Medicine

Meet U of T's Inventors of the Year

Author: 
Jenny Hall
Picture: 
photo of Inventor of the Year winners and U of T administrators

Dietary advice tailored to your DNA and a “bio-printer” that prints skin-like tissue that can be used to dress wounds are two inventions that might change your life in coming years.

They’re also two of 10 inventions whose creators were celebrated May 15 at the University of Toronto’s 2013 Inventors of the Year ceremony.

Posted Friday, May 17, 2013

The kids are gonna be alright

Sub-title: 
U of T offers help for children and youth with mental health issues
Author: 
Mark Witten
Picture: 
Portrait of Nick Carveth

Nick Carveth was paralyzed by anxiety in his large high school classes. Although bright and articulate, the lanky teen didn’t dare speak up for fear his peers would judge him.

Smoking weed helped calm his nerves but before long Carveth was chasing his stress away with chemical drugs such as ecstasy. By age 16, he was carrying a crack pipe in his leather jacket, smoking it just to get through the day.

Posted Thursday, May 16, 2013

Renowned U of T Alzheimer’s researcher wins prestigious international health award

Author: 
Suniya Kukaswadia
Picture: 
Portrait of Professor Peter St George-Hyslop

World-renowned molecular geneticist Professor Peter St George-Hyslop, director of the University of Toronto’s Tanz Centre for Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases, has won one of Europe’s top health awards for his pioneering work on the roots of neurodegenerative diseases.

Posted Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Antifungal therapy could be key to asthma treatment

Sub-title: 
Study finds nearly 5 million asthmatics worldwide could benefit
Picture: 
young girl using asthma inhaler

An estimated 4,837,000 asthmatics with allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis (ABPA) could benefit substantially from antifungal treatment, say researchers from the University of Toronto and Manchester University.

Their work, published today in the journal Medical Mycology, has also re-estimated the total number of asthmatics worldwide – to reveal a staggering 193 million sufferers. Twenty-four million asthma sufferers live in the United States, 20 million each in India and China, and seven million in the United Kingdom.

Posted Wednesday, May 8, 2013

From the pitcher's mound to the world of medicine

Sub-title: 
Meet alumnus Ron Taylor
Author: 
Angela Pirisi
Picture: 
photo of Ron Taylor's baseball card

For Blue Jays fans, images of the back-to-back World Series championships are still vivid.

There was the near triple play in the ’92 Atlanta Braves series, denied by a call. Roberto Alomar’s golden glove. The lightning speed of Devon White. Joe Carter’s walk-off home run to clinch the ’93 title.

As the team’s physician, University of Toronto alumnus Ron Taylor saw them all — from the bench.

Posted Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Decoding a deluge of data

Sub-title: 
Two U of T projects receive $1 million each for bioinformatics research
Author: 
Jenny Hall
Picture: 
photo of professor at computer

Two University of Toronto research projects have won $1 million each in funding from the Government of Canada through Genome Canada and the Ontario Genomics Institute.

The Genome Canada 2012 Bioinformatics and Computational Biology competition, a partnership with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, supports the development of the next generation of tools to deal with the large influx of data produced by today’s genomics technologies

Posted Thursday, April 25, 2013

Fully, Completely: explaining a thesis in three minutes

Sub-title: 
U of T students take top prizes in competition
Author: 
Lily Yee-Sloan
Picture: 
Jasdeep Saggar (left) took top honours and Abraham Hefits (right) placed second

It was not your typical dissertation panel: a swimmer, a lawyer, an economist, a policy analyst and a guitarist from the Tragically Hip.

They gathered at Queen’s University to judge 30 doctoral presentations from students representing 16 Ontario universities at the Ontario Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) competition.

Each graduate student had three minutes, one static slide, and no other props to convey their research topic to the non-specialist judging panel. The University of Toronto entered two scholars.

Posted Wednesday, April 24, 2013

War wounds: the struggle of Mexican journalists

Sub-title: 
Threats, violence and murder by drug cartels
Author: 
Mark Witten
Picture: 
Photos of killed Mexican journalists covered with red paint on the ground

Over the past decade, University of Toronto psychiatry professor Anthony Feinstein has interviewed hundreds of international war correspondents to assess their mental health.

Still, nothing prepared him for the gruesome tales he heard from Mexican journalists about drug-related bloodshed on home soil.

Posted Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Preparing for emergencies: lessons from the Boston Marathon

Author: 
Dominic Ali
Picture: 
photo of aftermath of Boston Marathon bombing

With the recent bombings at the Boston Marathon, being prepared in case of emergency is a growing concern for event organizers and participants.

Dr. Paul Arnold is an expert in emergency medicine and mass casualty incident preparedness. A clinical instructor and lecturer with the University of Toronto's Faculty of Medicine, Arnold spoke with U of T News about the importance of being prepared.

Posted Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Mats Sundin surprises local elementary school kids with a visit

Sub-title: 
Hockey star helps U of T raise awareness of childhood obesity
Author: 
Suniya Kukaswadia and April Kemick
Picture: 
photo of Mats Sundin playing ball hockey with kids

Hockey legend Mats Sundin surprised students at a Toronto elementary school this week, serving them a wholesome breakfast and playing ball hockey.

The visit to the Duke of Connaught Junior and Senior Public School was part of a campaign to help raise awareness about childhood obesity, a problem Sundin is fighting by working with the University of Toronto’s Fraser Mustard Institute for Human Development.

Posted Tuesday, March 26, 2013
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