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University of Saskatchewan

College of Medicine

Medicine is so much more than lab coats and stethoscopes. The research community at the University of Saskatchewan College of Medicine is a diverse group of humans, all working with their own unique motivations — and not all of them work in a hospital setting. Get to know what gets these researchers amped about their jobs, what they’re doing, where they’re doing it, and why. Presented by the Office of Vice-Dean of Research, College of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan.

Researchers Under the Scope

Brianne Philipenko (MD) was midway through her respirology fellowship in Calgary when the Covid-19 pandemic shut down the city.
 
 
 
She started interval workouts at home using Nike’s fitness app — when inspiration struck.
 
 
 
“Coming up with a creative, innovative way to allow people to access an exercise program outside of the typical organized pulmonary rehabilitation in a gym setting was something that I became really interested in,” said Philipenko..
 
 
 
As a respirologist, Philipenko was already frustrated by the lack of ‘mainstay’ guidelines on incorporating exercise into severe asthma treatment.
 
 
 
“I think that’s a big disservice for our patients,” she said. “We’re giving them these fancy medications that improve their asthma, but we’re not going after the low-hanging fruit such as physical activity.”
 
 
 
“It's something cheap, accessible, that everyone can do, and it's something that I think is very much underutilized.”
 
 
 
Even before the pandemic, access to pulmonary rehabilitation programs was severely limited, as most also serve with people suffering from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). Philipenko’s asthma patients were often leery of exercise, for fear of triggering an attack. 
 
 
 
“You don't exercise, so then you get out of shape and that makes you more short of breath when you exercise,” she said. “It becomes a vicious cycle of deconditioning and fear."
 
 
 
Philipenko teamed up with a physiotherapist and a kinesiologist to develop an at-home rehabilitation program for people with pulmonary hypertension. Patients download an app, then follow the program for eight to 12 weeks, incorporating pacing strategies and breathing exercises to ease their way back into fitness. 
 
 
 
“We're still in the middle of recruitment,” said Philipenko. “We have people that are extremely fit exercising every day, to people that never exercise ever, with asthma participating in the study,” she said. “It's promising.”
 
 
 
By 2021, Erika Penz (MD) and Donald Cockcroft (MD) -- colleagues Philipenko met during internal medicine training — helped convince her to return to her hometown, taking on her current role as a respirologist and an Assistant Professor of Respirology, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan's College of Medicine. 
 
 
 
“They have been giants in the space of asthma, and they really inspired me. They brought me back and made it exciting to participate in the research scene here in Saskatoon,” Philipenko said.
 
 
 
She’s working with the Asthma Research Lab team, where her patients can now take part in bronchoprovocation studies and pharmaceutical clinical trials.
 
 
 
“As much as I love my clinical practice, it's really nice to have something else going on that shakes things up. And for me, that was research,” said Philipenko.
 
 
 
She hopes to see a shift in the way exercise is perceived, pushing for recognition of its critical role alongside pharmaceuticals.
 
 
 
“That's the wonderful thing about asthma, is that if it's controlled, you should be completely asymptomatic. It's not a progressive disease. And we have some medications that can achieve that for people now. So it's a pretty exciting time to be working in this field.”

Exercise Your Right to Breathe: Dr. Brianne Philipenko & Asthma

As the world aims to eradicate hepatitis C (HCV) by 2030, Carrielynn Lund and Dr. Alexandra King’s team created a how-to guide.
 
 Journeys to Wellness: Prairie Hepatitis C Roadmap is a step-by-step guide to tackling a spike of new infections across the three Canadian prairie provinces.
 
Hepatitis C (HCV) causes severe liver disease, and was notoriously difficult to treat until the introduction of direct-acting antivirals a decade ago — antivirals which boast a remarkable 95% success rate.
 
Despite this advancement, Lund and Dr. King say Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba need to know why HCV cases keep rising, particularly in jails, in remote communities, and in people who lack adequate housing and nutrition.
 
The virus is not picky, as Carrielynn Lund learned when she was first diagnosed in the 1990s. Her doctor wrongly told her back then the blood-borne illness could be spread only through injection drug use.
 
Shocked, Lund said “I went out of that room and drove home thinking, oh my God, I'm gonna die.”
 
A single mother of two, she resumed her professional life and never disclosed that “dark, dirty secret” until nearly 20 years later, as she became friends with Dr. King.
 
The Waniska team, led by Saydi Harlton, brought together researchers, health professionals, and people who’ve lived with hepatitis C in sharing circles, workshops and interviews.
 
“The stigma around this needed to be addressed and I wanted to be a part of it,” said Lund. “People often feel really alone in this journey, and it’s so important that we create spaces where they can share their stories and be heard."
 
