Western researchers get $1.25M in federal funding

Western's ground-breaking project to develop a suite of molecular profiles for complex, chronic diseases, which can potentially lead to innovative treatments, has received more than half a million dollars in federal funding through the. The project is among four Western research projects that received new funding through CFI's John R. Evans Leaders Fund (JELF), which included more than $30 million worth of investments in 136 research infrastructure projects across 31 universities in Canada. "This new funding underscores the top research priority areas for Canada and for Western's department of medicine and the Bone and Joint Institute ," said Dr. Tom Appleton, principal investigator, and a professor in the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry. "The research themes of arthritis, cardiovascular and gastrointestinal cancers encompass a massive burden experienced by Canadians with unmet needs for new treatments. We are very excited to push these research areas ahead and to bring this world-leading technology that will be available to all researchers in the London biomedical community for the first time." Using molecular spatial profiling technology, investigators can interrogate the behaviour of cells within tissues, including from patients with life-threatening diseases, at an incredibly high resolution, explained the project's co-investigator Dr. Geoffrey Pickering, a professor at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry and co-director of the vascular biology group at Robarts Research Institute.