When you think of proteins, you probably think about chicken, steak, or that new tofu dish your friend made. If I’m lucky, you think about those tiny molecules that your teacher mentioned in biology class. My work is all about those tiny molecules. In my lab at the Centre for Blood Research, I spend my days (and nights) making proteins and testing them to see if they have what it takes to bust up a blood clot and save a life. It’s a long road to get from a test tube to a treatment, and it involves a lot of questions. The first question is: What do we want our drug to do? Heart attacks and

How are our normal blood clotting systems affected by viral infections? Could clues to the successful treatment of some of the world’s most challenging viral infections come from understanding how viruses interact with our body’s clot-creating proteins? These are the kinds of questions that Dr. Ed Pryzdial, Canadian Blood Services senior scientist and his laboratory team at the Centre for Blood Research (CBR) in British Columbia have dedicated research efforts to answering; efforts that have recently earned them project funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), based on a