Participants identified barriers to care, including confidentiality breaches, misinformation and inadequate access to testing.
 
“My priority right now may or may not be my hepatitis C. It might be, where am I going to sleep today? Or, what food am I going to be getting?” said Dr. King.
 
In the Roadmap, King said the disproportionately high number of cases in Indigenous people shows a need for true elimination strategies, rather than pockets of “little pilot projects.”
 
"There aren't necessarily a lot of resources, so you're dealing with fairly fragile systems," Dr. King noted.
 
Recent provincial government decisions to axe needle exchanges, and cut public transportation routes to remote and northern communities have taken their toll, she added.
 
Given the hurdles faced by Indigenous and two-spirit people, both Dr. King and Lund say prairie people need culturally informed care. They point to Indigenous-led hepatitis C elimination strategies with predictable funding and resources. 
 
“It really helps you to understand the importance of really good evidence-based policy that supports people and meet them where they're at,” Dr. King said.
 
Lund and Dr. King believe making a fiscal case for early detection and treatment may also swing policy-makers back toward patient-centred care.
 
Peer support also plays a role, Lund said.
 
“When someone who has been through it helps a newly diagnosed person, it can truly change everything for them," she said.

All’s Not Lost: A Roadmap to Treating Hepatitis C on the Prairies

James Stempien (MD) has navigated some of the most challenging corners of emergency medicine, from the frigid isolation of Inuvik to the bustling corridors of Saskatoon’s emergency departments. His experience in low-tech outposts has shaped his approach to modern emergency care.
 
 
 
“When things aren’t going well you see it in the emergency department first,” Stempien said. “We’re the front door. We’re always open.”
 
 
 
As provincial department head of emergency medicine, Stempien sees patients on their worst days in hospitals bursting at the seams, struggling to keep pace with Saskatchewan’s growing population.
 
 
 
“I worked in emergency last night and we were really busy, hours behind. All the ER docs there and nurses were running our tails off,” said Stempien. “We're seeing an increase in acuity.”
 
 
 
Stempien said the patients he sees now come in with serious medical concerns, which cannot be written off as minor ailments.
 
 
 
One in five emergency patients in Saskatoon requires hospitalization. Amid frequent congestion, Stempien says some find themselves on stretchers in the hallway, even in former linen closets, waiting to move upstairs to an acute care bed.
 
 
 
He said while a plan to open 109 more acute care beds at Saskatoon City Hospital ‘will make a big difference’, he and his staff are concerned overcrowding jeopardizes patients in the waiting room, leading to moral injury and burnout.
 
 
 
Stempien is determined to free up space inside his department. He's also led numerous innovations aimed at streamlining emergency medicine, including a recent move to send patients their discharge instructions via text message.
 
 
 
“They can access it as many times as they want. They're not going to lose the piece of paper on the way to the parking lot,” said Stempien.
 
 
 
Stempien, 67, said he still loves the job, in part thanks to the team atmosphere, and also because his patients are still full of surprises.
 
 
 
“Many things I've seen thousands of times, but every now and then you run across something and you think, wow, I've never seen that,” he said.
 
 
 
“That's what makes emergency medicine interesting. And fun."

In the Trenches: Dr. James Stempien on Emergency Medicine

Yi-Chun Chen is taking a close-up look at some of the body’s hardest-working cells — the ones often processing an overabundance of modern-day food and nutrients.
 
“From an evolutionary point of view, our cells are not designed to deal with that,” said Dr. Chen, who joined the department of Anatomy, Physiology, and Pharmacology at the University of Saskatchewan last year as an assistant professor.
 
She said our bodies are pushed into churning out large amounts of insulin rapidly after snacks and meals, “which makes the beta cells work extra hard.”
 
Raised in Taiwan and inspired by her grandfather—a retired elementary school science teacher—Chen’s fascination with biology first led her to work as a medical laboratory technologist, then to the world of cellular research.
 
Using both rodent and human models, Chen is studying pancreatic beta cells: the way they process peptide hormones like insulin and how their behaviour and function is affected by an excess of nutrients.
 
With high-resolution imaging, she and her team are examining how both humans and mice synthesize, process, and clear peptide hormones.
 
“There are a lot of things we still don't know about peptide hormones, not just in the pancreas, but in the brain, in the gut,” she said. “Those are fascinating.”
 
Last year, Chen was the recipient of a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Research Excellence, Diversity, and Independence Early Career Transition Award. After moving from UBC to Saskatoon, Dr. Chen said feels considerable support already from her established and mid-career prairie colleagues.
 
“They can mentor us and guide us, and we also have a group of five or six young scientists,” she said. “I can envision myself working on many, many interesting projects with them.”
 
