Backgrounder

September 18, 2008

ADVANCED HEALTH TECHNOLOGIES AND PHARMACEUTICAL RESEARCH

University of Guelph

Dr. Emma Allen-Vercoe
Uncovering the mysteries about bacteria in our digestive system
Provincial funding: $148,149

Dr Emma Allen-Vercoe studies normal human bacteria in the human gut and its influence on health and disease. Her research questions include what grows inside the human gut,  and how they are affected by drugs, hormones, diet or disease.  She is developing novel continuous culture methodologies to study the normal microbial inhabitants of the human gut in health and disease.  It is proposed to use cutting-edge fermentation technology coupled with molecular microbiology techniques to study stable gut bacterial communities in vitro.

Dr. David Pearl
Preventing animal transmitted diseases
Provincial Funding: $75,963

Understanding risk factors for disease and identifying outbreaks quickly are essential for preventing and reducing the impact of infectious diseases. At a new high-performance computing lab at the University of Guelph, Dr. David Pearl and his team are focused on identifying the risk factors for animal and zoonotic disease at the pathogen, host and environmental levels and developing surveillance systems for the timely identification of disease outbreaks.

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See also:

• News Release:
  Making Health Research Work For Patients
• Backgrounder:
  Ontario Research Fund
• Backgrounder:
  Inventing The Future Of Health Care
• Backgrounder:
  Lifes Sciences, Advanced Health Technologies And Pharmaceutical Research Projects
• Recipients