Dr. Robin Urquhart named the new Scientific Director of Atlantic PATH

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Robin Urquhart has been named the new Scientific Director of Atlantic PATH.  Dr. Urquhart is an Associate Professor, the Canadian Cancer Society Endowed Chair in Population Cancer Research in the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, and a Senior Scientist with the Beatrice Hunter Cancer Research Institute and the Nova Scotia Lead for the Terry Fox Research Institute Marathon of Hope Cancer Centres Network. “I’m thrilled and excited to take on this role,” says Dr. Urquhart. “Because of my involvement with Atlantic-wide initiatives around cancer research, I see this as a great opportunity to bring people and resources together and build our leadership and capacity in the region.” We look forward to working with Dr. Urquhart and welcome her to the Atlantic PATH team!

CanPath Research

Attention Health Researchers: CanPath – The Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow’s Health – is Canada’s national population health platform built to enable scientists to explore the complex factors that contribute to chronic disease and cancer. CanPath has collected data from approximately 330,000 volunteer Canadians, including information about health, lifestyle, environment and behaviour. The size of the cohort and the richness of its epidemiological, clinical and biological data positions Canada amongst the world’s leaders in longitudinal cancer and chronic disease research. The power of this cohort continues to increase with time as new data are added, technology advances, and incident health outcomes occur. For more information, please review the new CanPath Researcher Brochure and contact Atlantic PATH (Ellen.Sweeney@dal.ca) or CanPath (info@canpath.ca).

New Publication Alert

We’re excited to announce a new article in Oncology that examines the role of socioeconomic status in the relationship between depression and prostate cancer survivorship in the Atlantic PATH cohort. bit.ly/39dekQu This work builds on an article in Psycho-Oncology that analyzes anxiety and depression symptoms among adult males with and without a history of prostate cancer. bit.ly/36aWzPZ  

National COVID-19 Questionnaire Data Now Available

Over 101,500 CanPath participants from across Canada completed the CanPath COVID-19 Questionnaire in 2020. The first release of this data, including the over 93,000 responses collected by October 31st, 2020, is now available to researchers. These data were collected by the regional cohorts that make up CanPath: the BC Generations Project, Alberta’s Tomorrow Project, the Manitoba Tomorrow Project, Ontario Health Study, CARTaGENE (Quebec) and Atlantic PATH. Data collected through the survey include: Self-reported COVID-19 test results/suspected infection Symptoms experienced (if any) Current health status and risk factors Potential sources of exposure Lifestyle and behaviours (alcohol use, tobacco use etc.) Impact of the pandemic on job status Impact of the pandemic on mental, emotional, social and financial well-being Nationally harmonized data from the CanPath COVID-19 Questionnaire is now available to researchers. Given the immediate need for pandemic research, CanPath has revised its expedited review process to provide timely access to the data. Requests for access to the national COVID-19 Questionnaire dataset, as well as accompanying baseline and follow-up datasets, will be reviewed in as little as 9 business days. Please note that while ethnicity/race data was not collected through this questionnaire, self-reported ethnicity data was collected at baseline for all CanPath participants. This data is available for all participants who completed the COVID-19 questionnaire, with the exception of Manitoba Tomorrow Project participants as this cohort is still in recruitment. Of the over 93,000 participants to complete the CanPath COVID-19 Questionnaire by October 31st: 11.5% reported they were tested for COVID-19 0.21% reported they tested positive for COVID-19 0.02% were hospitalized because of COVID-19 2.66% suspected having an undiagnosed case of COVID-19 52.2% experienced mild or severe symptoms of COVID-19 25.4% reported a change in employment status since the pandemic Questions about the CanPath COVID-19 Questionnaire dataset? Email access@canpath.ca.

CanPath Webinar Announcement: Research Spotlight – How 3 Trainees are using CanPath Data and Biosamples

Join us on January 27th for a CanPath webinar to learn about three exciting research projects using data and biosamples from two of CanPath’s regional cohorts, Atlantic PATH and BC Generations. Jacob Nearing (PhD candidate, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Dalhousie University) will be presenting his doctoral research which investigates the oral microbiome for biomarker discovery in cancer. Kalli Hood (MSc, Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, Dalhousie University) will be presenting her Master’s research which used toenail biomarkers to compare arsenic speciation and metallomic profiles in breast, cervical, prostate, and skin cancers. Molly Sweeney Magee (PhD candidate, School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia) will be presenting on her doctoral research focused on cancer diagnosis and health behaviour change.   Registration details: http://bit.ly/3b9ewBE

CanPath CITF Funding Announcement

We are thrilled to announce that CanPath has been awarded $1.9million in funding from the COVID-19 Immunity Task Force for a COVID-19 seroprevalence study!  This work will be implemented by all the regional CanPath cohorts, including Atlantic PATH.  

Portable X-ray fluorescence of zinc applied to human toenail clippings

We are pleased to announce a publication in Applied Radiation and Isotopes examining Portable X-Ray Fluorescence of Arsenic using Atlantic PATH’s toenail samples!! This work was led by Dr. David Fleming at Mount Allison University. The full text is available via open access: bit.ly/2G17SjM. This work builds on the first publication in the Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology which examines Portable X-Ray Fluorescence of Zinc. The full text is available via open access: https://bit.ly/35zlKdU

UNB Saint John data scientist pioneering in occupational health informatics

UNB Saint John alum Hongchang (Gary) Bao’s work with Dr. Chris Baker and Dr. Anil Adisesh produced an automated coding algorithm for occupational data (job title and industry codes for the Canadian National Occupation Classification (NOC) system). Funded by CanPath and the New Brunswick Health Research Foundation, the algorithm is now being applied data from Atlantic PATH and the Alberta’s Tomorrow Project. https://bit.ly/31Cd5pR