Her goal today is to identify biomarkers that could predict diabetes far earlier.
 
She hopes to develop biochemical assays that measure proinsulin levels to serve as an early warning system. This could enable interventions months or even years before a traditional diagnosis based on blood glucose levels.
 
“We want to be able to predict the development of, for example, type 1 or type 2 diabetes before they are diagnosed,” said Chen.
 
In the long term, Chen envisions both preventative strategies and regenerative therapies to fight diabetes. Stem cell-derived beta cells may be a future solution, she said.
 
“We are making really good progress in Canada, actually. We have clinical trials. We’re putting the stem cell–derived beta cells into patients with type 1 diabetes.”
 
She hopes this will one day reduce the need for constant insulin injections, even helping curb obesity.
 
“Don’t give up,” Chen said. “We are passionate and we want to work on many, many things.”
 
“If you like it, keep going.”

Peptide Puzzle: Yi-Chun Chen on Early Markers for Diabetes and Obesity

Welcome one, welcome all. At Researchers Under the Scope, you will get to know what amps up the researchers at the University of Saskatchewan College of Medicine. In mid-2020, they are dealing with COVID-19 in so many different ways: extracting blood from COVID-19 patients, planning a province's hospital response to a pandemic, asking residents why they're avoiding hospitals even when they face potentially fatal crises. And they're just getting started. Listen in starting June 7, 2020.

Trailer: Researchers Under the Scope

Eric Sy's greatest passion is looking after patients and trying to get them better. COVID-19 is stumping so many in the medical field. But Sy and so many others are working hard to find treatment methods to alleviate COVID's toll on patients around the world. Interviewer Chelsea Laskowski gets Eric Sy on Skype and they talk Trump, blood plasma, and why Sy is approaching everything with extreme caution right now. Recorded on May 5, 2020.

Eric Sy talks about hitting COVID-19 with Hydroxychloroquine, Remdesivir and blood plasma

Emergency room visits plummeted in Saskatchewan when COVID-19 hit. Why? That's what Donna Goodridge wants to find out. She is doing a study that is crucial to understanding what’s happening to groups of people who we haven’t heard much from during the COVID-19 pandemic -- people living in lower income housing. In a physical distancing interview with Chelsea Laskowski, Goodridge shares her insights on long-term care homes, palliative care and what scares her about the residents' experience during COVID-19.

Drilling down on how COVID-19 affects vulnerable people with Donna Goodridge

While the world has been in what can sometimes feel like chaos, a few people out there are bringing order into our lives. Dr. Gary Groot is bringing order into healthcare, and he’s adapting as the COVID-19 pandemic evolves in the prairie province of Saskatchewan. Interviewer Chelsea Laskowski speaks with Groot about measuring what's happening, what needs to happen, and the level of pressure he faces to get it right.

Preparing for when the COVID-19 surge hits hospitals, with Gary Groot

At first, Darryl Falzarano was unenthusiastic about COVID-19. He had hoped it would be contained early on. But... it wasn't. And now Falzarano's work days are dedicated to COVID-19 as he leads a research team at the University of Saskatchewan's Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization-International Vaccine Centre. Chelsea Laskowski interviews Falzarano about his mental pivot, and what happens in the next few months.

What happens in the lab that's hunting for a COVID-19 vaccine in Saskatchewan, with Darryl Falzarano

Joyce Wilson leads the team of virologists and geneticists searching for antiviral drugs we can repurpose to stop COVID-19 infections from spreading.
 
Using a $449,000 grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Wilson and her team use genomic tools to identify pathways the virus uses as it hijacks cells in the human body. As she tells host Jen Quesnel, from there her team will narrow down antiviral therapeutics that slow or inhibit COVID-19 infections.

Suppressing the coronavirus: Joyce Wilson leads the hunt for existing drugs that stop COVID-19

Respiratory disease now accounts for one in four hospital admissions, with lung cancer killing more patients than any other cancer.
 
As both a respirologist and a health economist, Dr. Erika Penz knows Canadians spend a staggering amount of money treating lung diseases and cancer -- conditions that can be prevented.
 
That's why, early on, Penz chose to put respiratory disease in her crosshairs.
 
"That's actually why I get excited," said Penz. "The more we can understand and reduce these risks.... the more we can reduce the burden on both caregivers and the health care system."
 
By cutting smoking, vaping, and exposure to pollutants such as asbestos, Penz says we can release the tremendous pressure lung diseases place on hospitals, patients and their families.
 
In this episode, we hear why she became fluent in the language of both clinicians and bureaucrats; what being a clinician entails during a respiratory pandemic; and why Penz is determined to halt the pain and suffering of preventable lung disease.

The burden of lung disease and lightening it, with Erika Penz

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