They can be heard at 7 p.m. every evening: ringing bells, clanging pots, honking horns, and blaring sirens sounding out in support of health-care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the workers on the frontlines are researchers at Providence Health Care who are trying to understand the virus and how to control and cure it.
More than a dozen “rapid response” research projects have been launched by Genome B.C. aimed at improving COVID-19 virus and antibody detection, and accelerating the development of treatments and vaccines. Zabrina Brumme and Christopher Lowe are heading a collaboration aimed at creating a test that will not only reveal whether or not the virus is
Project Leaders: Chanson Brumme Institutions: University of British Columbia (UBC) Budget: $76500 Competition: Rapid Response Funding for COVID-19 Research Projects Genome Centre(s): Genome British Columbia Fiscal Year: 2020 Status: Active This project will create a simple open-source software package that will help analyze viral genomic data from the COVID-19 pandemic. This tool will be created
Project Leaders: Christopher Lowe, Zabrina Brumme Institutions: Simon Fraser University (SFU) Budget: $101000 Competition: Rapid Response Funding for COVID-19 Research Projects Genome Centre(s): Genome British Columbia Fiscal Year: 2020 Status: Active There is an urgent need to quickly and accurately identify cases of COVID-19 as people with the illness need to quarantine themselves in order
World AIDS Day arrives each December 1 with a sense of sadness, but there was cause to celebrate in British Columbia last December. That was when provincial Health Minister Adrian Dix officially declared that A IDS was no longer an epidemic in British Columbia, but an endemic concern. Accompanying Dix that day at the opening
One of the most important HIV conferences of the year, the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2020) took place in the second week of March, just as many people’s attention was engulfed by the new coronavirus. You might have missed some of the key developments in HIV prevention presented at the meeting: The
SEATTLE, Washington – Though there have been multiple biomedical advances to prevent and treat HIV and AIDS in the last decade, these innovations have not been accessible to everyone. Barriers remain in the form of stigma, lack of supportive policy, a dearth of robust health systems and even more challenges unique to each country. Here
The federal government has provided researchers at the University of British Columbia with a total of $5.1 million in funding towards research on detecting, managing, and reducing the transmission of the COVID-19 coronavirus. UBC researchers were initially provided with $2.8 million on March 6, but that has since been topped off with an additional $2.3
VANCOUVER — Multiple research teams out of a B.C. university are getting millions of dollars in funding from the federal government to propel their novel coronavirus research. The University of British Columbia announced Tuesday that five of its research teams are collectively getting $2.3 million from the federal government to continue their work on detecting,
Here’s the story of one Canadian doctor who has spent decades helping the medical world turn the tide on the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In 1981, AIDS was first recognized as a new disease. Caused by the HIV virus, it first presented as a strange kind of pneumonia. Doctors soon realized that although the pneumonia was treatable,
This year, the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) was held in a virtual format due to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. For the first in our video coverage series for 2020’s meeting, we’re revisiting a feature from 10 years ago on the future of HIV research, which is not so different from the
In 2015, the US government released a 5-year plan known as the National HIV/AIDS Strategy that outlined methods to lower the incidence of HIV infection and slow down the epidemic. The actions were predicated on “90-90-90” goals-90% of people with HIV would be diagnosed, 90% of those diagnosed would receive antiretroviral therapy (ART), and 90%
As a curious, keen problem solver who works to better understand HIV molecular virology, Hanwei Sudderuddin’s experiences with the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) have prepared him for his current work with the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE). After becoming intrigued with FHS professor Zabrina Brumme’s research upon listening to her speak as
HIV/AIDS was once a death sentence but the virus is now treatable Artist Tiko Kerr pulls down a large cardboard box from a shelf in his East Vancouver studio. It’s overflowing with empty pill bottles. “These are my meds. This is what keeps me alive.” The prominent artist was nearly killed by HIV, the virus
In recognition of his community-engaged teaching and research activities, Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) professor Robert Hogg has been named the recipient of the 2019 Warren Gill Award for Community Impact. Hogg has dedicated his research career to working with BC clinicians, community organizations and people living with HIV to find ways to overcome barriers
If any heroes emerge from the COVID-19 outbreak, one of them will likely be a man widely considered one of the heroes of the AIDS epidemic – Anthony Fauci. Fauci, who has been unafraid to speak the truth about the new coronavirus strain and counter the misinformation put out by Donald Trump, has been director
HIV treatment as prevention, as measured in community-level viral suppression, was strongly associated with a large drop in the number of new HIV infections among gay and bisexual men in Australia, even before PrEP was available. This study was presented by Dr Denton Callander from the University of New South Wales yesterday at the Conference
As community viremia declined, so did the incidence of HIV infection among gay and bisexual men in a 6-year Australian study, researchers reported. The findings, presented during CROI, provide “compelling evidence that treatment as prevention can achieve population-level ‘big picture’ public health goals around reducing new cases of HIV among gay and bisexual men,” Denton
It was the early 2000s, and I was still a teenager. I wasn’t out yet. I was so angry when Billy died because I didn’t understand. Billy didn’t have to die, but he couldn’t afford the medication he needed to save his life, and he couldn’t get insurance because of discrimination against people with preexisting
Gracias a los avances en el diagnóstico y tratamiento del VIH, las personas que viven con la infección pueden llevar una vida normal y alejada del estigma. En diálogo con Infobae, la mirada de un experto La infección por VIH sigue siendo un problema de salud. A pesar de los avances de la ciencia que
The BC-CfE Laboratory is streamlining reporting processes for certain tests in order to simplify distribution and record-keeping, and to ensure completeness of results. Beginning September 2, 2025, results for the ‘Resistance Analysis of HIV-1 Protease and Reverse Transcriptase’ (Protease-RT) and ‘HIV-1 Integrase Resistance Genotype’ tests will be combined into a single ‘HIV-1 Resistance Genotype Report’.
For more details and example reports, please click on the button below
