John Wilkinson, minister of research and innovation, and David Caplan, minister of health, made the announcement at York University on behalf of the Government of Ontario. In total, 116 research projects at 14 institutions received $21 million.

“Ontario is a global leader in the health sciences and we punch well above our weight when it comes to research and commercialization. Today’s investment is an important part of our government’s $3-billion commitment to enable our top researchers to turn their best ideas into new knowledge, new technologies, improved therapies and better disease prevention,” said Wilkinson.

Dorota Crawford, assistant professor of kinesiology and health science in the Faculty of Health, is researching how genetic, molecular and cellular neurobiology, and environmental factors contribute to the brain development of children with autism. Her multidisciplinary research program seeks to develop medical tests to identify autism and create both proper diagnostic tools and, ultimately, effective treatment. The funding will provide her laboratory with, among other equipment, a microscope imaging system that allows researchers to take images of living neuronal cells and is the only one of its kind in Canada.

Kari Hoffman, assistant professor of psychology and biology in the Faculty of Health, researches the dynamic signals emitted by populations of neurons in the brain. Brain and nervous system disorders, a leading cause of death and disability in Canada, currently cost Canadian taxpayers over $20 billion each year. Through the funding, her laboratory will acquire a high-resolution, high-yield neural data acquisition system, allowing the simultaneous monitoring of pools of hundreds of neurons in the brain. With this technology, Dr. Hoffman will address the conditions under which neural populations are communicating effectively, reflecting healthy brain function, and the conditions under which they demonstrate interference or cross-talk, as is thought to occur in attentional disorders, autism, and epilepsy, and memory disorders.

Gerald Audette and Vivian Saridakis’ joint funding proposal will create leading-edge facilities to study proteins’ three-dimensional structure as part of an effort to better-understand their biological function to develop new and more effective disease preventions or therapies. Audette, assistant professor of chemistry in the Faculty of Science and Engineering, will explore how bacteria spread genetic material, which can lead to multi-drug resistant bacteria. Saridakis, assistant professor of biology also in the Faculty of Science and Engineering, will focus on tumor suppressor proteins. The facility will also greatly expand York’s research capacity in protein X-ray crystallography, structural biology, and biochemistry through the creation of a protein X-ray crystallography suite.

Derek Wilson, assistant professor of chemistry in the Faculty of Science and Engineering, is using his funding to build a new biophysics laboratory. His research uses the latest Mass Spectrometry and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance techniques to investigate the connection between the structural motions of proteins and their biological function.  Understanding how proteins move is crucial to designing ‘tailor made’ drugs that target specific diseases.

“It’s no secret that York is working hard to become one of Canada’s top research-intensive universities,” said President Mamdouh Shoukri. “This funding will help York to intensify the health research that happens here. It will help us support the work of our world-class faculty, and help our students become global leaders in transforming health care.”

York University is the leading interdisciplinary research and teaching university in Canada. York offers a modern, academic experience at the undergraduate and graduate level in Toronto, Canada’s most international city. The third largest university in the country, York is host to a dynamic academic community of 50,000 students and 7,000 faculty and staff, as well as 190,000 alumni worldwide. York’s 11 faculties and 26 research centres conduct ambitious, groundbreaking research that is interdisciplinary, cutting across traditional academic boundaries. This distinctive and collaborative approach is preparing students for the future and bringing fresh insights and solutions to real-world challenges. York University is an autonomous, not-for-profit corporation.

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For more information, contact:

Elizabeth Monier-Williams, Research Communications, York University, 416 736 2100 x21069/ eamw@yorku.ca