Radiation therapy aims beams of intense energy at a tumour to kill cancer cells. But if the ultranarrow beam is aimed inaccurately, it can hit healthy cells and “underdose” the target tumour.

Led by Dr. Dennis Mücher, a professor in the Department of Physics, U of G researchers have come up with a technique called a “hadron tumour marker” to make proton radiation therapy more accurate.

The implications of these findings for human cancer therapy are huge

They tested the technique at TRIUMF, Canada’s national laboratory for nuclear and medical physics in Vancouver.

Cancer is the leading cause of death in Canada and half of all cancer patients are treated with radiation therapy.

Cancer radiation therapy using ions, including charged particles such as protons, has become more widespread because it can target tumours and cancer cells with great precision. That makes it especially useful for treating cancers in delicate tissues like the eyes, brain or spinal cord.

In a separate study, U of G scientists harnessed tumour-killing viruses that may one day help treat devastating forms of breast, brain and pancreatic cancer.

We wake up the immune system

A research team led Dr. Sam Workenhe has shown for the first time that a one-two punch of cancer-killing viruses and chemotherapy can help trigger tumour inflammation, stimulating the body’s immune system to control tumour growth.

Workenhe, a professor in the Department of Pathobiology, said the study may ultimately help doctors enlist patients’ immune systems to fight cancers with especially poor treatment outcomes from conventional surgery, chemotherapy or radiation.

“The implications of these findings for human cancer therapy are huge,” he said. “We wake up the immune system.”

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U of G researchers aim to test waste water to detect levels of the SARS-CoV-2 virus – released in human feces – from student residences. Detecting higher levels of the virus in the sewer system may help prevent outbreaks on university campuses, says food science professor Lawrence Goodridge.

He’s working on the project with other U of G researchers and scientists at Laval University and the Public Health Agency of Canada.

“We appear to be the first in Canada to test a campus residence and use the data to try to make the campus safer.”

Previous research shows that the virus appears in waste water roughly a week before it shows up in a population, says Goodridge, director of the Canadian Research Institute for Food Safety at U of G.

“If we find evidence of the virus in waste water, it’s an indication that there is potentially a problem coming up. With that information, we can then take steps to take early action against that potential problem.”

Engineering professor Ed McBean and student research assistants are now taking waste water samples at East Residence.

By identifying the virus in communities, says McBean, the research could help target individual testing more efficiently.

It could also reinforce public health practices from mask-wearing to handwashing, says Goodridge. “We appear to be the first in Canada to test a campus residence and use the data to try to make the campus safer.”

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“This project really began from my frustration as a parent, noticing my child was always getting ill and consequently being told to stay home, me along with him,” says the project’s lead, Prof. Monica Cojocaru, Department of Mathematics and Statistics.

“I wondered if there might be better ways to figure out how to prevent more of these illnesses.”

The pairing of math and illness prevention is nothing new; modelling is often used to estimate the effectiveness of medical interventions such as vaccines in large populations, for example.

The first step to understanding how infections spread in a child-care centre requires mapping out typical contact patterns of the children among themselves and with staff and/or surfaces.

Cojocaru and her students are working with U of G’s Child Care and Learning Centre on the project. She says it will be a challenge, since kids move in unique ways at different stages in their development.

“They run everywhere, they bump into things and other kids, they roll on the floor, they put things in their mouths. So, in this environment, we can’t assume a rational element of behaviour in their movements,” she says.

The team will then simulate the introduction of several pathogens into its scale model, such as rotavirus, flu virus, respiratory syncytial virus and norovirus. Some of these pathogens travel in the air, some spread through one-on-one contact and some contaminate surfaces.

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Prof. Sam Hocker, Department of Clinical Studies, is undertaking a three-year study to learn more about the anti-cancer properties of cannabidiol and its potential for treating urothelial carcinoma, a difficult-to-treat bladder cancer in animals.

The project will provide much-needed research on veterinary applications of cannabis, said OVC dean Jeff Wichtel.

“Veterinarians and pet owners have been eager for information on the medical applications for cannabis,” he says. “This groundbreaking work will help us learn about the role of cannabinoids in cancer and advance this field of medical research in Canada.”

Most bladder carcinomas in humans are treated with surgery and immunotherapy, but some cases are harder to treat. Hocker says work with dogs could help design potential therapeutic options for more aggressive forms of bladder cancer in humans.

