New CIHR funding boosts UVic health research

Battling parasite-borne disease and improving family fitness are the goals of two University of Victoria projects recently awarded funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

Since restructuring in 2015, CIHR has organized its grants into two funding streams: project grants, designed to capture ideas that contribute to the creation and use of health-related knowled#8805; and foundation grants that provide long-term support for the pursuit of innovative, high-impact research programs.

With his seven-year, $959,663 foundation grant, exercise psychologist Ryan Rhodes will explore how parental support can move good intentions about exercise into actions for the entire family.

Physical activity is vital to public health but very few Canadians—children included—are active enough to reap the benefits. Parents are among the least active groups and they serve as key support and modeling for their children.

“We’ll examine innovative ways to form good habits, making physical activity more a part of family culture and identity,” says Rhodes, who is director of UVic’s Behavioural Medicine Lab. “If successful, it may help change the typical education approach to physical activity promotion used in current policy.

UVic biochemist Martin Boulanger will use his five-year $825,000 project grant to continue research into how Apicomplexa—the group of single-celled parasites that cause toxoplasmosis and severe malaria—invade host cells.

Both of these illnesses are devastating to human health around the globe. Toxoplasmosis can cause food-borne illness, eye disease and death in patients with compromised immune systems. If transmitted to a fetus, toxoplasmosis is known to cause neonatal abnormalities or death.

Nearly 3.4 billion people live in at-risk zones for malaria, resulting in more than 200 million clinical cases and half a million deaths per year, 85 per cent of which are young children.

Boulanger will build on previous research in which his team mapped out how these parasites build a doorway into host cells. The CIHR funding will allow him to understand on a molecular level how the parasites use a unique motor-based mechanism to propel themselves through that doorway into host cells.

“Once we better understand how they enter a cell, we can leverage that information to find new therapies that inhibit their progress,” says Boulanger.