Drs. Leonard Foster, Honglin Luo, Chris Overall, Arinjay Banerjee, Gabriela Cohen Freue, B. Brett Finlay, Michael Gold, Eric Jan, Sheila Teves, and Stuart Turvey received a grant from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and BC Knowledge Development Fund, totalling $5.4 million, for their project titled “Transformative and disruptive systems immunology.”
The Overall Lab will use the grant to purchase next-generation mass spectrometers for single-cell proteomics.
L to R: Drs. Daniel Graf, Chris Overall and Peter Bell
With these funds, Dr. Overall has purchased a top-of-the-line Ascend Tribrid (Thermo) – liquid chromatography-coupled tandem mass spectrometer for his lab. The instrument is capable of analyzing 18 patient samples simultaneously. Dr. Peter Bell, a Research Associate in the Overall lab, is using the instrument to develop single-cell proteomics that, with Dr. Daniel Graf, Professor and Craniofacial, Oral and Dental Disorders (CODED) Director, will be used to analyze human alveolar bone and dental pulp cells and craniofacial tissue samples for projects in the CODED research focus group.
Pathogens such as influenza and salmonella have an immense impact on the health of Canadians and the economy, with thousands of deaths and millions of missed days of work every year. However, these numbers pale in comparison to the massive loss of life and enormous economic and societal impact of COVID-19. Tropical diseases are also entering Canada as the climate warms, viruses are moving from animals to humans at increasing rates due to natural habitat loss, and bacteria are becoming more resistant to antibiotics.
The impact of these threats could be dramatically diminished if we had a more complete understanding of how viruses “jump” to humans to cause disease and if we had new and more effective vaccines and treatments. Vaccines are the most cost-effective preventive medicines—their initial investment is low, and they limit the costs of diagnosing and treating a disease. New antiviral drugs are also desperately needed to treat unvaccinated and immunocompromised people and breakthrough infections in vaccinated individuals.
The work conducted at the Overall Lab will directly benefit Canadians, especially Indigenous people and others who work or live with animals or depend on hunting for food security. Indirect impacts include improved Canadian food security, COVID-19 economic recovery, and future pandemic resilience.