With your help, and the help of so many Manitobans over the years, we have had an undeniable impact on health care worldwide!
Mark Torchia co-developed two novel medical devices and techniques that evolved into successful biomedical spin-off companies – Monteris Medical Ltd. and Intelligent Hospital Systems (IHS).
For their work in developing the NeuroBlate system – which combines robotics and laser technology to treat patients with brain tumors – Dr. Torchia and Richard Tyc won both the prestigious 2015 Ernest C. Manning Innovation Principle Award for Canadian innovators, as well as the Governor General’s Innovation Award, which celebrates outstanding Canadians who contribute to Canada’s success.
Paul Fernyhough found a way to reverse numbness and pain, called neuropathy, often experienced by hundreds of millions of people around the world with diabetes, HIV, or as a side effect of cancer chemotherapy. Fernyhough founded the biotech company WinSanTor and is in clinical trials for his development of a treatment for neuropathy.
Dr. Meir Kryger opened the first clinical sleep laboratory at the Research Centre in 1987 and was the first to diagnose obstructive sleep apnea in North America. He was also the first to show the feasibility of using noninvasive techniques to ventilate post-polio patients in their homes.
Drs. Grant Pierce and Pavel Dibrov developed novel drugs that combat some of the most dangerous bacteria that are becoming resistant to conventional antibiotics. The new drugs should prevent this multi-drug resistance.
Many additional discoveries impacting cancer care, heart disease, and stroke… from determining the underlying causes of heart failure due to anti-cancer drugs, conducting the world’s largest study on cancer patient satisfaction and treatment consultation, changing the way physicians treat heart disease in diabetes, finding that dietary flaxseed significantly reduces blood pressure, to identifying a molecule that determines if a heart cell lives or dies.
Researchers at the Albrechtsen Research Centre have trained more than 3,000 MSc and PhD students, technicians, and visiting scientists who have gone on to successful careers and leadership roles as university professors, clinicians and surgeons, nurses, dentists, clinical directors, research directors, clinical research scientists, senior managers in the pharmaceutical industry, project managers, technology transfer managers, clinical physiotherapists, Health Canada senior compliance officers, research facilitators, medical students and postdoctoral fellows – in countries all over the world. And our passion to educate does not end there. The RBC Youth BioLab Jeunesse program in the Albrechtsen Research Centre has now welcomed more than 50,000 visiting elementary and high school students in biomedical science, in a world-class research laboratory!
*This article was first published in the Spring 2018 edition of Believe, St. Boniface Hospital Foundation’s bilingual newsletter produced twice annually in partnership with St. Boniface Hospital.