Medicinal cannabis is used to treat people, but currently, no products are licensed in Canada for treating animals. Lobbying is under way for legislation to allow veterinarians to authorize use of medical cannabis.

For this research, OVC received one of Canada’s first grants for veterinary cannabis research. Funding came from Grey Wolf Animal Health, a specialty animal health company.

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Prof. Emma Allen-Vercoe, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, is among 14 researchers from five countries on a research team looking to study connections between microbes in the body and cancer.
Her expertise in culturing gut microbes developed in her U of G lab – and its custom-designed “robo-gut” mimicking the workings of the large intestine – led the team’s principal investigators to invite her to join the project.

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The study is the first to show the specific trigger for nausea – a common symptom of many diseases and a distressing side effect of chemotherapy that is not effectively treated by current drugs – and its suppression by cannabidiol, a non-psychoactive compound in cannabis.

“This work may lead to a host of potential therapeutic benefits,” says Linda Parker, a U of G psychology professor who has studied the pharmacological properties of cannabinoids on brain behaviours for almost two decades.

This includes better anti-nausea therapies using cannabis as well as a novel drug that elevates a natural cannabinoid (2-AG) in the brain region responsible for the sensation of nausea. The study was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

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Why is this research so important?

In Northern Canada, food security is mainly an economic issue. We currently import perishable produce and fly it into remote places at great expense. It’s difficult for people to get fresh food and they can’t grow their own food outside. In the Middle East, they’re projecting the day when they will have to survive without oil. The deserts of Kuwait, where it’s 50 C, and the snow banks of Yellowknife, where it’s -50 C, have equally profound food security issues but the solution is identical: space-related technology.

How are you growing plants in barren places?

We’re using controlled environment technologies to produce food year-round in places where you would never consider sticking a seed in the ground. It’s technology that we’ve developed for growing food in space — the next worse place after Northern Canada to grow food has got to be the surface of the moon or Mars. We’re hoping to put a pilot-scale installation in the Northwest Territories and there’s already a prototype in Kuwait growing vegetables in an otherwise hostile environment. We hope to explore high-value perishable crops like strawberries, sweet peppers, herbs and romaine lettuce, along with medicinal herbs, which have a higher profit margin.

What role does light play in the technology?

A plant is a product of its environment and responds to every environmental variable — carbon dioxide, light, temperature, humidity, nutrients and water. The advent of high-intensity, high-efficiency LEDs gives us the power to fine-tune the environment control. With the colour of the light, you can change the size, shape, taste and colour of a plant. Plants are the ultimate challenge because they’re so sophisticated in their physiological responses to light.

In the film The Martian, Matt Damon’s character grows potatoes on Mars. Could that really happen?

“Yes, the arithmetic was good — previous NASA research supports it. Our work is to fill in the blanks more precisely. For example, looking at how low can you take the pressure in the structure and still have plants providing all the functions of life support, food, oxygen, recycling water and scrubbing carbon dioxide.”

Do you think controlled environment agricultural systems will provide solutions to food security issues?

Absolutely. It will happen as the technology gets deployed on a larger scale and becomes more economically possible. The technology exists, and the interest, initiative and feasibility are obvious. The need is clear. It all depends on money — it’s the only limitation. –DAVID DICENZO

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By Andrew Vowles

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he next time you sit down for a meal, line up for takeout or cruise the aisles of your supermarket, consider this: You want safe, fresh food, but how much will you pay for it? You want affordable, abundant food, but what if you save money at the expense of the environment or your health?

Tackling these issues is the point of Food From Thought (FFT), a new $77-million project involving researchers at the University of Guelph. The seven-year project announced this fall will bring together more than 100 Guelph researchers along with various external partners. In the process, they’re addressing another paradox: how to produce enough food for a growing human population — predicted to reach nine billion people by mid-century — without ruining the Earth’s ecosystems in the process.

“We’re talking about changing the way we produce food in Canada,” says population medicine professor Jan Sargeant, one of 10 principal investigators in the project.

Feeding all of those people will require more food. But our efforts to grow more food increasingly threaten the very life supports — air, water, soil and biodiversity — that sustain our agri-food system.

