With just under 17,500 residents, Fort St. John in northeast British Columbia has the distinction of being the second-largest city on the Alaska Highway after Whitehorse.

This year it also has the distinction of being the home of Taneille Johnson, whose research into the causes of an early-onset aging disorder called Dyskeratosis Congenita (DC) earned her the right the represent her province in the SABC finals.

Symptoms of the disease can include premature graying, degeneration of nails, lesions, anemia, testicular atrophy and predisposition to cancer. The lives of patients with more serious forms of the disease are often cut short.

Working with Dr. Tara Beattie at the University of Calgary (Fort St. John is near the Alberta border), Taneille looked at a DNA enzyme called telomerase, mutations of which are believed to shorten the lifespan of bone marrow stem cells and help cause DC.

Testing four common mutations, she determined that one suppressed telomerase activity while the other three had no effect.

“Understanding how telomerase and its mutations work is an extremely important field of study,” said Taneille, 17, a Grade 12 student at North Peace Secondary School. “Low activity is associated with DC and blood disorders such as anemia but too high levels are associated with many different types of cancer.”

She intends to pursue molecular biology and life sciences at McGill University next fall after a summer of lifeguarding, breaking a two-year tradition of spending her summer holiday in the University of Calgary lab.

Student discovers that rhubarb extract may prevent Alzheimer’s disease

Motivated by working in seniors’ homes, 17-year-old Linda Liu discovered that an extract from rhubarb prevented the misfolding of a protein that is associated with disease. The extract also dissolved previously misfolded proteins offering the glimmer of hope of both potential prevention and treatment for the disease.

The tragedy of Alzheimer’s is well documented. Every 70 seconds someone develops the disease in North America. Today there are five to six million Alzheimer victims in Canada and the US.

“Having volunteered in seniors’ homes I was inspired by the devastating effects of Alzheimer’s disease,” said Linda, whose goal is to become an MD.

The high school student researched the disease and learned that this common form of dementia can be caused by the misfolding of tau proteins commonly found in the central nervous system. She also learned that traditional medicine in India considers rhubarb as an important plant and may possess the ability to treat Alzheimer’s disease. It also contains antioxidants known to prevent Alzheimer’s.

To test whether rhubarb could be effective Linda used different amounts of extract on tau proteins and added a chemical known as Heparin which causes tau to misfold. There were also control samples that contained the materials listed above but without extract. The extract was able to cut the amount of misfolding by 50% and dissolved 50% of misfolded tau.

What’s even more exciting is that misfolding of tau proteins is associated with many other diseases including Parkinson’s disease, arthritis, diabetes, mad cow disease, atherosclerosis, ALS (Lou Gherig’s disease), and Huntington’s disease.

Linda’s project demonstrates that it may be able to prevent and treat Alzheimer’s as well as other diseases that involve the same basic mechanisms, said her mentor Scott Yuzwa, a researcher at the Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC.

“I was most impressed by Linda’s ability to read and understand primary scientific literature. She was able to propose a project on her own that required extensive literature research followed by careful experimental planning,” Dr Yuzwa said.

Vancouver, British Columbia – BC Biotech presented $10,000 to the winning teams of the sanofi-aventis Biotech Challenge at its annual BC Biotech Biotechnology Awards Ceremony on Wednesday, April 18, 2007. This biotech competition for high school students is one of 13 held nationally and is coordinated by BC Biotech in Vancouver. Each cash prize is split equally between the team members and their respective schools to go towards their science program. This year’s competition was held at the BCIT, Burnaby Campus on Friday, April 13, 2007.

Christina Chiu from Hugh Boyd Secondary School was awarded first place for her project Engineering Gut Cells to Produce Insulin to Treat Diabetes. Christine designed an experiment that examined the ability of using a genetic engineering approach to coax gut cells to produce insulin in a sugar-dependent manner, while also regulatable by a drug.

As the first place winner, Christina and her school will share $3000 and she will compete with the first place student teams from each of the regional sites across Canada in the fifteenth annual National sanofi-aventis Biotech Challenge competition in a two-way, real time videoconference competition on May 10, 2007.

Second place went to Sir Winston Churchill Secondary’s Thomas Sun and Robyn Thom for their project Diblock Copolymers and Epoxidized Carthamus Tinctorious Oil as Novel Polyvinyl Chloride Plasticizers and Third Place was awarded to Xue Chen (Janny) and Karen Yu also of Sir Winston Churchill Secondary for Fiber-Reinforced Cellulose Acetate Composite.
Judges Dr. Paul Barran of NRC-IRAP, Dr. Carl Perez of Chromos Molecular Systems Inc. and Dr. Keith Turner of BCIT praised the teams for the quality of their projects and President of LifeSciences BC, Karimah Es Sabar added, “This gives students a great experience and provided them with the opportunity to connect with mentors in BC’s biotechnology industry.”

LifeSciences BC would like to thank the following supporters who have generously supported this year’s sanofi-aventis Biotechnology Challenge in British Columbia.

National Supporters
sanofi pasteur
sanofi-aventis
Human Resources Social Development Canada
Canadian Institutes of Health Research
VWR International
Genome Canada
National Research Council of Canada
Canadian Louis Pasteur Foundation
Canada Foundation for Innovation
BioTalent Canada

Regional Supporters
LifeSciences British Columbia
British Columbia Institute of Technology
NRC / IRAPFor more information, contact:

Melissa Beaton
Marketing Specialist
LifeSciences BC
tel: 604-602-5227
email: mbeaton@lifesciencesbc.ca

www.lifesciencesbc.ca