Catching Up with the Inaugural 2019 PRiME Fellows

In September 2019, the first annual PRiME Fellowship Awards were presented to ten outstanding trainees to drive high-risk, multidisciplinary research focused on precision medicine. As the first funding round approached completion, PRiME provided an overview of the fellows' progress.

Highlights included Dr. Noor Al-saden's gold-nanoparticle radiation therapy for glioblastoma (contributing to a $200,000 Canadian Cancer Society grant); Dr. Rony Chidiac's Frizzled-signaling work on blood-brain and retinal barrier permeability; Angela Duong's 3D brain-cell cultures studying mitochondrial function; and Dr. Margot Karlikow's CRISPR-based gold-nanoparticle sensing tool.

Anastasia Korolj's podocyte diagnostic device generated $150,000 in follow-on funding from NSERC and CRAFT; Dr. Jiabao Liu's PPAR research contributed to a $250,000 New Frontiers grant; Dr. Mark Mabanglo investigated ClpP protease inhibitors as antibiotics; Dr. Jiaxi Peng built a digital-microfluidics system for neural stem-cell proteomics; Yuxi Xiao established a CRISPR-Cas12a screening protocol; and Dr. Fei Xu developed an AI-assisted microfluidic drug screen (supporting a $200,000 New Frontiers grant).

Despite COVID-19 disruptions, the fellows achieved substantial progress across all projects.