The Bowdish lab is on a roll!

Posted on July 15, 2014 by Dr. Dawn M. E. Bowdish

This past month has been very productive in the Bowdish laboratory, with many triumphs achieved by it’s industrious members.

Firstly, a big congratulation goes to Kyle Novakowski, the Bowdish lab’s newest PhD student. Following a lot of hard work, determination and great dedication to his Masters project, Kyle successfully passed his transfer exam on July 7 and has officially begun his ~~seemingly endless~~ exciting pursuit for a PhD. Good luck to Kyle in continuing his interesting investigation on the regulation and function of MARCO!

Dessi Loukov presents her undergraduate work in the Bowdish lab at the 1st annual Perey Symposium, convinces everyone she’s a senior PhD student and brings home the Faculty choice award for best speed poster presentation.

Next up is Dessi Loukov, who is currently an undergraduate but come September will be the Bowdish lab’s 4th PhD student. At the 1st annual MIRC Perey Symposium held on June 19, Dessi impressed faculty and trainees with her educational and enthusiastic speed poster presentation on modulating the immune system to potentially reverse age-associated inflammation. Dessi was awarded a travel award as a result of her superb presentation skills. Kudos also to Fan Fei (PhD candidate) and Avee Naidoo (MSc candidate) who gave excellent speed poster talks and Dr. Chris Verschoor who gave an excellent oral presentation. Who knew that research in inflammation could be so exciting? The Bowdish lab, that’s who!

One PhD candidate who deserves great recognition for his recent successes is Mike Dorrington. Not only was Mike awarded with a prestigious and well-deserved Canadian Lung Association & Canadian Thoracic Studentship, but he additionally achieved received The Ruth and Wilson Tafts Prize for Immunology for having the best paper published in a peer-reviewed journal in 2013. Geez Mike, save some awards for the rest of us. These awards will be used to further fund his fascinating work on the role of macrophages – clearly, the best cell around – in recognition and clearance of Streptococcus pneumoniae in the upper respiratory tract. Congratulations Mike!

At the celebration of Mike’s first first author publication. Although Dawn is mostly happy for Mike, she is also slightly nervous that she might be about to lose an eye when the champagne is opened.

Then, there’s Dr. Chris Verschoor, the lab’s most productive and well-rounded member. Chris’ paper entitled, “Alterations to the frequency and function of peripheral blood monocytes and associations with chronic disease in the advanced-age, frail elderly“, was recently accepted into the PLoS one. If you’re interested in changes in monocyte populations with age – I mean, who isn’t? – keep a look out for Chris’ article in the next issue of PLoS one . Way to go Chris on this well-deserved publication!

<- Manuscipt accepted = happy post-doc.

And last, but definitely not least, the lab takes great pleasure in congratulating our passionate leader, Dr. Dawn Bowdish, who has been awarded tenure and a promotion to Associate Professor effective as of July 1, 2014. This accomplishment is a fitting acknowledgement of Dawn’s exceptional work, devotion and academic contributions to research in the field of macrophage biology. In addition to her promotion and tenure, Dawn recently received a Best Teacher Award in the Department of Pathology for excellence in undergraduate teaching and graduate supervision. Well-done Dawn!

Dawn receives the Pathology & Molecular Medicine Department’s best teacher award for her undergraduate and graduate supervision. Dr. Murray Potter, the education co-ordinator and Dr. Fiona Smaill, the chair, present her with the award.

Congratulations Bowdish lab on our successes!

Way to kill it, like young macrophages on pneumo 😉

The Bowdish lab cleans up at the IIDR trainee day!

Posted on November 8, 2013 by Dr. Dawn M. E. Bowdish

The winning team!

