鈥攁s with any pharmaceutical development鈥攊s unpredictable and time-consuming. Biomedical ethicist Dr. Jonathan Kimmelman, epidemiologist and vaccinologist Dr. Nicole Basta and pediatric infectious disease specialist Dr. Jesse Papenburg will use historic success rates for viral vaccine development to provide publicly accessible, evidence-based projections for when a COVID-19 vaccine might be available.

A mobile app can monitor COVID-19 patients. A primary aim of public health agencies is to identify, monitor, track, isolate, and treat anyone with symptoms of COVID-19 to prevent transmission. Around 90% of those who test positive for COVID-19 stay home after diagnosis. Infectious disease primary care specialist Dr. Bertrand Lebouch茅 is teaming up with Opal app creators Dr. John Kildea and Dr. Tarek Hijal to create an app that provides resources for COVID-19 patients isolating at home. Patients will be able to self-monitor symptoms and connect with health care providers if their illness worsens. This innovation will improve safety for those isolating at home with COVID-19 and provide critical data on COVID-19 illness to help us better understand the disease.

Herd immunity is an important factor in ending social isolation measures. If enough people are immune to COVID-19, the virus can no longer transmit effectively, so the spread of infection stops. MI4 researchers Dr. Greg Matlashewski, Dr. Matthew Cheng, Dr. Momar Ndao and Dr. Cedric Yansouni are studying blood samples from COVID patients and asymptomatic people to determine when antibodies to the virus appear. Antibodies are proteins produced by the body in response to infections, such as COVID-19, that can protect against future exposures to the virus. In theory, if you have COVID-19 antibodies, you cannot contract the disease a second time. By understanding when antibodies form in patients with COVID-19 and asymptomatic carriers, the researchers will be able to recommend testing measures that can show us who is protected from disease. This knowledge is important because it allows us to assess how much herd immunity there is in the population.

Thinking outside the box鈥攁nd quickly鈥攊s critical if we are to generate solutions for the current COVID-19 crisis. To protect the population in the short and long-terms, infectious diseases experts Dr. Momar Ndao, Dr. Michael Reed and Dr. Martin Olivier are working to develop a COVID-19 vaccine by adapting and testing two established approaches based on the tuberculosis vaccine and adenovirus. Because both of the existing systems are approved for use in humans, developing a COVID-19 vaccine using the same principles could lead to a more rapid solution.

Understanding how the coronavirus infects the body could help us prevent it. Dr. Janusz Rak and his team are harnessing vesicles, small cellular structures that move biological materials from one cell to another inside the body, to understand how the SARS-CoV-2 virus infects the body. The SARS-CoV-2 virus moves around the body similarly to vesicles. It attaches to cells, allowing the virus content to enter them. Eventually, enough cells are infected to cause illness. By understanding how the coronavirus 鈥榩retends鈥� natural vesicles to infect the body, and how to stop its penetration into cells, the team will bring us one step closer to understanding how to stop the virus from spreading throughout the population.

Have heart attacks decreased since social isolation began? Cardiologists Dr. St茅phane Rinfret and Dr. James Brophy have noticed an unexpected decrease in heart attacks since the COVID-19 pandemic started. They are conducting research to determine whether people suffering from cardiac episodes are avoiding hospitals for fear of contracting COVID-19, or if social isolation has indeed reduced the incidence of heart attacks due to reduced physical activity and work-related stress. To determine the answer, the team will contact cardiology units across the country to learn whether there has been a reduction in cardiac surgeries (placement of stents, valve replacements, etc.) Their findings will help cardiologists across the country take steps to ensure their patients are receiving the treatment they need.

How you are seen by society can affect how you react in a crisis. Around the world, countries have adopted measures such as social distancing, closing of schools and businesses and limited access to public spaces. Psychiatrist Dr. C茅cile Rousseau, along with collaborators from Concordia University and University of Ottawa, will conduct surveys and interviews with 4,000 Quebecers to understand how minority status, low socioeconomic status, discrimination/stigmatization and mental health affect understanding and adoption of COVID-19 public health measures. The results will inform the best way to communicate about COVID-19 with different groups.

