It was a Friday night in June when Craig Jenkins got the urgent call from Dr. Chantale Pambrun, director of Canadian Blood Services’ Centre for Innovation. “She asked, ‘What’s the likelihood we can test 10,000 samples in the first week?’” remembers Jenkins, senior manager of product and process development at the Centre for Innovation. The next morning, he, Dr. Pambrun, and senior medical lab technologist Valerie Conrod were in the Ottawa lab, and they clocked 14-hour days all week to meet the target for Canada’s first study to determine the prevalence of COVID-19 antibodies in Canadians’
October 20, 2020
Norman Bethune Symposium 2020
Postponed in April 2020, the Centre for Blood Research’s annual Norman Bethune Symposium moved to an online format and was held on Sept. 9, 2020. We heard from some Canadian Blood Services research trainees about the symposium and their experiences presenting their work in the “new normal” virtual format, which included a research showcase via Twitter. Olga Mykhailova (postdoctoral fellow, Acker laboratory) On the Norman Bethune Symposium: From my perspective, NBS-2020 went under the title “New reality”. This “during-COVID life” makes everyone challenge themselves to be totally open to new
October 8, 2020
A National Consensus Forum for Improving Access to Cornea Donation and Transplantation in Canada
For the last decade the increasingly long waiting lists for cornea transplantation have consistently gained media and government attention. Wait times are often measured in years as opposed to months, meaning the rates of access to cornea transplantation in Canada are on par with, or lower than, the rates seen in some developing countries. Yet, despite all the attention the number of corneas transplanted in Canada has remained unchanged for the last six years and no focused and coordinated efforts have been expended to improve this system. The Forum - February 9-10, 2020 On Feb. 9 and 10, 2020
Organs and tissues
Machine learning opens new frontiers in red blood cell research
A recent research paper points towards machine learning as a solution to improve how experts assess the shape of red blood cells, or red blood cell morphology. With the potential to eliminate subjectivity and standardize testing, this approach could herald a new era in red blood cell morphology assessment, with potentially big implications for transfusion medicine research and beyond. “This work took over three years and involved 19 experts across five countries and 12 institutes,” explains Dr. Jason Acker, a senior scientist at Canadian Blood Services’ Centre for Innovation. The research
September 29, 2020
Dr. Heyu Ni inducted as a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences
The Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (CAHS) was established in 2004 and brings together Canada’s top-ranked health and biomedical scientists and scholars to make a positive impact on the urgent health concerns of Canadians. Its Fellows are individuals of great achievement within the academic health sciences in Canada, who serve the Academy as unpaid volunteers to provide assessments of, and advice on, key issues relevant to the health of Canadians. Last week, the Academy announced its new Fellows, among them Dr. Heyu Ni. Dr. Ni is a Canadian Blood Services senior scientist. He is also a
September 24, 2020
Transfusion Camp carries on: educating physicians about using blood wisely
By Dr. Yulia Lin and Casey Kapitany Blood transfusion is one of the most commonly ordered procedures in hospitals. In Canada, more than 1 million red blood cell units are transfused every year, thanks to the generosity of blood donors. Optimizing the use of each precious, potentially life-saving unit of blood, in ways that maximize their effectiveness and safety while avoiding waste, is a critical goal for physicians who prescribe blood for their patients. That’s where Transfusion Camp — a program established in 2012 by the University of Toronto QUEST Program, a research collaborative
September 15, 2020
Honouring Earl W. Davie (1927-2020)
Earl W. Davie, Ph.D., professor emeritus of biochemistry at the University of Washington in Seattle, died in June 2020. Over the course of Dr. Davie’s long and distinguished career, he made many discoveries that advanced understanding of how blood clots and led to the development of treatments for many bleeding disorders. His seminal discovery, with Dr. Oscar Ratnoff, was the waterfall sequence for blood clotting. Published in the journal Science in 1964, Drs. Davie and Ratnoff discovered the elegant pattern of activation and propagation of clotting factor signals that leads to clot formation
September 10, 2020
Honest and compassionate leadership in a crisis: An interview with Dr. Isra Levy
There is a comical clock in the office of Dr. Isra Levy, vice-president of medical affairs and innovation at Canadian Blood Services headquarters in Ottawa, with the numbers on the clockface jumbled. It taunts his visitors to question why one even bothers keeping time at all, as there never seems to be enough. I was fortunate to spend some time observing Isra at work in March 2020. On that day, Isra was recording a podcast for Canadian Blood Services’ staff about the organization’s initial plans for dealing with the impending COVID-19 health crisis. Looking back, I realize that given the task
August 20, 2020
Genotyping red blood cells can make transfusions safer for patients with sickle cell disease
In a new study, a research team that includes experts from Canadian Blood Services and the McMaster Centre for Transfusion Research showed that genotyping red blood cell (RBC) proteins could help make transfusions safer for patients with sickle cell disease. Blood transfusions can be a life-saving treatment for patients with sickle cell disease, an inherited blood disorder that causes RBCs to become sickle- or crescent-shaped. But transfusion comes with risks: if donor RBCs have proteins that are not found on the patient’s RBCs, the patient’s immune system attacks the donor’s foreign RBC
August 12, 2020
Blood transfusion during the pandemic: strategies in a time of uncertainty
COVID-19 has had major implications for patients who need blood transfusions, blood donors, and the transfusion services and hospitals that manage transfusions. For example, in the event of a shortage, what additional steps can be taken to minimize waste of blood components, and how is blood use prioritized for patients if there is a predicted shortage? What donor and donation factors need to be considered to maintain an adequate supply of blood during the pandemic? According to Dr. Mindy Goldman, medical director at Canadian Blood Services, one of the biggest challenges for clinicians during
