2024

July

• Sarah attends the Americas School for Neuroimmunology (ASNI) summer course, a great place for peer and mentor networking, learning from experts, and discussing exciting future directions in the field of neuroimmunology. 

• Scholarship alert! Sarah receives the MS Canada Doctoral Award to support her studies of how sex, helminth infection, and autoimmune neuroinflammation interact. 

June

• Our collaboration with Dr Jen Gommerman’s lab (University of Toronto) continues. Great collaborators can be transformative, and this has been such a rewarding project. In this chapter, we have two contributions to highlight. Check out the research article and review put together by co-lead authors, PhD candidate’s Annie Pu (GommerLab) and Naomi Fettig (Osborne lab), that report on and discuss the effect of an aging microbiota in MS.

  • Mining for microbial metabolites associated with disease progression in an age-dependent model of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis can be found on bioRxiv.

  • Our review in The influence of aging and the microbiome in multiple sclerosis and other neurologic diseases Immunological Reviews is a great partner to this story!

• Leah and her SPRINT team wrap up and present their knowledge translation project on B cell therapies at the 2024 endMS Summer School.

February

• Leah travels to beautiful Banff to attend the Keystone Symposium on REGULATION OF BARRIER IMMUNITY and share a poster of her research with the support of a UBC Healthy Aging Trainee Travel Stipend.

March

• Back to back jacks! Andrew and Naomi both deliver homerun performances for their departmental PhD exit seminars. 

• Leah completes the gut-brain loop by giving a talk on her research at CDDW 2024 in Toronto.

January

• Our first PhD student successfully defends! Huge congratulations to Dr Blair Hardman as he moves on from the lab to start his journey as an industry scientist. We’ll miss you.

2023

December

• Leah gives a talk at the endMS 2023 conference in Toronto on her work on aging, MS, and the gut-brain axis. Thanks to MS Canada for the funding support to attend and present at this meeting.

• Nicola Pett, co-supervised with Dr Carolina Tropini, defends her Master’s thesis. Thanks to great examiners Drs Kirk Bergstrom and Marc Horwitz for a lively and fun discussion of the intestinal virome.

  • Check out Nicola’s JoVE paper T4 Bacteriophage and E. coli Interaction in the Murine Intestine: A Prototypical Model for Studying Host-Bacteriophage Dynamics In Vivo that summarizes some of the methods she optimized and her findings of T4 bacteriophage and E. coli co-colonization in gnotobiotic mice. This project was made immensely more enjoyable by our collaboration with Dr Forest Rohwer (San Diego State University).

September

• Dr Leah Hohman earns a Michael Smith Health Research BC fellowship to support her work investigating the interactions between age, intestinal health, and neurodegeneration. Congratulations Leah!

August

• Naomi & Lisa both give presentations at the annual International Society for Neuroimmunology (ISNI) congress in Quebec City, QC. Excited to share our stories about the impacts of dietary fiber and helminth infection on EAE.  Thanks to MS Canada for Naomi’s Trainee Travel award to support this trip.

May

• The Osborne lab takes a retreat at Loon Lake. In addition to great presentations on blue sky ideas for the future, we got in a hike and some extreme board game competition.

• Naomi ventures to Whistler BC to attend the NEUROIMMUNE INTERACTIONS: FROM BASIC MECHANISMS TO NOVEL THERAPEUTIC DIRECTIONS Keystone meeting, with support from a Keystone Future of Science travel award.

• Blair Hardman presents his PhD research to the department, marking the first exit seminar for the lab, and reminding everyone in attendance that “It’s about the journey AND the destination”.

April

• The endMS SPRINT program is an amazing interdisciplinary training opportunity. So excited to see what Leah Hohman and her team, headed by mentor Dr Hedwich Kuipers (U Calgary), accomplish over the next year.

March

• Thanks to members of the Canadian Association of Gastroenterologists for support of Sarah’s research into vanishing taxa of the intestinal microbiome. She received travel and poster awards at this year’s Canadian Digestive Disease Week meeting! Grateful to work with wonderful collaborators in Carolina Tropini’s lab on this exciting project.

• The Osborne lab is awarded a Discovery Grant from MS Canada to pursue understanding of how helminth infections alter neuroinflammation and repair mechanisms in the central nervous system.

• Leah Hohman, PhD, receives a fellowship from MS Canada. This supports an ongoing collaboration with the Gommerman lab @ the University of Toronto investigating the role of age and an aged microbiome in progressive MS.

• Sarah Popple passes her PhD candidacy exam (with flying colors!). The help she received from lab members and other trainees is greatly appreciated. Many thanks to the examiners, Drs Brett Finlay, Mike Gold and Marc Horwitz, for a wide-ranging and fun discussion.

• Lisa Osborne awarded the Early Career Researcher Partnership Prize through the CIHR Institute for Nutrition, Metabolism and Diabetes and the Canadian Association of Gastroenterology (CIHR INMD-CAG).

• The lab is awarded a CIHR Project Grant to continue studying the effects of the dietary fiber guar gum on host immunity. In collaboration with Dr Ian Lewis @ the University of Calgary, we will pursue mechanistic understanding of how guar gum and the microbiota collaborate to produce metabolites that alter CD4+ T cell function and the translational potential of guar gum to limit autoimmune relapses in a mouse model of multiple sclerosis (MS).