Many countries including Canada are facing shortages of personal protective equipment. Face masks, gowns and face shields are essential to keeping health care workers safe, and preventing transmission of COVID19, but the huge increase in demand means that hospitals across Canada have no choice but to ask workers to re-use this vital equipment. Respirologist and epidemiologist Dr. Dick Menzies, virologist Dr. Selena Sagan and their team are studying whether masks can be sterilized using ultraviolet (UV) light. The research team will test whether UV light is effective in sterilizing N95 masks, surgical masks and plastic face shields. They will also test whether the light degrades the filtration quality of the masks. If the UV lights are found to be effective, hospitals will have a made-in-Canada way to safely reuse much needed personal protective equipment.

COVID-19 can quickly turn into a life-threatening respiratory infection. Surgeon Dr. Jonathan Spicer and his team are investigating how a category of white blood cells called neutrophils influence the severity of COVID-19 infection. Much like a spider web, when stimulated, neutrophils can release their DNA into the small blood vessels of the body forming what are called Neutrophil Extracellular Traps, known as 鈥淣ETs鈥�. It is thought that COVID-19 causes massive amounts of NETs to be released in some patients and that this may be the reason why some get so sick. Dr. Spicer鈥檚 team will analyze the blood of patients infected with COVID-19 to determine if the presence of NETs predicts more severe illness. If this test is proven, it could help doctors deliver NET-directed therapies to prevent patients from becoming more sick from the infection and thus, save lives.

COVID-19 has disrupted the lives of people across the world and raised concerns about serious mental health implications. There is almost no evidence from previous infectious disease to inform understandings of mental health in COVID-19. Mental health evidence from COVID-19 is being produced very rapidly, but much is of very poor quality. Health practitioners and policymakers need to understand how COVID-19 is affecting mental health and have options to intervene in order to make decisions that best serve the population. Psychologist Dr. Brett Thombs and biostatistician Dr. Andrea Benedetti will conduct a living systematic review to curate all mental health evidence during COVID-19 on the impact of the outbreak on mental health, mental health risk factors, and effective interventions. Their results will be important in helping health care providers to support the mental health of Canadians.

Which neighbourhoods in Canadian cities are most vulnerable to COVID-19 spread? Which are able to best implement social distancing? Urban governance expert Dr. David Wachsmuth and his team will analyze urban areas to create neighbourhood-level information on COVID-19 transmission risk. Their work will determine the opportunities and threats related to lifting social distancing measures. The results will help policymakers recommend the best measures for social distancing and travel restrictions in the months ahead.

Matthew Cheng, Department of Immunology and Microbiology, is leading a team conducting a clinical trial to test the efficacy of existing drugs against COVID-19, in the hopes they may improve outcomes as a vaccine is being developed. This effort is part of a larger, global initiative under the auspices of the World Health Organization.

Matthew Cheng is also undertaking a clinical study to identify biomarkers that can help predict disease outcomes and response to treatment in individual patients. This study is funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) and linked to a global effort to identify effective biomarkers for COVID-19.

J枚rg H. Fritz, Department of Microbiology & Immunology, is working with international collaborators to better understand the immune response to COVID-19, defining how antiviral immunity functions at a molecular level, in order to develop tests to determine who is immune, and inform vaccine development.

John Hanrahan, Department of Physiology, is developing drugs that can prevent coronavirus from moving from one cell to another, potentially stopping the disease before it can spread throughout the body.

Lara Khoury, Faculty of Law and Associate Member, Institute for Health and Social Policy, is working with collaborators to use this once-in-a-generation crisis to evaluate public powers and accountability mechanisms in relation to emergency public health decision-making, focusing on how governments can remain accountable while exercising sweeping legal and regulatory authority.

