University of British Columbia

Colleges and universities earn revenue each year by licensing their trademarks to major apparel companies, including Lululemon and Fanatics. These companies, in turn, rely on vast supplier networks located primarily in countries with weak labour protections and regulations.

A celebrated Vancouver researcher used fabricated data and hid evidence of infected wounds to falsely claim his patented skin treatment could heal years-old bed sores in a matter of weeks, according to a leaked report.

If these results had been real, a product known as Meshfill would have been "close to miraculous" for people with spinal cord injuries, according to one expert. But investigators say they weren't real, and the public was never informed about an investigation that uncovered numerous examples of misconduct during a clinical trial for the liquid skin substitute.

The Investigative Journalism Foundation (IJF) and CBC News have obtained a 64-page report about University of British Columbia (UBC) plastic surgery professor Aziz Ghahary's actions during a pilot study for Meshfill. It lays out how he presented falsified results to the public on several occasions, violated conflict of interest guidelines and was even accused of bullying by another researcher.

The March 2021 document, which was written by a UBC-appointed investigative committee of three outside experts, says Ghahary "abandoned his scholarly integrity in his pursuit of his attempt to establish that Meshfill should be used as a treatment for chronic pressure ulcer wounds" — also known as bed sores. Despite his public claims of success, none of the pressure wounds in the pilot study had healed and some became infected.

"These false claims gave patients and funders false hope by falsely claiming that Meshfill had quickly healed chronic pressure ulcer wounds. He also potentially endangered the health of future human trial subjects when Dr. Ghahary falsely claimed that there had been no adverse effects during the pilot study," reads the report.

Ghahary left his job at UBC shortly after the investigation was completed in 2021. He'd worked there since 2005.

The lack of public notice about the findings raises some questions for Leigh Turner, director of the Centre for Health Ethics at the University of California, Irvine.

"I think the findings of the report are extremely serious," Turner said. "I would hope that this is a really relatively extreme example of violation of scholarly integrity. But there presumably are other cases and there presumably are other investigative reports that are not seeing the light of day. That's a problem."

UBC spokesperson Matthew Ramsey said he could only confirm that Ghahary's employment at the university ended in 2021.

"Privacy law prevents UBC from commenting on allegations of scholarly integrity you've raised related to Dr. Ghahary’s research at UBC," Ramsey wrote in an email.

"Scholarly integrity investigation reports contain personal information that UBC, as a public body, is required to protect from disclosure under FIPPA [the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act]. UBC does not have the legal authority to publish/share this type of personal information."

[Tarek Elneweihi, a lawyer who represents Ghahary] noted that Ghahary is now 83 years old and is completely retired from research work.

Meshfill never reached the market in Canada and should not be confused with the cosmetic procedure advertised online.

I thought this one was really cool!

TLDR:

Blood-type antigens act like nametags on cells, and the UBC enzymes act as molecular scissors, snipping off the ‘nametag’ that marks type A and revealing type O beneath.

Summary:

Published today in Nature Biomedical Engineering, the achievement marks a major step toward helping thousands of patients get kidney transplants sooner.

In a first-in-human experiment, the enzyme-converted kidney was transplanted into a brain-dead recipient with consent from the family, allowing researchers to observe the immune response without risking a life.

For two days, the kidney functioned without signs of hyperacute rejection, the rapid immune reaction that can destroy an incompatible organ within minutes. By the third day, some blood-type markers reappeared, triggering a mild reaction, but the damage was far less severe than in a typical mismatch, and researchers saw signs that the body was beginning to tolerate the organ.

Older History:

The breakthrough is the result of more than a decade of work. In the early 2010s, Dr. Withers and colleague Dr. Jayachandran Kizhakkedathu, a UBC professor in the department of pathology and laboratory medicine and the Centre for Blood Research, were focused on making universal donor blood by stripping away the sugars that define blood types.

Those same sugars, or antigens, coat organ blood vessels. If a recipient’s immune system detects the wrong antigen, it attacks. Type-O patients—more than half of kidney waitlists—can only receive type-O organs, yet type-O kidneys are often given to others because they’re universally compatible. As a result, type-O patients typically wait two to four years longer, and many die waiting.

Traditional methods for overcoming blood-type incompatibility in transplants require days of intensive treatment to strip antibodies and suppress a recipient’s immune system—and require organs from living donors. This new approach changes the organ rather than the patient, meaning transplants could be performed faster, with fewer complications, and for the first time could unlock the use of blood-type mismatched organs from deceased donors—when every hour can determine whether a patient lives or dies.

The chain of discoveries that led up to this:

The key to this approach is the 2019 discovery by the UBC team of two highly efficient enzymes that remove the sugar that defines type-A blood, effectively converting it to type O.

The next challenge was applying this to whole organs, achieved in 2022 when a Toronto team showed lungs could be converted. After successful tests on blood, then lungs and kidneys (with the University of Cambridge) outside the body, the question remained: Could an enzyme-converted organ survive inside a human immune system?

