Call for expression of interest - Associate Program Director - Hematopathology Residency Program - deadline to apply - June 14, 2024.

The UBC Hematopathology program is posting for an Associate Program Director (APD) for a 1 year term starting July 1, 2024. The APD will be a Hematopathologist who holds a clinical appointment at UBC and whose clinical work is based in the Lower Mainland. If you are interested, please submit the following documents: a cover letter, CV, and two letters of reference, to Shelley Berkow at shelley.berkow@pathology.ubc.ca by June 14, 2024. 🔗 Read More

***Congratulations to our newest Hematopathologist - Dr. Kevin Shopsowitz****

Dr. Kevin Shopsowitz has successfully passed the Royal College exam and will be joining our Hematopathology staff at Vancouver General Hospital (VGH). Congratulations Kevin. We look forward to working with you as staff in the near future.

RECENT ACHIEVEMENTS OF BCCDC PUBLIC HEALTH LABORATORY (PHL) MEMBERS

We are proud to highlight the exceptional accomplishments of our members from the BCCDC Public Health Laboratory (PHL) who were honored at the recent National Association of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases conference.

• Mel Krajden received the prestigious CACMID John G. FitzGerald Award, recognizing his significant contributions to the field.
• Jonathan Gubbay was honored with the CACMID Mentorship Award for his exceptional guidance and support to peers and juniors.
• Catherine Hogan was awarded the AMMI Canada New Investigator Award, spotlighting her emerging leadership in medical microbiology.

For more details on the awards, visit the 🔗 conference awards page.

In addition, we are pleased to share the success of Natalie Prystajecky’s GEMSTONE project, which has attracted attention from over 121 news outlets. This includes 109 general news platforms, 5 industry-specific sources, 5 radio stations, 2 TV channels, and 1 print publication. The project, which focuses on detecting fecal contamination in seawater, highlights the innovative and impactful research conducted at our center.

A whole slew of recent papers, not limited to but including these ones:

🔹 Natalie A. Prystajecky, et al.
Targeted genomic sequencing of avian influenza viruses in wetland sediment from wild bird habitats. 🔗 Read the full study here

---

🔹 Kevin S Kuchinski, Natalie Prystajecky, Agatha N Jassem, Inna Sekirov, et al.
Nasopharyngeal angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) expression as a risk-factor for SARS-CoV-2 transmission in concurrent hospital associated outbreaks. 🔗 Read the full study here

---

🔹 Shannon L. Russell, Kevin S. Kuchinski, Chris Fjell, et al.
Nasopharyngeal angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) expression as a risk-factor for SARS-CoV-2 transmission in concurrent hospital associated outbreaks. 🔗 Read the full study here

---

🔹 Muhammad Morshed, et al.
Case Series of Jamestown Canyon Virus Infections with Neurologic Outcomes, Canada, 2011–2016. 🔗 Read the full study here

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

🔹Dr. Granville's Research Published in Nature Reviews Rheumatology.
The paper, which can be accessed 🔗 here , delves into the role of granzymes in the pathogenesis of these conditions, offering new insights that could revolutionize treatment approaches.

Further detailing the impact of this research, a comprehensive article discussing Dr. Granville's findings and their implications for medical advancements has been featured on Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute's website. Read more about the transformative potential of this research 🔗 here .

---

🔹 Ali Bashashati's latest research in Nature Communications

🔔 📣 Introducing VOLTA, a self-supervised framework for learning cell representations from histopathology images without manual annotations. After extensive benchmarking involving 800,000 cell images, VOLTA has demonstrated superior performance compared to existing methods. It excels in capturing cell morphological variances across nine datasets and six distinct cancer types. VOLTA provides a framework that can empower discoveries without any annotation data, even in situations where sample sizes are limited.

To showcase the potential of our proposed framework, we apply VOLTA to ovarian and endometrial cancers and demonstrate that our annotation-free cell representations can be utilized to identify the known histotypes of ovarian cancer and provide insights that link histopathology and molecular subtypes of endometrial cancer.

Article: https://lnkd.in/guctw25j
Code: https://lnkd.in/gSeF2gn8

---

🔹 New Publication from Dr. Wellington's Lab:

Exploring the Impact of APOE4 Genotype on Plasma Biomarkers in Cognitively Resilien.
🔗 Read the full study here.

PALM GRADUATE STUDIES PROGRAM: DID YOU KNOW?

ⓘ Did you know that students entering directly into the PALM PhD Program only take 4 credits of courses (two x 2 credit core courses, both taught at VGH), and MSc students only take 12 credits of courses (two x 2 credit core courses plus 8 elective credits)? This is fewer credits than many other graduate programs.

ⓘ Did you know that our Program admits students four times per year (January, May, July, September) with our rolling admissions, and can admit strong students on short notice?

ⓘ Did you know that the PALM Comprehensive Examination has been revised to allow students to develop project ideas more closely related to their thesis?

NOTABLE CASES BY DR. HABIB MOSHREF RAZAVI

Today's case of interest involves a 74-year-old female presenting with a vasculitic rash following a recent respiratory illness. Despite the resolution of her rash, ongoing drenching night sweats and a history of pancytopenia (Hb 110 g/L, platelet 140x10^9/L, and neutrophils at 1.8x10^9/L) prompted further investigation, including a bone marrow biopsy. The bone marrow cellularity was found to be <5%, with blasts <1% invoking the possible diagnosis of aplastic anemia. Interestingly, the aspirate revealed numerous histiocytes laden with debris as well as nursing macrophages, and occasional instances of hemophagocytosis. Macrophages are intimately involved in iron metabolism. In the spleen and liver, these cells, phagocytize red cells, degrade hemoglobin in phagolysosomes, and process heme through hemeoxygenase, releasing labile ferrous iron stored by ferritin or extruded by ceruloplasmin and ferroportin. Transferrin binds to the released iron, which is then received by the bone marrow macrophage transferrin receptor for internalization and use in erythropoiesis. (Aspirate stained with May-Grünwald Giemsa at x100 magnification) and (Perl's stain for iron at x100 magnification).For more insights into these processes, see this nice publication DOI:10.3390/ph11040137.

ADVANCED RESEARCH COMPUTING SUMMER SCHOOL

We are excited to announce that the UBC ARC 2024 Summer School has been scheduled for July 8-11, 2024. This educational opportunity is designed to enhance your skills and knowledge in a vibrant learning environment.

• Dates: July 8-11, 2024
• Registration: Free of charge
• For more information and to register, please visit: Read More

Don't miss out on this excellent opportunity to advance your professional development at no cost.

NOW OPEN: NEW FACULTY RESEARCH AWARD

Faculty of Medicine is now accepting applications for this year’s New Faculty Research Award, valued at a maximum of $10,000 per award.

Applicants must be within two years of their first eligible Faculty appointment in the UBC Faculty of Medicine as of the application deadline. Eligible appointments include Assistant Professor (or higher) and Adjunct Professor. This year, applications are accepted from Clinical Faculty members within four years of their first Clinical faculty appointment as Clinical Assistant Professor or higher in the UBC Faculty of Medicine as of the application deadline. Previous awardees and applicants who have received $200,000 or more in Start Up Funds from other sources are ineligible for this opportunity. The funds may be used for research equipment, research supplies and/or research services (e.g., cost recovery payments to core equipment), and research support salaries (e.g., technical personnel).

The application deadline is JUNE 26, 2024 at 5:00pm. Further information and the online application form are available on MedNet at
https://mednet.med.ubc.ca/research/internal-funding-opportunities/new-faculty-research-award/

lease contact Tara Chen at tara.chen@ubc.ca if you have any questions about this opportunity.