“We want to sustain these ecosystem services while putting food on our plates,” says Malcolm Campbell, a professor and vice-president (research). He researches plant-environment interactions in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and he’s the institutional lead for the Food From Thought project. “Those two challenges collide and create one super-challenge.”

Agriculture consumes water and mineral resources. Farming is our largest source of water pollution through runoff of fertilizers and pesticides. Livestock contributes to the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threaten the health of animals and people. Some 30 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture.

“Population growth and urbanization are pushing up our demand for food while climate change, volatile energy prices and water scarcity are going to make food harder and more expensive to produce,” says geography professor Evan Fraser, scientific director of Food From Thought. “Additionally, for all the good things that agriculture can do, we have to acknowledge that in many parts of the world, agriculture causes major environmental problems.”

Production is one side of the problem. The other side is consumers. We waste almost one-third of the food we make, and what food is not wasted is poorly shared. Parts of the world struggle with obesity, while others endure malnourishment and hunger. But the United Nations estimates that there are about 2,850 dietary calories available daily for every man, woman and child on the planet. “There’s more food available per capita today than at any point in human history,” says Fraser.

In this century, how we produce and distribute food — and what kinds of food we produce — will be a more important issue than simply producing more calories. What’s needed today, say FFT principals, is a “digital agricultural revolution” that will allow us to grow more and safer food on less land and with fewer inputs.

“The digital agricultural revolution will deliver the right amount of food at the right location for real-time management of individual plants and animals,” says Campbell. Precision agriculture will rely upon information technology and “big data” to produce food. Those information tools will serve as the brains in robotic milking systems; in drones and satellites that monitor soil moisture for irrigation requirements or optimum planting times; and in smartphone apps that allow farmers to identify insects in their fields to help predict and control pest infestations. Imagine self-driving tractors that automatically plant, fertilize and irrigate crops without wasting seed, nutrients or water.

Under Food From Thought, these tools will help researchers study food safety, sustainable food production and agriculture’s impact on biodiversity.

FOOD SAFETY & LIVESTOCK HEALTH

Big data is increasingly important to ensure food safety and livestock health. Current attempts to keep livestock healthy have contributed to the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which threatens both animal and consumers’ health. Pathobiology professor Bonnie Mallard is using genomics to screen and breed healthier livestock lines. Her patented immune response profiling technology identifies animals with naturally high, average or low immunity to various pathogens. This allows breeders and farmers to select animals for better disease resistance, and benefits consumers eating products from healthier animals treated with fewer antibiotics and other drugs.

Food science professor Jeffrey Farber worked for Health Canada for about 25 years before joining Guelph in 2015, where he runs the Canadian Research Institute for Food Safety. He plans to research innovative technologies for reducing food-borne illness, particularly in low-moisture foods such as nuts, dried apples, dried strawberry and chocolate.

Farber says big data will allow researchers to look at varied problems. Imagine simulation systems that allow scientists to model how pathogens behave as they travel through the gastrointestinal tract and their effects on gut microbes. For consumers, that might lead to new products such as probiotics in food that nurture good gut bugs and help control the bad ones. On a larger scale, imagine being able to weave data about microbial pathogens with geographic information systems designed to capture weather and climate patterns. Farber says that kind of information could help predict food-borne disease outbreaks.

His work intersects with studies by Jan Sargeant, who has led Guelph’s Centre for Public Health and Zoonoses for eight years. Preventing the spread of disease from animals to humans will also be easier with better information systems, says Sargeant. She says integrating production information with data on disease spread will help predict and stem infectious disease outbreaks. “We can do more meaningful things to prevent disease outbreaks in animals, thereby improving animal health and welfare, and protecting human health.”

SUSTAINABLE FOOD PRODUCTION

Big data can help make farming more efficient, allowing farmers to shrink agriculture’s environmental footprint. “Agriculture creates a leaky system,” says plant agriculture professor Clarence Swanton, who studies how plants compete and communicate to thwart pests and disease. Referring to excess use of nitrogen and phosphorus in fertilizers that feed algal blooms and dying water bodies, he says, “You can look at any watershed and see the impact of agriculture.”

Elsewhere on campus, Guelph crop scientists are using genomic information to develop more nutritious plant lines suited to local conditions, including simulating changes expected to be wrought by climate change. Learning more about farm animal genetics offers a route to breeding livestock that converts feed into meat or milk more efficiently — U of G researchers have already improved Canada’s dairy industry by providing producers with more efficient breeding stock that cause fewer greenhouse gas emissions. And they’ve developed crop varieties that are more productive and hardy.

