Dawn receives funding from the Ontario Research Funding – Research Infrastructure

This morning Ted McMeekin, MPP for Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale, Patrick Deane, president of McMaster, and Mo Elbestawi, the University’s vice-president, Research & International Affairs announced that McMaster University researchers, including Dr. Bowdish were successful in their applications for research infrastructure funding from the Ontario government.

The funding that Dawn has received will be used to expand and support her lab’s research into discovering novel immunomodulatory therapies for infectious disease that will be essential for combatting antibiotic resistant bacteria.

For the McMaster Daily News article click here.

For a description of the project click here.

Breaking News: Inimex Pharmaceuticals begins First Clinical Study of an Innate Defense Regulator

During the course of Dr. Bowdish’s PhD she discovered that host defence peptides (formerly known as antimicrobial peptides) were not actually bactericidal under physiological conditions. Instead they worked by interacting with the leukocytes as “immunomodulators” altering cytokine responses and chemotaxis and altering the leukocyte’s pro-inflammatory response. This work was the basis of a patent which resulted in the creation of Inimex Pharmaceuticals. Recently Inimex has announced that they have successfully passed Phase I clinical trial for their IDR (Immune Defence Regulator), a new class of anti-infective drugs. Read the press release here.

The Bowdish lab has an ongoing interest in developing novel anti-infective agents.