Hope

• You may have heard of Ozempic, the “miracle drug” for weight loss, but did you know that it was actually designed as a new treatment to manage diabetes?
• In Canada, diabetes affects approximately 10 per cent of the general population.

Locks and keys

• Every cell in the body needs sugar as an energy source, but too much sugar can be toxic to cells.
• This equilibrium needs to be tightly controlled and is regulated by a lock and key system.
• Cells cover themselves with locks that respond perfectly to insulin keys to facilitate the entry of sugar into cells.
• The body can encounter difficulties producing an adequate number of insulin keys, and/or the locks can become stubborn and unresponsive to insulin.

Severe insulin-deficient diabetes: We’re missing keys!

• In the severe insulin-deficient diabetes (SIDD) subtype, the key factories — the beta cells — are on strike.
• Why the beta cells go on strike remains largely unknown, but since there is an insulin deficiency, treatment often involves insulin injections.

Severe insulin-resistant diabetes: But it’s always locked!

• In the severe insulin-resistant diabetes (SIRD) subtype, the locks are overstimulated and start ignoring the keys.
• There are many treatment avenues for these patients but no consensus about the optimal approach; patients often require high doses of insulin.

Mild obesity-related diabetes: The locks are sticky!

• Mild obesity-related (MOD) diabetes represents a nuanced aspect of Type 2 diabetes, often observed in individuals with higher body weight.
• The locks are “sticky,” so it is challenging for the key to click in place and open the lock.

Mild age-related diabetes: I’m tired of controlling blood sugar!

Mild age-related diabetes (MARD) happens more often in older people and typically starts later in life. With time, the key factory is not as productive, and the locks become stubborn. People with MARD find it tricky to manage their blood sugar, but it usually doesn’t lead to severe complications. Among the different subtypes of diabetes, MARD is the most common.

Unique locks, varied keys

• In Canada, unique cases of Type 2 diabetes were identified in Indigenous children from Northern Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario by Dr. Heather Dean and colleagues in the 1980s and 90s.
• Read more:
  Indigenous community research partnerships can help address health inequities

  Childhood-onset Type 2 diabetes is on the rise across Canada, but disproportionately affects Indigenous youth.

• Acknowledging this distinct subtype of Type 2 diabetes in First Nations communities has led to the implementation of a community-based health action plan aimed at addressing the unique challenges faced by Indigenous Peoples.

A mosaic of conditions

• Type 2 diabetes is not uniform; it’s a mosaic of conditions, each with its own characteristics.
• Since diabetes presents so uniquely in every patient, even categorizing into subtypes does not guarantee how the disease will evolve.

Lili Grieco-St-Pierre receives funding from Fonds de recherche du Québec - Santé (FRQS). Jennifer Bruin receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), JDRF, Diabetes Canada.

• A strange and enormous jawbone was discovered on the English coastline eight years ago, but my team was hesitant to identify it as a new species until more specimens came to light.
• Now, with the discovery of a second giant jawbone several years later, we have named a new species of ichthyosaur, an ancient marine reptile.
• In 2016, prolific fossil hunter Paul de la Salle, unearthed a giant jawbone on the beach at Lilstock in Somerset.
• My team, including De la Salle, studied this discovery and published our findings in 2018 in the journal PLOS One.

• The preservation and fine detail provided new information that also helped us to better reinterpret De la Salle’s original bone.
• We therefore erected a new genus (taxonomic rank) and species of giant ichthyosaur that we called Ichthyotitan severnensis, meaning “giant fish lizard of the Severn”.

Blue whale-sized giants

• Using a basic formula called a simple scaling factor, we can estimate that our ichthyosaur was up to 26 metres long, about the size of a blue whale.
• Comparisons with the same bone in other ichthyosaurs suggests that Ichthyotitan was between 20 and 26 metres in length.
• We have to be careful with such estimations due to differences among species, such as those with long or short snouts.
• At 202 million years old, the fossils narrowly predate a global extinction event that eradicated these giants – and marine reptiles would never reach such a size again.

Anyone can make a contribution

• I asked them whether they would like to join my team to study this fossil and they agreed.
• Ruby Reynolds is now a published scientist who not only found but also helped to name a gigantic prehistoric reptile.
• Palaeontology is one of those sciences where anybody can make a significant contribution.

Dean Lomax worked with Paul de la Salle, Marcello Perillo, Justin and Ruby Reynolds and Jimmy Waldron of the Dinosaurs Will Always Be Awesome Museum on the referenced research. He dedicates the work to Paul de la Salle who found the first surangular in 2016.

• Forest fires in British Columbia are expected to begin earlier and last longer this year and severe multi-year droughts are forecast for the Prairies.
• In the lead-up to the federal government’s 2024 budget, there was hope for investments in water management and water-related infrastructure to help address some of these issues.

Fires and droughts

• The budget is light on details — and critical infrastructure investments — regarding the management of fires and droughts.
• But they are often politically contentious and have many social and environmental impacts that need to be weighed during the decision-making process.
• Given the recurring jurisdictional spats between Ottawa and the provinces over water management issues, this lack of commitment to large-scale infrastructure is perhaps unsurprising.

Focus on emergency management

• In contrast to Ottawa’s actions, Alberta recently dedicated funds in its provincial budget to address the urgent threat of a looming drought.
• On the topic of fires, while the federal government acknowledged in early April the looming destructive wildfire season, the budget is focused exclusively on emergency management and firefighter training.
• While it’s important to prepare, such a focus ignores an arguably more pressing problem — the lack of infrastructure required to provide the water for firefighting.

Floods

• It did, however, propose almost $7 million over five years for the Meteorological Service of Canada’s early warning system for extreme weather events, with a focus on floods and storm surges.
• However, this type of policy approach doesn’t address the root causes that result in the occurrence of floods; rather, it focuses on paying out for damages after the floods have happened.
• Ultimately, what is perhaps most striking about the issue of floods in the 2024 budget is how little attention they received and how much of it may be buried under housing-related budget measures.

Housing and wastewater

• The third major water-related aspect we examined in the 2024 budget concerned housing and water management in the built environment.
• There were many welcome references in the budget about the need to invest in urban storm water and wastewater infrastructure.
• This is definitely an important component in dealing with rapid growth and housing affordability issues in Canadian cities, but it will be critical for infrastructure investments to go beyond the status quo and incorporate novel storm-water systems and green infrastructure.

What still needs to be done

• In the end, this budget did little to address the concerns many Canadians have about climate-related impacts and water security.
• There must be investments in sustainable water-use programs and timely water measurements.
• The above being said, infrastructure alone won’t solve the complex issues of climate-related water management.

Kerry Black receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. David Barrett receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, provincial research grants, and collaborates on projects receiving NSERC Alliance funding.

• Frankfurt, Germany; 14 March 2024 – Partex Group, a pioneer in AI-driven drug discovery, today announces a collaboration with global pharmaceutical giant Sanofi, aimed at using Partex’s advanced AI technology to enhance the value of Sanofi's out-licensing portfolio.
• Through meticulous indication expansion, prioritization, and lab validation studies, the collaboration endeavours to uncover fresh prospects for Sanofi’s out-licensing portfolio.
• Dr. Gunjan Bhardwaj, CEO of Partex, expresses enthusiasm about this innovative milestone collaboration, stating, “Our collaboration with Sanofi exemplifies our dedication to driving innovation in drug discovery.
• Partex will receive an upfront cash component at the start of the collaboration and an opportunity to receive additional future financial incentives.