Health research can change the future!

The Future – It’s yours to change

Peter Dirks: Brain Fighteter

Peter Dirks: Brain Fighteter

This is the brain scan from a 13-year-old boy. That bright blob at the bottom is a tumour. If it's cancerous, he'll be lucky to live.

To really fight brain tumours I want to do more than operate. I'm helping figure out what makes brain cancers tick.

I'm Peter Dirks, brain surgeon and brain cancer researcher.

 

A cancerous brain tumour looks like a purplish lump, covered in blood vessels and as big as plum. But look closer - all the tumor cells aren't the same.

We've discovered that it's only about one-in-10,000 of the tumor cells that are the cancer ring leaders. These brain cancer stem cells keep the tumor fed and growing.

 

I've got a great research team of a dozen people. Each one of us is working on a different part of the brain cancer puzzle.

We're finding new ways to isolate cancer stem cells so that we can study them and figure-out how they control the cancer.

 

Our research is like entering a mysterious biological labyrinth. But we're slowly figuring out what makes brain cancer stem cells so powerful.

So, one day I won't just have my scalpel in this fight - we'll have helped make drugs that will target the ring-leader cells - and knock-them-off.

Peter Dirks: Brain Fighteter

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Theresa Gyorkos: Worm Slayer

Theresa Gyorkos: Worm Slayer

I call them vampire worms. Hookworms live in your intestines and drink your blood. Being infected with hookworms really feels like you're being drained of life.

The big problem? Almost one in every five people on Earth - most in poor, tropical countries - are infected with hookworms.

I'm Theresa Gyorkos, a parasite epidemiologist and I'm trying to do something about that.

 

BELEN, PERU

My first visit to Belen was a shock. There are about 50,000 people and most live on the Amazon River. The problem? Their outhouses sit right on the river, too.

People get hookworms by walking barefoot on soil contaminated with feces (poop). The hookworm eggs are in the feces.

 

I teamed up with a Peruvian doctor named Martin Casapia to study hookworm infections in Belen. We collected the feces from 1000 school children.

Yuck Factor
You might think that's gross. But what's amazing is how when you're doing something that's helping people you totally forget about the yuck factor.

I wasn't sure what kind of reaction I would get when I told the kids my plan. They were amazing. Turns out nine out of ten had worm infections.

 

My work involves more than science and medicine. I get to work with people of all different cultures and life situations - from the poorest, sickest kids to officials from international organizations like the World Bank. Success boils down to MUTUAL RESPECT.

We have the hard numbers on how bad the parasite situation is in Belen.

Now I'm working with local people and international agencies to find the best way to give the Belen hookworms the boot.

Theresa Gyorkos: Worm Slayer

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Jack Tu: Number Lover, Health Protector

Jack Tu: Number Lover, Health Protector

My friends joke I'm fixing hearts with my laptop — and I am. I'm helping heal Canadians with computers and number crunching.

Instead of helping one patient at a time, I'm using statistics to help hundreds.

I'm Jack Tu, cardiologist and health policy researcher.

 

Doctors and nurses are so busy treating patients that it's hard to see the big picture. That's where my team comes in - we have computer programmers, mathematicians and IT specialists.

We have the numbers on heart patients from every hospital in Ontario. Information like what drugs patients are given, how quickly they get them and who survives.

 

With these numbers, I created Ontario's first hospital report cards for cardiac care. And there were some big differences.

At a hospital with top marks, you had three times the chance of surviving a heart attack compared to at a hospital with the lowest score.

 

Hospitals changed the way they treat heart patients because of our report cards. These changes could save 400 lives a year - in Ontario alone.

Know what my dream is now? You guessed it - collect more heart statistics. This time I'm using numbers to help people keep their hearts healthier and stay out of hospitals.

Jack Tu: Number Lover, Health Protector

 

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The Invisible Condom®: Michel G. Bergeron

The Invisible Condom®: Michel G. Bergeron

Every day I deal with consequence of unprotected sex - STDs, Sexually Transmitted Diseases. Sometimes they're deadly.

Did you know that STDs are worse for women? And, women can't protect themselves from STDs by wearing a condom. I want to change this.

I'm Michel G. Bergeron, infectious diseases doctor at Laval University, and inventor of the Invisible Condom®.

 
Worldwide there are 350 million new cases of STDs such as HIV/AIDS and herpes every year. That's one million a day!

What's the Invisible Condom®? It's my way of giving women more power to avoid getting STDs.

The Invisible Condom® is a gel that a woman puts in her vagina. The gel blocks microbes from entering her body, then it kills these germs - and sperm.

And the guy doesn't even know it's there...

It's taken 15 years of research to create the Invisible Condom® - and we're not done yet. Dozens of scientists have been involved in the research.

Colourless! No taste! No odour!

Engineers, chemists and even physicists have helped invent a special gel applicator. It evenly distributes the gel so that a woman is totally protected.

 

It takes a lot of testing to make sure a new treatment like the Invisible Condom® is safe and really works. We're doing clinical trials in Canada and Africa. The next step involves testing with 5,000 women from several countries.

Then there'll be something else that won't be as easy to see - women with STDs.
 
The Invisible Condom®: Michel G. Bergeron

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