Well it was an impressive show even for our over achieving lab! Bowdish lab undergraduates (Netusha Thevaranjan, Dessi Loukov, James Han), graduate students (Kyle Novakowski, Mike Dorrington, Fan Fei), post-docs (Dr. Chris Verschoor) and associates (Fiona Whelan, Dr. Jennifer Stearns, Michelle Pinto) all got selected to present posters at the IIDR trainee day. James Han won the IIDR Award of Excellence for best poster by an undergraduate and Dr. Jennifer Stearns brought home the award for best poster by a post-doc. Avee Naidoo was selected to give a talk only 6 weeks into her graduate degree and Dr. Chris Verschoor won the Gulliver award ($1000!) for the best oral presentation by a post-doc. What a great day!

For a complete album of photos, click here.

Avee Naidoo gives her first talk on her project – 6 weeks into grad school!

Dessi Loukov presents her poster and gets lots of compliments on her story.

Dr. Chris Verschoor wins the Gulliver award for best presentation by a PDF.

Dr. Jennifer Stearns and James Han win IIDR awards of excellence for their poster presentations.

“Blood CD33+HLA-DR- myeloid-derived suppressor cells are increased with age and a history of cancer” 2013. Verschoor et al. JLB

Posted on June 15, 2013 by Dr. Dawn M. E. Bowdish

MDSCs (myeloid derived suppressor cells) are a recently discovered and very heterogenous cell type that appear to directly suppress T cell responses and their presence in the tumour or the circulation is an extremely poor prognostic marker.

The Bowdish lab recently dipped our foot into the confusing world of MDSCs because we were curious to know whether their frequency increases with age and if so, could this explain why age is a risk factor for many cancers. They do increase with age and this may explain why some adaptive immune responses decline with age. One thing we were very surprised to find is that individuals who had any history of cancer but were believed to be in remission had higher levels of these cells in circulation. This begs the question – did these people have higher levels and to begin with and is this why they were predisposed to cancer? Or do they still have subclinical tumours that promote the development of MDSCs? Or does the suppressive environment of the cancer microenvironment stay with you for life? More studies (not by us, that was enough) are warranted.

For the .pdf click here

For the supplementary data, click here.

Dr. Chris Verschoor wins prestigious fellowship from the Canadian Thoracic Society!

Posted on July 22, 2012 by Dr. Dawn M. E. Bowdish

A big congratulations to Dr. Chris Verschoor on winning a competitive fellowship from the Canadian Thoracic Society. Dr. Verschoor’s winning proposal consisted of an innovative assessment of how changes in immune function that occur with age will predispose the elderly to disease. This research proposal capitalizes on the ability of the McMaster Immunology Research Centre‘s to perform clinical grade research using the Human Immunology Suite and Dr. Verschoor’s expertise in human immune phenotyping. We look forward to all the exciting research this will allow Dr. Verschoor to perform.

Congratulations to Dr. Peter Pelka on obtaining a faculty position at the University of Manitoba!

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Dr. Dawn M. E. Bowdish

Dr. Pelka is the first Bowdish lab trainee to get a faculty position. He’ll be leaving us in May 2012 to join the Department of Microbiology at the University of Manitoba where he’ll be building a research program in virology. Congratulations Peter, we wish you all the best!

Dr. Chris Verschoor’s award winning work on pneumonia in the elderly profiled.

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Dr. Dawn M. E. Bowdish

To read about the work which won him the prestigious M.G. DeGroote post-doctoral fellowship, see this article…http://fhs.mcmaster.ca/main/news/news_2012/mgdfa_recipients_2011.html

Dr. Verschoor is tackling an issue of grave importance to Canada’s aging population – the high toll of infectious disease. As an example, 90% of pneumonia deaths in Canada occur in the elderly at tremendous cost to our health care system. Pneumonia is often the result of a period of decreased mobility (e.g. hip fracture and hospital stay) and the beginning of a decline in health. Preventing infections would keep the elderly healthy for longer and provide increased independence, decrease the cost of care and result in longer, happier lives.

Congratulations to Dr. Chris Verschoor on received the M.G. DeGroote Post-doctoral fellowship

Posted on June 25, 2011 by Dr. Dawn M. E. Bowdish

Dr. Chris Verschoor has won the Micheal G. DeGroote Postdoctoral fellowship for 2011-2012. The prestigious Michael G. DeGroote Fellowship Awards provide postdoctoral candidates in the Faculty of Health Sciences the opportunity to pursue leading-edge health sciences research.The awards are designed for candidates who have an exemplary academic record and are interested in pursuing postdoctoral work in one of the numerous areas of research excellence in the Faculty of Health Sciences at McMaster University.