January

• In collaboration with trainees from the Horwitz and Crowe labs in the M&I department @ UBC Life Sciences Institute, we show that coxsackie virus infection-induced shifts in the microbiome are sufficient to accelerate type 1 diabetes onset in genetically susceptible NOD mice. Congratulations to Zach and Rachel on their Frontiers in Immunology publication!

2022

September

• Congratulations to Naomi Fettig on publication of her thesis work. In Cell Reports, she demonstrates that individual sources of dietary fiber have differential effects on the microbiome and host immune system. Specifically, she shows that one particular fiber source, guar gum, impairs pro-inflammatory T cell activation and delays the onset of MS-like autoimmunity and neuroinflammation.

• Dr Leah Hohman’s ideas about how intestinal epithelial cells contribute to age-related immune dysfunction and microbiome dysbiosis are published in Aging Cell. Check out “A gut-centric view of aging: Do intestinal epithelial cells contribute to age-associated microbiota changes, inflammaging, and immunosenescence?”

July

• Thanks to Immunity @ Cell Press for the invitation to write a Preview of stunning work from Ignacio et al. describing a previously unappreciated role for microbiota/eosinophil cross-talk in setting intestinal homeostasis. Dr Leah Hohman’s summary “Eo: what are we doing here?” is a great appetizer to the full story out of Dr Kathy McCoy’s lab.

June

• This study published in JCI Insight is the product of a great collaboration with Drs Jennifer Gommerman and Valeria Ramaglia. Progressive MS needs new and effective treatments. Here, we describe a new, age-dependent mouse model of progressive MS, which we hope will provided insight into disease pathogenesis and uncover novel treatment targets. Congrats to all involved, including Naomi Fettig.

  • Also check out Atkinson et al. from Dr Ben Segal’s lab describing a similar age-dependent effect in a distinct genetic background, published in the same issue.

• First prize for poster presentations to Naomi Fettig at the Microbiology & Immunology Research Day!

• Blair Hardman earns a a CSI Travel award to attend the annual Canadian Society for Immunology meeting.

• Welcome to our newest staff member! Natalia Garcia Carranza, co-supervised by Dr Carolina Tropini, will support our ongoing studies of host-multibiome interactions as a Gnotobiotic Research Technician.

June

• Lisa Osborne is awarded two pilot grant awards through a partnership between Scialog and Research Corporation for Science Advancement. We’re very excited to work with new collaborators Dr Ukpong Eyo (University of Virginia) on helminth/microbiome interactions and their effects on the central nervous system, and Drs Gianna Hammer (University of Utah) and Linnea Freeman (Furman University) on age-related defects of meningeal immune surveillance.

May

• Nicola Pett is awarded an NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship to support her work characterizing host-phage interactions.

• Sarah Popple is awarded a 4 Year Fellowship from the University of British Columbia. Congratulations Sarah!

• Blair Hardman takes centre stage at the American Association of Immunologists (AAI) annual meeting, presenting his work on the cues that determine distribution of antiviral T cells throughout the gut. Thanks to the AAI for generous travel award support!

April

• Lisa shares her thoughts with CBC on what we do and don’t know about how to manipulate the microbiome to optimize host health.

  • Probiotics, prebiotics — now postbiotics? What's known and not about latest gut research

March

• Dr Lisa Osborne is a co-PI on a Discovery Grant funded by the MS Society of Canada. In collaboration with Dr Jennifer Gommerman @ the University of Toronto, our teams will delve further into the mechanisms by which aging alters the microbiome and neurodegenerative potential in a model of progressive MS.

• Growing again….welcome to Negin Ramanjan, our new Gnotobiotic Technician. Negin will be co-supervised by Dr Carolina Tropini.

February

• The lab’s first murine norovirus (MNV) research paper is published in Journal of Virology. Big thanks to Andrew Sharon for taking this project on and carrying it over the finish line, and to Heather Filyk who started it all. Congratulations to all involved!

January

• Welcome to our newest graduate student, Nicola Pett! Nicola will be co-supervised by Lisa and Dr Carolina Tropini while pursuing a Master’s degree studying phage-host interactions.

2021

August

• The lab welcomes our first postdoc, Dr Leah Hohman. Leah comes in with signifcant expertise in T cell biology, host-pathogen interactions and imaging. She’ll use the strong intellectual and technical foundation she developed during her PhD in her research in the Osborne lab studying how age-related changes in the gut impact progressive MS-like disease.

July

• Interested in how the intestinal ecosystem communicates with the immune system and central nervous system to influence MS and MS-like disease in animal models? Look no further than Naomi Fettig’s comprehensive review Direct and indirect effects of microbiota-derived metabolites on neuroinflammation in multiple sclerosis, published in Microbes & Infection.

March

• Sarah Popple’s first publication from the lab. A great collaborative review with Drs Arthur Mortha and Kyle Burrows from #theonlylabever on Remote Regulation of Type 2 Immunity by Intestinal Parasites is published in Seminars in Immunology.