We are once again bringing you inside UHN's Krembil Brain Institute – one of North America's largest and most innovative neurological centres – to meet the scientists and physicians advancing discovery, the patients who inspire us and the care teams who support them. This season, we're exploring some big new research in brain health, including: What young women need to know about preventing a stroke? Can loneliness re-wire your brain? And how you can reduce your chances of Alzheimer's. We'll also take you to the forefront of AI-powered brain science, dive into the link between genetics and reading disabilities and find out why getting a good night's sleep is crucial for brain health. There are a million amazing things to know about your complex brain – and we couldn't be more excited to explore them with you. Season 3 launches on March 19, with episodes every other Tuesday. Subscribe to Your Complex Brain so you don't miss a thing.

The co-director of UHN’s Krembil Brain Institute and Senior Scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre shares her fascinating findings that have led to a new way of understanding the biology of meningiomas, skull base tumours.

Dr. Howard Abrams leads a team that is pioneering an innovative solution to the gap in housing for older adults, along with providing health supports so that they can age at home with dignity. It’s called NORC – short for Naturally Occurring Retirement Community. What is a NORC? Everything from a co-op to a condo to an apartment building where older people make up the majority of residents. “Most older Canadians want to age in place, they want to age at home…it's where they've lived most of their life, and they know how to do that best,” says Dr. Abrams. So he and a team at the UHN NORC Innovation Centre in Toronto are helping to organize a structure for providing the necessary supports that allow these hubs of older adults to age in place as opposed to moving into a residential home or long term care. In addition to identifying and organizing a building to become a NORC, the UHN NORC Innovation Centre supports can include helping residents get to doctors appointments, and providing medical expertise for managing everything from foot care to cardiac issues to high blood sugar due to diabetes. There are now three NORC Innovation Centre projects up and running in Toronto, with more in the works. Dr. Abrams explains that the project team is gathering evidence and data for publication that will lead to proof of concept for NORC’s. If successful the goal is to scale this innovative solution for older adults across Ontario and the country.

In the latest episode of UHN podcast Behind the Breakthrough we feature KITE researcher Dr. Tatyana Mollayeva, who talks about her pioneering research on sleep disruption and its impact on patients with neurological disease and brain injury. Her research, for example, reveals a connection between a patient’s ability to recover from mild traumatic brain injury and sleep disruption, and, she’s been able identify risk factors such as adverse cognitive reactions and loss of reaction time in people with mild TBI who have sleep issues. Dr. Mollayeva also speaks to her role as an educator, and, advocacy work promoting sleep health awareness, including with the World Health Organization where she has pushed for the inclusion of sleep as integral to brain health.   And Dr. Mollayeva reveals her inspiring journey to becoming an award winning research scientist, beginning at age 16 after graduating high school in her hometown of Novyi Rozdil , Ukraine when she left to study the sciences and earn a medical degree in Moscow. In the early 1990s, she fled the collapsing Soviet Union to Turkmenistan, where she met her husband. After stints in Wyoming and then back to Turkmenistan, Dr. Mollayeva and her family were accepted in 2003 to come to Canada under the Independent Immigrant Program. In her 2022 acceptance speech upon receiving a prestigious Canada Research Chair, Dr. Mollayeva paid homage to all immigrants who take the risk of leaving their homeland to seek new opportunity. “As an immigrant, this award is not just for me. It is for all immigrants who have a passion and take the often frightening step of changing their professional identity.”   

Dr. Laurie Ailles is an award winning senior scientist at UHN's Princess Margaret Cancer Center whose pioneering research revealed the origins of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. Her discovery is now paving the way towards more accurate and individualized prognoses that better inform potential treatments and improve outcomes for patients with the disease. Dr. Ailles’ also speaks to her career path as a successful medical science researcher, which traces back to her peripatetic childhood journey of living in several countries around the world as the daughter of a CIDA employee. She credits those experiences for shaping her outlook and contributing to her resilience as a researcher.

