Innovation Anthology #761:

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Armed with his research on "stop" and
"go" chemical messengers that
control appetite, Dr. Bill Colmers
wanted to know how these worked
when rats ate a high calorie diet.

Dr. Bill Colmers is a Heritage Scientist in
Pharmacology and Neuroscience
at the University of Alberta.

He found that some rats loved ithe high calorie
diet and got fat, while other rats didn’t like it
at all.

DR. BILL COLMERS: So when you take that
whole bunch of rats, and put them back on
the regular rat chow which is well balanced
but doesn’t have a lot of calories, the rats
that were resistant to the diet continued to
grow slowly.  But the fat ones, they’ll defend
that excess weight but they won’t continue to grow. 
So the question is, why?  What we learned was
the that GO signal, the hunger signal, that
signal was still fine in the ones that were fat,
But when we looked at the STOP signal ,  
the one that tells you to stop eating,
we found that no matter how much of
the drug that we put on, the fat ones
didn’t respond anymore.  They lost that
STOP signal

Dr Colmers next looked at why the
brains of fat rats stopped producing
the "stop eating" signal.
  
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: 2016-03-01