Innovation Anthology #751:

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Dr. Ian Lewis holds the Alberta Innovates Health Solutions Translational Health Chair in Metabolomics at the University of Calgary.

He’s trying to find out why relatively innocuous microbes go wild when they get inside the human body.

And he’s doing this by studying the metabolism of microbes or what happens when they eat.  

DR IAN LEWIS:  So this is the really cool part of this research.  In the case of pseudomonis, its quite happy to live in the drain,  all kinds of places everywhere in in the hospital.  
But the most unusual place for it to be living in is inside your lungs or inside your blood stream or  inside your urethra.  And we believe that the microbes that adapt most readily to that big transition and can really capitalize on those super abundant food sources that you find inside a human, that those microbes present the biggest challenge in terms of infection control.  It’s one of the things that contributes to virulence.  And so our theory is if we understand how they go about doing this, then we could establish both  a diagnostic mechanism for finding them ahead of time and also controlling them after they have established an infection.

Dr. Lewis says his lab is already making progress by looking at the thermodynamics of how infectious  microbes metabolize human nutrients.

Thanks today to Alberta Innovates Health Solutions.

FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER

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Alberta Innovates Health Solutions

Alberta Innovates (formerly Alberta Innovates – Health Solutions)

As the newly formed Alberta Innovates corporation, we still fund top quality, internationally competitive health research and innovation activities to improve the health and wellbeing of Albertans. We provide leadership for Alberta’s health research and innovation enterprise by directing, coordinating, reviewing, funding and supporting research and innovation.

Working with our many partners  in the health system, we ensure that research achieves innovation in care, policy and practice, and that the needs of patients and clinicians influence research.

Our background

Alberta Innovates consolidation was launched November 1, 2016.

Alberta Innovates – Health Solutions

Alberta Innovates – Health Solutions was established as part of the Alberta Innovates system by an Act of Legislation of the Government of Alberta. It is a agency  of the Government of Alberta. We receive a yearly allocation from the Ministry of Health and report through the ministry to the people of Alberta.

Our Mandate and Roles document reflects our role and responsibilities and outlines the government statues and regulations with which we comply.

Alberta’s Health Research and Innovation Strategy (AHRIS) sets out Alberta’s health research agenda for the coming decade to ensure our considerable investments in research align with our priority—to improve the health of Albertans.

 

 

Program Date: 2016-01-21