By improving farm operations, those tools may help keep costs lower for both farmers and consumers. Ten years ago, Swanton bought 100 acres near Eramosa north of Guelph, where he now grows corn, wheat and soybeans. Swapping his weed scientist lab coat for his farming dungarees, he ponders the effects of this summer’s drought in southern Ontario. He harvested fewer soybeans than normal this year, and wonders whether he might have improved his harvest by finding a more drought-resistant soybean variety or a more targeted monitoring system to track field conditions.

AGRICULTURE & BIODIVERSITY

Farming practices cause up to 270,000 square kilometres of the Earth’s land mass to be deforested or turned into desert every year. That has to stop, says integrative biology professor Paul Hebert: “Our need to feed humanity is despoiling vast amounts of land.” We also lose untold numbers of species that play a role in ecosystems and ultimately sustain human life.

Under the International Barcode of Life project, he and other researchers around the world intend to catalogue species in an effort to preserve organisms and ecosystems. DNA barcoding, a technology developed by Hebert, distinguishes species by reading a telltale snippet of their genetic material. Analysis and cataloguing takes place on campus at the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics within the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario.

Beyond mapping biodiversity, DNA barcoding has proven useful in identifying mislabelled food items in restaurants and supermarkets; in regulating the cross-border movement of endangered species; and in enabling Canadian food exporters to demonstrate product authenticity. Hebert imagines new uses for barcoding on the farm of the future.

“By next summer we will deploy a DNA-based monitoring system across southern Ontario that will track shifts in the density of crop pests,” he says. Much like a network of weather stations collecting information about rainfall or temperature, this system will analyze insects from traps deployed in farm fields to alert farmers about emerging pest problems. Ultimately, he says, the technology will allow farmers to diagnose problems right in the field and apply pesticides only where and when they’re needed.

Far from pitting agriculture and biodiversity against each other, Food From Thought will bring together agricultural scientists and ecologists. It has to, says Swanton. “In agriculture, a less diverse system is easier to manage,” he says. “It’s a change of thought: How to make the system more diverse to enhance ecosystems and maintain agricultural production?”

Farming in one place can affect an ecosystem thousands of miles away, says Kevin McCann, an ecologist in the Department of Integrative Biology. Snow geese feed on grain grown in the southern United States, bulking up for their annual migration north to Canada. Plentiful farm crops mean more snow geese, which mean larger flocks arriving in Hudson Bay. The result: the Hudson Bay lowlands are decimated as explosive numbers of geese strip the landscape of vegetation. “This is a global issue, and needs people thinking from the local to the global scale,” he says. “Is there a sweet spot of production while preserving biodiversity?”

Campbell thinks there is, and that Food From Thought can help find it. He expects the initiative will yield ideas for increasing food production while protecting ecosystem services, supporting the agri-food economy and ensuring healthful food for consumers.

“To ensure food security, we must safely, sustainably and nutritiously feed the world’s growing population while protecting the world’s biodiversity,” he says. “The University of Guelph, and Canada, will lead the world in meeting this challenge.”

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One day you might not need passwords at all, thanks to research involving Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects team (ATAP) and University of Guelph researchers.

Engineering professor Graham Taylor and graduate student Griffin Lacey, along with Google’s ATAP, are developing a new phone security mechanism based on user habits.

“Mobile users find typing in passwords intrusive to their enjoyment of the phone,” says Lacey. “So we’re looking for a solution that could help improve the usability of their devices.”

As part of what Google ATAP called a “research sprint,” Lacey took part in ATAP’s Project Abacus for three months at Google’s California headquarters where he helped with a learning problem called continuous authentication, or guaranteeing user identity through multiple phone sensors such as touchscreen and keyboard input and images.

Google ATAP contacted Taylor as an expert on machine learning. This computational technique essentially teaches computers to learn like humans by finding patterns in large amounts of raw data.

In one form of machine learning called deep learning, a computer is taught to recognize patterns within multiple kinds of data — sound, images, keystrokes — and place them into categories. The device can then use the computer equivalent of a human’s neural pathways to distinguish between individuals.

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