Health Innovation Roundup

 

The Health Innovation Roundup, sponsored by Health City, is written and published weekly by Taproot Edmonton to bring you the latest news and events in research, technology, companies and people changing health for the better in Edmonton.

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Here are some highlights from this week’s Health Innovation Roundup:

Headlines

• University of Alberta researchers are using nanomedicine to improve the effectiveness and safety of chemotherapy. The team, led by Afsaneh Lavasanifar, has developed nanoparticles that act as a host to anti-cancer drugs, dictating their distribution in the body so that they redirect the drugs from normal tissues to tumour sites.
• U of A researchers have discovered a way to use 3D bioprinting to create nose cartilage for surgical procedures. The researchers used a specially designed hydrogel that can be mixed with cells collected from a patient and then printed in a specific shape.
• A team led by Peter Kannu, chair of the department of medical genetics at the U of A, is developing more sensitive and dynamic genetic tests that will add the sequencing of RNA to the current practice of genome sequencing, which could help diagnose and treat patients with mystery diseases.
• The U of A’s Dean Eurich said diabetes is not a “sugar” disease, highlighting the difference between Type 1 and Type 2 in a recent Q&A.
• Three U of A-based health projects have received $200,000 in funding from Alberta Innovates through its Health Innovation Platform Partnerships (HIPP) program.
• ST Innovations, the business arm of the U of A’s SMART Network, has launched a new innovation challenge that gives health innovators an opportunity to win $120,000. The deadline to apply is May 16.
• U of A spin-off company Clicknpush is among six finalists competing at the Praxis Spinal Cord Institute pitch-off event on May 5. Clicknpush will showcase its innovative technology that maps the accessibility of routes by identifying potential obstacles.
• Campus Alberta Neuroscience is offering grants that range between $5,000 and $30,000 to support early-stage innovation projects with solutions that address neuroscience and mental health-related challenges in Alberta. The application deadline is June 30.
• Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii) and AltaML announced a new partnership with Calgary-based Attabotics to bolster artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities for supply chains.
• Edmonton Global is hosting an online webinar on May 11 about the power of artificial intelligence in the life sciences sector. DrugBank CEO Michael Wilson and U of A oncologist Dr. John Mackey are among the participating panelists.
• Health City has released a new paper highlighting its new remote monitoring initiative.

Events

• May 6, 9am: ML Foundations by Amii
• May 6, 12pm: Neonatal infection and antimicrobial use—can we agree to disagree?
• May 6-May 20 (Thursdays): Pandemic End Game: Implications for Patients and Public Health
• May 7, 8am: Shining an evolutionary light on parasites and our anti-parasitic therapeutics
• May 10-14: UAlberta Innovation Showcase
• May 11, 8am: Leveraging AI for Drug Discovery
• May 12-June 2 (Wednesdays): Diabetes Updates – From Guidelines to Practice
• May 13, 12pm: TRAIL Dataset Webinar – Collision Avoidance Dataset
• May 18-19: Promoting Healthy Brain Aging and Preventing Dementia International Symposium
• May 18 & June 1: Celebrating 100 Years of Insulin Seminar Series
• May 18 & June 15, 11am: Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Grand Rounds
• May 27: DNA testing in pregnancy
• June 7-9: Global Healthcare Innovation Academy (GHIA)
• June 22-24: Li Ka Shing Institute of Virology/Gairdner Virtual Virology Symposium
• Sept. 22-24: Inventures 2021 Startup Pitch Event

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