SKIN Canada Newsletter: Spring 2023

SkIN Canada is providing funds to catalyze new multi-center teams pursuing novel skin research. These awards are intended to support preliminary activities that are typically not fundable as stand-alone projects. The deadline for the application is Monday May 1st before 11:59 PM ET.

SkIN Canada offers funding opportunities for trainees to attend conferences as part of their training experience. A limited number of awards are available each year on a competitive basis.  The deadline for the next competition is  Monday May 15th before 11:59 PM ET.

The SkIN Canada Trainee Mobility Award provides funding for trainees in skin research to study and conduct research in another laboratory other than their own within Canada or abroad as part of their training experience.

The value of the Award is up to $4,000 for a period ranging from of 2 weeks to 6 months. The deadline for the next competition is  Monday May 15th before 11:59 PM ET.

Dr. Sarah Hedtrich is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of British Columbia. After finishing her studies of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Leipzig, Germany, Sarah Hedtrich completed her PhD in pharmacology & toxicology at the Freie Universität Berlin. During her postdoc she moved to the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich and the Tufts University in Boston, USA. After returning to Berlin, she headed a junior research group from 2013-2015 before she was appointed as an assistant professor in April 2015. Since January 2019, she is an assistant professor with tenure track at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Her lab combines research expertise in pharmacology, biomedical engineering & drug delivery. They focus on the establishment of Next Generation Therapies, Nanomedicine, Tissue Engineering & Tissue Regeneration. They are particularly interested in healthy and diseased states of human epithelia with a current focus on inflammatory and genetic diseases of the human skin and lung. Their research is highly interdisciplinary and requires close collaborations with experts in the field of chemistry, medicine and genetics….

Patient engagement is an opportunity for people with experience of a health-related issue to contribute to research on that issue. The Canadian Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR) highlights patient engagement as an important part of health research. Patient engagement, however, is a new concept for many researchers and research ethics boards, and it can be difficult to understand the differences between patient engagement activities and research activities. Focus groups are one example of how research and patient engagement activities are often confused.

We distinguish these two types of activities by using different terms for each. We use focus groups to refer to research activities, and discussion groups to refer to patient engagement activities. In focus groups, researchers collect data by speaking with a group of research subjects about their experiences. Researchers use this information to answer research questions and share their findings in academic journals and gatherings. In patient engagement, discussion groups are a way for patients to help plan research projects. Their contributions are not treated as research data, but instead, they help make decisions that shape the research process. We have found that using different languages to refer to each type of activity has led to improved clarity in research planning and research ethics submissions. This information is in reference to the work done by the Maritime Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research  (SPOR) Unit.

Clinical Trials Ontario (CTO) is an independent not-for-profit organization established with support from the Government of Ontario. Our mandate is to work together with the clinical trials community, the public, and other partners to improve Ontario’s clinical trials environment. Since 2012 we have been carrying out our mandate with one of our three strategic pillars being patient and public engagement. We believe engaging patients and the public is critical to improving the environment for clinical trials in Ontario and will result in better clinical trials, better experiences for trial participants, better physician-researcher experiences, and in the long run, a better health care system. More information about Clinical Trials Ontario can be found at www.ctontario.ca.

In this episode of Arthritis At Home, Ellen Wang, Programs Coordinator, Arthritis Consumer Experts, speaks to Dr. Brett Thombs, Professor, Faculty of Medicine, McGill University, and Director, Scleroderma Patient-centered Intervention Network (SPIN). Recently, his team was obtained an Ignite Grant from the Arthritis Society for the project titled “A Scleroderma Patient-centered Intervention Network patient-researcher partnership to understand pain sources, patterns, and barriers to effective management in systemic sclerosis.”

They discuss the importance of integrating the patient voice at all stages of research and the benefits of doing so. Dr. Thombs explains that patients have the choice of how they want to be involved and no formal experience is needed.

Additional learning resources

• Scleroderma Patient-centered Intervention Network (SPIN)
• Ignite Innovation Grants Summaries
• Canadian Institute of Health Information: Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs)