New Toxicology Publication

Congratulations to Kalli Hood and team on their new publication in Frontiers in Public Health! Kalli’s Master’s research found an association between a history of cancer and arsenic speciation/metallome exposure in the Atlantic PATH cohort. This work is part of our larger focus on environment and cancer, and establishing toenails as an important biomarker representing ~18 months of exposure. Kalli is now working on her PhD focused on drinking water quality in the Department of Civil and Resource Engineering at Dalhousie University.  

New Research Report — Current Management and Health Care use for People with Osteoarthritis

Congratulations to Dr. Cheryl Kozey and team on their completed study and new report, Current Management and Health Care Use for People with Osteoarthritis. The team used existing data from Atlantic PATH to examine self-reported characteristics of people living with and without osteoarthritis in all three Maritime Provinces (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island).  The Atlantic PATH data for Nova Scotians was then linked to administrative data, accessed through Health Data Nova Scotia, in order to identify trends in health care use by Nova Scotians with and without osteoarthritis. A copy of the summary report can be found here: https://mssu.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/OA-Maritimes-Summary-Report_2023-02-10.pdf An infographic characterizing the the participants and findings can be found here: https://mssu.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/OA-Maritimes-Infographic.pdf

Nearing PhD Defense

Congratulations to Jacob Nearing who successfully defended his PhD in Microbiology and Immunology at Dalhousie University!! Supervised by Dr. Morgan Langille, Jacob used biosamples from Atlantic PATH and Alberta’s Tomorrow Project in his work, “Identification of Robust Biomarkers Using Microbiome DNA Sequencing with a Focus on the Oral Microbiome and Cancer Associations.” Abstract The human microbiome can be defined as the community of microbes that live within and on the human body. Modern day microbiome research relies on the use of high throughput deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequencing to characterize and identify microbes and community structures associated with human disease. Indeed, the human microbiome has been proposed as a useful source of biomarkers for numerous human health conditions including cancer. Yet often, microbial biomarkers identified through DNA sequencing efforts are not reproducible between studies. Herein, I present my work on examining computation choices during microbiome experiments and applying this knowledge to identify novel associations with the salivary microbiome and breast, prostate, and colon cancer. Typical DNA sequenced based surveys of microbiomes, requires numerous choices to be made at each step of the experimental protocol. Often theses choices are unclear with no current gold standard within the field. Yet, these methods are used interchangeable within the literature without regard for how that choice might impact the biological conclusions that researchers find. To help address this issue I examined how choices made during two computational steps for processing DNA sequencing data impacted the biological conclusions drawn. In doing so I highlighted critical differences that can be attributed to bioinformatic tool choice and suggest potential solutions for these issues in the future. Using information from the above chapters, the second half of this thesis represents analysis done on salivary samples from a large population cohort to both characterized salivary microbiome variation and how that variation is associated with breast, prostate, and colon cancer. Within these chapters we show that several daily life factors are significantly associated with salivary microbiome composition, yet they only explain a small amount of total community variance. We also show that the salivary microbiome contains little signal in cases of breast and prostate cancer. Contrastingly our work did show potential salivary microbiome associations within cases of colon cancer. These findings show the potential for future diagnostic research into the relation between the oral microbiome and colon cancer development. Jacob’s publications and additional information about his research can be found here. Congratulations, Dr. Nearing!! We wish you all the best in the future and look forward to following your career.  

Canadian Cancer Society Accelerator Grants

The Canadian Cancer Society’s Accelerator grants seek to accelerate the application of high-quality evidence addressing unmet, cancer-related needs (bit.ly/3B9DTj5). Congratulations to Dr. Robin Urquhart, Scientific Director of Atlantic PATH and Dr. Trevor Dummer, National Scientific Co-Director of CanPath on their successful Accelerator grants! Dr. Urquhart’s work will focus on adapting and implementing cancer patient pathways in Nova Scotia. The overarching aim is to implement and test evidence-based Cancer Patient Pathways as a coordinated approach to referral and early diagnosis is needed t oreduce delays and improve patient outcomes. Dr. Dummer’s work will focus on preventing cancer in the gender minority populations. While existing cancer prevention strategies address the needs of the majority population quite well, alternate strategies that account for the needs of marginalized communities who are often at an increased risk of cancer are lacking. This work will synthesize existing practice and is related to Dr. Dummer’s current CanPath project, “Primary Prevention of Cancer-Causing Substance Use in Gender Minority People of Canada” (https://canpath.ca/project/dummer-chan-2022/).