Irah King, Department of Microbiology & Immunology, is looking at how targeting the gut microbiome鈥攖he vast microbial community living in the intestine鈥� might offer treatment options for COVID-19. This study builds on existing evidence that the gut microbiome affects our immune response to respiratory infection, that evidence of the disease shows up in fecal swabs and stool samples, and that COVID-19 patients with gastrointestinal symptoms often experience worse outcomes.

Todd C. Lee, Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, is conducting a Quebec-wide trial to test the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine鈥攁 malaria medication that has produced some limited positive results in smaller studies which require confirmation 鈥� for both prevention and early treatment of COVID-19. Dr. Lee is coordinating a national trial involving other provinces and this Canadian trial is partnered with a U.S.-led study so as to arrive at the answers in the shortest time possible.

Mathieu Maheu-Giroux, Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health, is using statistical and mathematical models of COVID-19 disease transmission to provide daily provincial-level updates on the state of the epidemic in Quebec and Canada. This will inform government decision-making by providing real-time forecasts of the rate of COVID-19 spread the demand on the health care, and the impact of social distancing measures and other preventive strategies.

Sara Mahshid, Department of Bioengineering, has developed a prototype that can potentially simplify testing of SARS-Cov2 RNA via a colorimetric approach, making it easier and cheaper to manufacture tests, and providing faster results for diagnostics of COVID19.

Richard Menzies, Department of Medicine, Division of Respiratory Medicine, is examining the medical and economic costs and benefits of multiple different COVID-19 testing strategies, ranging from expanded but targeted testing of individuals particularly testing all contacts of confirmed cases, testing all essential workers, testing all workers and students, to universal testing. This data can inform testing policy in Quebec, in Canada and other countries.

Nicolas Moitessier and Anthony Mittermaier, Department of Chemistry, are partnering with Molecular Forecaster, a Montreal company, to use innovative computational methods to design new drugs that target one of the key biological mechanisms by which COVID-19 replicates and spreads. Selected compounds will then be synthesized and evaluated as potential antiviral agents. This work builds on knowledge gained from the SARS and MERS epidemics, as well as work the team has done on cancer and Parkinson鈥檚 drug development.

Joaquin Ortega, Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, is exploring a novel vaccine approach to eliciting a stronger immune response by creating protein-based virus-like particles, as a complement to other efforts to create vaccines based on RNA and DNA. In this project Ortega will collaborate with Duane Chung at Algaeneers, a leading bio-manufacturing company in Ontario.

Martin Schmeing, Canada Research Chair in Macromolecular Machines and Director, Centre de recherche en biologie structurale (CRBS) and Don van Meyel, Director of the Centre for Translational Biology, are working to develop large-scale, local production of the key ingredients needed for COVID-19 testing. Currently, these materials are made out of country, and Canada must compete for scarce supplies. Their goal is to ensure an adequate supply of tests for Canadians and support expanded testing strategies to help control the spread of COVID-19 more effectively.

Abhinav Sharma, Divisions of Cardiology and Experimental Medicine, is conducting a randomized clinical trial to determine if a class of commonly-prescribed drugs used for patients with cardiovascular diseases and high blood pressure contributes to outcomes among individuals with a COVID-19 infection. This study will provide important guidance for managing heart disease and high blood pressure during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Benjamin Smith, Department of Medicine, Division of Respiratory Medicine, is studying how highly targeted testing strategies might reduce the length of time that health care workers must spend in isolation following exposure to COVID-19. The goal is to use early, targeted viral testing to identify those health care workers who can safely return to work as early as one week before the full 14-day quarantine is completed while ensuring those who are infectious remain in isolation, thereby preserving this vital workforce while making sure patients are safe.

Brett Thombs, Department of Psychiatry, is conducting (1) a large-scale, worldwide study on mental health impacts of COVID-19 and mitigation efforts like social distancing, particularly on people already suffering from chronic medical conditions and (2) a trial of an intervention designed to reduce negative mental health effects.