The answer came in late 2023 on an overseas trip for Dr. Kizhakkedathu. “Our collaborators showed me their data where, using our enzymes, they had converted a human kidney and transplanted it into a brain-dead recipient. It was working beautifully.” He stayed up late to call Dr. Withers first thing in the B.C. morning. “I was so thrilled. It was a dream moment.”

Future:

Regulatory approval for clinical trials is the next hurdle, and the partner UBC spin-off company Avivo Biomedical will lead development of these enzymes for transplant application and to enable the creation of universal donor blood on demand for transfusion medicine.

Scientists at the University of British Columbia have discovered a previously unknown virus in farmed Pacific oysters during a mass die-off in B.C. in 2020.

The paper, published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said that while mass die-offs have been attributed to various factors, including viruses, in many cases, there is no definitive cause.

“We’ve recently seen annual mass die-offs in B.C. and elsewhere of Pacific oysters, the most widely farmed shellfish worldwide,” said first author Dr. Kevin Zhong, research associate in the UBC Department of earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences (EOAS).

The researchers collected 33 oysters from two farms in B.C. during a mass die-off in 2020, as well as 26 wild oysters from 10 nearby sites.

RNA analysis revealed the presence of a previously unknown virus, Pacific Oyster Nidovirus 1 (PONV1), in 20 of the dead and dying farmed oysters, according to the research. However, the virus was not found in healthy wild oysters, which suggested the virus was killing the oysters.

“This discovery highlights how little we know about viruses infecting invertebrates in general and oysters in particular,” said senior author Dr. Curtis Suttle, professor of earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences, botany, microbiology and immunology, at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries.

The virus, which has one of the largest RNA genomes on record, according to the research, is so genetically different from other nidoviruses that the research team has proposed a new family, Megarnaviridae, or ‘large RNA viruses’ PONV1, which the team is proposing to name Megarnavirus gigas, or ‘large RNA virus giant.’

Suttle said these large RNA viruses appear to be specific to oysters, so humans are not at risk of contracting the virus.

However, the team said this discovery is a reminder that oyster farmers should use an abundance of caution when moving juvenile oysters as little is known about what causes disease in the bivalve molluscs.

“This research is not a cause for alarm,” Suttle added. “Rather, this is a meaningful step forward in advancing our understanding of oyster health and supporting the long-term sustainability of shellfish aquaculture.”

Related article: https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/ubc-stir-stick-detects-spiked-drinks-seconds

Post from pixelfed.ca

https://pixelfed.ca/p/reef/801031719341101091

Link to post on pixelfed.ca

https://pixelfed.ca/p/reef/800099744119871553

cross-posted from: https://rss.ponder.cat/post/110404

🤔🧑‍💻 How much training on computing skills should a new lab member get? How do we centralize data analysis from all group members? Defining code management for Dr. Stringhini's new lab at the School of Population and Public Health
@ubcmedicine
@ubc

https://stringhinilab.github.io/GitHubProceduresLab/ ✅

#openscience #reproducibility #github #rstats

“We were shocked to learn that Professor Tucker was recently abruptly removed from this teaching assignment and are deeply concerned that the decision for the removal relates largely to his advocacy for more learning and discussion about Palestine and Israel. We are aware that the university is being lobbied intensely to silence discussion of what is happening in Gaza, and we strongly suspect that the decision regarding Professor Tucker is linked to his activities in this regard.”

Months after Tucker’s event, the School adopted a new bulletin board policy, stating that posters that contributed to an “uncomfortable environment” would be restricted.

“This Palestine exceptionalism is just not acceptable. To me, the attitude of the school is itself anti-semitic because it implies that to talk about what’s going on in Gaza offends Jews,” another member said.

“There should be a recognition that there’s a diversity of opinion. Don’t stereotype Jews as people who are all expected to have values that are supremacist and racist and who don’t care about the suffering of Palestinians. We find that offensive.”

cross-posted from: https://rss.ponder.cat/post/63506

EML is thrilled to welcome Pierre Friquet, artist and award-winning digital experience designer. Tested at the Paris 2024 Olympics, his latest project, Captain Nemo, aims to use VR to increase ocean literacy, using stunning visuals, immersive soundscapes, and captivating interaction mechanics to illustrate the interdependence of our environment.

Join us in the Pena Room (IKB 301) on November 27th, from 3-4:30, to learn more about this incredible educational resource, as well as Pierre's internationally recognized artistic work!

and I'm a part of that problem

Link: https://github.com/Panopto-Video-DL/Panopto-Video-DL-browser?tab=readme-ov-file

Instructions:

1. Install the TamperMonkey browser extension if you don't have it already

   • Firefox
   • Chrome

2. Install this script from GreasyFork

3. Open a lecture on Panopto, look for this button in the bottom right:

4. A video will open. Download it with ctrl+S

5. watch the lecture offline without having to deal with panopto's bs

Use the videos for yourself, don't upload them anywhere else. UBC will get yo ass if you do

Hey! This is Matcha, the easiest way to meet someone new at UBCV.

Sign up and get matched with another student in your year group across faculties by text every Friday.

Bring your match to Great Dane for a free pastry! :)

Sign up: https://forms.gle/AfFWdUSqqMi9rWBx5

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