2022 Women Leaders in Digital Health

Congratulations to our colleague, Dr. Samina Abidi who has been selected as one of nine Women Leaders in Digital Health 2022 by Digital Health Canada. Launched in 2017, this award recognizes visionaries who are harnessing the power of IT to transform Canadian health and healthcare. Dr. Abidi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, Faculty of Medicine at Dalhousie University. She holds an MD, MSc in Information Technology and PhD in Health Informatics. Dr. Abidi is the co-Director of the NICHE (kNowledge Intensive Computing for Healthcare Enterprises) research group and has been involved with digital health academics, innovation, mentorship and advocacy for over 10 years. Her research interests span artificial intelligence, digital health and knowledge management. “… [G]iven the unique challenges and demands faced by the Canadian health system, we need not just dynamic clinical leaders but also a diversified community of thinkers and problem solvers who bring innovative solutions to address the gaps within the Canadian health system. In this regard, Dr. Abidi possesses excellent leadership, innovation, forward-thinking and interpersonal skills, coupled with sound academic acumen and experience that is helping to improve the Canadian health system.” https://digitalhealthcanada.com/news/2022-women-leader-samina-r-abidi/        

Prostate Cancer Awareness Month

This #ProstateCancerAwarenessMonth, we’re sharing insights from recent studies from researchers across Canada. Today, we’re sharing findings from Sheida Majouni, PhD candidate from Dalhousie University! In 2022, Majouni and colleagues applied machine learning to arsenic species and metal profiles of toenails from Atlantic PATH. They aimed to understand environmental metal’s potential to produce disease, specifically prostate cancer: https://bit.ly/3eVjUMK “Artificial intelligence has a unique potential to revolutionize population health,” says Dr. Syed Sibte Raza Abidi, Professor in the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University. “By discovering environmental risk factors’ influence on chronic disease risk with risk prediction models, it is a pivotal tool for mitigating the risk of chronic disease onset.” This work is being expanded with the support of a New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF) Exploration grant. Team members include Dr. Syed Sibte Raza Abidi (Nominated Principal Investigator), Dr. Jong Sung Kim (Co-Principal Investigator), Dr. Ellen Sweeney (Co-Investigator), Dr. Gabriela Ilie (Co-Investigator), Dr. Trevor Dummer (Co-Investigator), Dr. Taehyun Roh (Collaborator), Dr. Nathalie Saint-Jacques (Collaborator), and Jason Hicks (Collaborator). Watch this space for future findings!

Funding News

Congratulations to Dr. Samina Abidi, Dr. Raza Abidi, Dr. Ellen Sweeney and team on their successful CIHR Catalyst grant, “Digital Health and Artificial Intelligence based Platform for Early Chronic Disease Risk Assessment and Prediction to Improve Population Health.”  This project will leverage digital health/e-health and artificial intelligence technologies to develop a Personalized Risk Investigation, Stratification and Mitigation (PRISM) platform to assess chronic disease risk. “

Congratulations to Drs. Syed Sibte Raza Abidi, Jong Sung Kim, Ellen Sweeney, Gabriela Ilie, and Trevor Dummer on a successful New Frontiers in Research Fund’s Exploration grant.

The highly competitive funding is meant to support high-risk, high-reward and interdisciplinary research. The NFRF funding is “especially meaningful because it encourages our scholars to push the boundaries of knowledge. This is how great discoveries are made,” says Alice Aiken, Vice-President, Research and Innovation. “It’s exciting to see our researchers harnessing machine learning, natural language processing and other cutting-edge techniques to reveal new truths that can improve our health and society.” (Source: DalNews, https://bit.ly/3O8Agi7). Using Atlantic PATH data and toenail samples, this funding will allow the research team to expand on their work on arsenic-related cancer and machine learning. Based on Canada’s geology, arsenic represents one of the most prevalent environmental carcinogens linked to skin, bladder, kidney, prostate, lung, breast, and cervical cancer. Half of Canadians are susceptible to develop cancer in their lifetime, with risk modified heavily by genetic susceptibility, behavioural factors and environmental exposure. While cancer risk prevention strategies have extensively focused on physiological and behavioural factors, environmental exposure as a cancer risk has not been well studied which has led to missed opportunities to reduce the risk of cancer through environmental population health programs, such as reducing chronic arsenic exposure by treating contaminated groundwater currently consumed by Canadians. Increased arsenic levels in human toenails have been detected in the Atlantic PATH cohort. Innovative population health interventions, focusing on predicting the susceptibility and type of arsenic induced cancer across Canada are urgently needed to mitigate the increasing prevalence of cancers in Canada. This work will investigate environmental cancer biomarkers and develop innovative data-driven environmental cancer risk assessment tools to help reduce the incidence of cancers caused by arsenic exposure. Please stay tuned for updates from this project!

New Publication! Toenail speciation biomarkers in arsenic‐related disease: a feasibility study for investigating the association between arsenic exposure and chronic disease

Congratulations to Nathan Smith & colleagues!! Based on his MSc research, this is important foundational work examining toenails as biomarkers for arsenic speciation that Atlantic PATH and the HERC Lab continue to build on. https://bit.ly/332UU0r