Funded Research Project

Sphingolipidoses include Gaucher’s disease, Krabbe’s disease, Fabry’s disease, Niemann-Pick (types A/B/C), metachromatic leukodystrophy, GM1 and GM2 gangliosidosis, Sandhoff disease and Farber disease.

Congenital heart defects affect >1 in 100 children (60 times more common than cancer). They increase the risk of hospitalization by 20 times and are responsible for 4% of all hospital admissions in children.

Excess weight and obesity are defined as an excessive accumulation of body fat. In Canada, 29% of children are overweight or obese and the majority (~70%) of them will remain overweight as adults.

Birth asphyxia and resulting neonatal encephalopathy (NE) in full-term babies is a major cause of death and severe neurodevelopmental disabilities, including cerebral palsy and intellectual disability.

This project involves an innovative approach using state-of-the-art techniques, including high-dimensional immunophenotyping combined with single-cell transcriptome analysis (CITE-seq), which allows for the simultaneous study of RNA and proteins from a single cell.

This project has several innovative elements. First, the concept of incidentally discovered asymptomatic VTE, or VTE, is largely unstudied in pediatrics, unlike its adult equivalent.

When a child is born very prematurely, the brain is not fully mature. Several crucial stages of brain development occur in the weeks following birth.

The World Health Organization has included global child health in its priorities for action to achieve marked and sustained improvements in the health of the world’s population by 2030.

Berger’s disease, also known as IgA nephropathy, is an autoimmune disease that damages a person’s kidneys. It affects between 2 and 10 out of every 100,000 people each year and although it often occurs in young adults, it may appear during childhood.

On a global scale, 5%–10% of pregnancies are complicated by hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP), which can lead to serious maternal, fetal, and neonatal complications. Many of these women have pre-existing hypertension (<20 weeks of pregnancy) or hypertension postpartum that persists for more than 3 months. It has also been shown that women with a self-managed postpartum HDP are at high risk of developing chronic hypertension and cardiovascular complications later.