The human microbiome consists of viruses, fungi, bacteria - even parasites and protozoa - that live on and in our bodies. And today the microbiome is having a ‘scientific moment’. Researchers are testing its uses to improve health, and, as a therapeutic agent to treat everything from bloodstream infection to the ill effects of cancer treatment. In this episode of UHN's ‘Behind the Breakthrough’ leading Canadian microbiome research scientist Dr. Bryan Coburn explains how our understanding of the microbiome is growing exponentially, and the human clinical trials he’s conducting to determine if it can be a therapeutic tool to treat patients.

In this episode, Dr. Cristina Nostro, Senior Scientist at the McEwen Stem Cell Institute at UHN, discusses the developments in curing type one diabetes through the use of stem cells and dives into the uptake of islet transplantation as a treatment option and the different technological advancements to improve the life of people living with this autoimmune disease.

The podcast "Behind the Breakthrough" features Dr. Hance Clarke, an anesthesiologist and director ofpain services at Toronto's University Health Network, discussing the challenges of managing pain aftersurgery. Dive into the consequences of the lack of a protocol and the scope and scale of addiction inCanada as a result of post-surgery pain. Dr. Clarke discusses the need for a balance between patient comfort and preventing addiction, and howhis research protocols are used to achieve this balance. The opioid crisis has led to a focus on pain as apart of the process, and how to support patients through the hospital system

On this episode of Behind the Breakthrough, Dr. Mamatha Bhat shares how she and her team of UHN researchers are leveraging artificial intelligence to help predict complications resulting in long-term outcomes for liver transplant patients. This novel, world-first approach has the ability to determine the personalized predictors of outcome for each patient – for example, increased risk of cancer, heart disease, and cardiovascular events are examples of what compromise long-term survival following transplantation, especially after the one year mark. This precision medicine approach can help identify which patients are at risk of which complications to help simulate diagnostic and therapeutic responses from a clinical practice perspective. Dr. Bhat speaks to the journey involved throughout the research process, as well as how she encourages future clinician-scientists to foster resiliency while engaging in their work as well as being opportunistic and creative.

Season 5 launches with an interview with pioneering social medicine advocate Dr. Boozary, who speaks to how UHN is tackling one of the biggest challenges to health for those who are marginalized – homelessness.

Season 5 is just around the corner, coming Fall 2023. Until then check-out our friends at UHN's Krembil Brain Institute as they launch season two of Your Complex Brain!  Well, it’s no surprise. Since last season, our brains haven’t gotten any less complex! But that just means there are even more stories to share about the mysteries, myths and science behind how our brains work, and what keeps our brains healthy and fit. On Season 2 of our podcast Your Complex Brain, we’ll highlight the latest research, technology and innovations in brain science by speaking with thought leaders & experts, as well as patients, their families and the dedicated care teams on the front lines of keeping our brains healthy - and fixing them when illnesses arise. This season, we’ll be looking for answers to some pretty big questions – such as, ‘Is stress contagious?’ ‘Why are many women living with brain disease experiencing a delay in diagnosis?’ And, ‘How could advances in technology improve outcomes for patients who undergo deep brain stimulation?’ And those are just the first three episodes! There are a million amazing things to know about your complex brain – and we couldn’t be more excited to explore them with you.

Renowned UHN surgeon scientist Dr Shaf Keshavjee sits down with Behind the Breakthrough podcast Host Christian Cote’ and takes listeners on a behind-the-scenes journey of his ground breaking medical discoveries – two of which have had a profound impact on lung transplant around the world. For his Master’s thesis in the late 1980’s he developed a lung preservation solution – LDP – which is now the standard for lung preservation worldwide. Twenty years later he followed that up with the invention of a lung perfusion machine that preserves and treats damaged donor lungs outside the body – or ex vivo. The Toronto Ex Vivo Lung Perfusion System has doubled the number of lungs available for transplant and is now in use around the world. Today the system is being tested to treat other damaged organs including the liver, kidney, and heart. In this wide-ranging and revealing conversation Sprott Department of Surgery’s Dr. Keshavjee speaks to the importance of mentorship, the qualities necessary to be a successful scientist, and, the importance of scientists learning about patenting and commercializing their work.

Restoring vision for the visually impaired has been a dream of scientists and clinicians for centuries. Neurodegenerative eye diseases like glaucoma or age-related macular degeneration affect visual information processing.  But the visual system in humans is smart–it can compensate for a loss in connectivity caused by disease. The potential for virtual reality cognitive retraining may improve the quality of life in visually impaired individuals. These retraining devices are effortlessly portable; therefore, protocols can be completed from the comfort of someone’s home.

Pancreatic cancer is an aggressive disease with poor survival rates. Huge contributors to this dire outcome are the fact it is typically diagnosed at an advanced stage, has limited treatments, and no cure. This is what makes the discovery of Dr. Rama Khokha and her lab so profound. In this episode of Behind the Breakthrough podcast the senior scientist at UHN's Princess Margaret Cancer Centre walks us through her world first discovery - mapping the biology of a pancreatic cancer tumor. Dr. Khokha found three distinct tumor microenvironments [TME’s] for pancreatic cancer – Resistant; Deserted; and Intermediate. The Resistant TME was found to be the most aggressive, while the Deserted MTE was found to resist - and grow  - during chemotherapy. Dr. Khokha’s mapping discovery now gives researchers a clear understanding of the behavior of pancreatic cancer. It has the potential of far reaching impact – contributing to research for new and improved treatments, the potential for earlier diagnosis, as well applying her mapping technique to other cancers such as colorectal and lung cancer.  

Dr. Lorraine Kalia’s research looks at testing different compounds in C. Elegans and how it can lead to a better understanding of Parkinson’s disease and new therapeutic targets. The best part: some of these compounds are already approved for use in humans. Through Dr. Kalia’s research we may be able to repurpose these compounds for the neurodegenerative condition.

In this episode of Behind the Breakthrough, Dr. Eleanor Fish dives into her groundbreaking research of treating viruses by harnessing a naturally occurring antiviral protein in our body called Interferons. Dr. Fish, an Emerita Scientist at Toronto General Hospital Research Institute, is a world leading immunology researcher and a passionate about the importance of Interferons in fighting pandemics and virus outbreaks such as COVID-19, SARS, and Ebola.

Listen to Dr. Jonathan Irish, renowned head and neck surgeon, talk about how augmented reality can help make tumour removal more precise and improve patient outcomes. He also reflects on how the traits that made him a champion athlete - perseverance, concentration and repetition - also helped make him a master surgeon.

Each year over 20,000 Canadians are sustain a traumatic brain injury, which affects an individuals personality, well-being and those around them. In this episode of Behind the Breakthrough, we sit down with Dr. Carmela Tartaglia at UHN's Krembil Brain Institute to discuss her research. The goal: to better understand concussion, their effects and eventually develop diagnostic tools for conditions like Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. 

Long-term care residents living with dementia were disproportionately affected by the public health measures imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Andrea Iaboni’s Dementia Isolation Toolkit sought to change that.

In this episode of Behind the Breakthrough Dr. Gordon Keller talks about his staggering legacy of advancing the field of regenerative medicine, including his lab’s world-first discovery of the hemangioblast. The hemangioblast is the precursor cell that goes on to form blood vessels and other blood cells in the body. That 1997 discovery led to the next step in Dr. Keller's research – successfully ‘differentiating’ or coaxing precursor cells into becoming a specific cell type that could potentially replace or regrow damaged parts of the body. This seminal work laid the foundation for the research he oversees today at UHN’s McEwen Stem Cell Institute harnessing stem cells to repair damaged organs such as the heart, liver and pancreas.