Dr. Verschoor won the award for his innovative project proposal on discovering the fundamental basis of susceptibility to pneumonia in the elderly. Pneumonia is a leading cause of death and decline of function in the elderly and a significant cost to the Canadian Health Care System. Dr. Verschoor proposes to discover the underlying molecular mechanisms of their increased susceptibility with a long term goal of discovering innovative therapies.

The Bowdish lab welcomes Chris Verschoor, Fiona Whelan, Mike Dorrington & Tanja Thurn.

Posted on September 14, 2010 by Dr. Dawn M. E. Bowdish

The Bowdish lab is undergoing massive expansion at the moment & we’re thrilled to welcome our new post-doc, Chris Verschoor. Chris recently graduated with a PhD from Guelph and since Guelph trains the best students, we were happy to scoop him up. (Full disclosure: Dawn graduated from Guelph).

Fiona is a MSc student with a computer science degree from Waterloo, who will be bringing her bioinformatic skills to the wet lab.

Mike is also a MSc student who has recently graduated from beautiful UBC (Full disclosure: Dawn did her PhD there & dreams of going back), spent a month in Ecuador & is now hard at work.

In other graduate student news, Zhongyuan Tu, the first member of the Bowdish lab and former thesis student is now a MSc student. We’re delighted that he’s chosen to stay on.

Tanja Thurn brings years of experience as a medical technologist to the Bowdish lab & she will be tackling some of our technology issues and will be a resource to all.

Welcome to all the new members of our team!

(Position filled Sept 14 2010) Post-doctoral position in Immunosenescence Available

Posted on August 12, 2010 by Dr. Dawn M. E. Bowdish

Would you like to build your career exploring the immunology of aging?

In the Western world the majority (>90%) of deaths due to pneumonia occur in the elderly. Why they are at such high risk is not entirely clear, but presumably immunosenescence (age related changes in the immune system) is a key factor. The high mortality rate is compounded by co-infections, such as influenza infection. This research project involves developing a mouse model of Streptococcus pneumoniae colonization and infection in aged mouse and determining how co-infection with influenza increases the risk of developing pneumonia. This will include a both a basic science component (i.e. deteremining how age-associated changes in immunity contribute to susceptibility to infection) and a translational component (i.e. testing therapeutic interventions).

An immediate post-doctoral opportunity is available for a creative scientist with a strong commitment to excellence and innovation to pursue leading edge research in immunology. Although this is presently only a 1 year position, this may be extended if the applicant obtains fellowship funding. Candidates with experience in virology or mouse models of infection are especially encouraged to apply.

The position is in the Department of Pathology & Molecular Medicine at McMaster University located in the heart of the Golden Horseshoe in southern Ontario. McMaster University has been ranked as one of Canada’s most research intensive universities known for it’s highly collaborative and mentoring atmosphere.

Interested candidates should send a CV, cover letter and three references to Dr. Dawn Bowdish (bowdish@mcmaster.ca, www.bowdish.ca).

NSERC announces new PDF fellowship award.

Posted on June 17, 2010 by Dr. Dawn M. E. Bowdish

For all you potential PDFs, here’s the news from NSERC…

“Applications open soon for prestigious new PDF program

Budget 2010 announced that the three granting agencies would establish a new and prestigious postdoctoral fellowships program to attract top-level talent to Canada. The program is designed to be internationally competitive, with 70 new two-year fellowships, valued at $70,000 each per year, to be awarded on an annual basis. The first fellowships will be awarded in 2010–11.

As the program details are finalized over the coming months, NSERC, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council will communicate updates regularly to the university and researcher communities. Updates will also be posted to the agencies’ Web sites as they become available.”

Applications open soon for prestigious new PDF program

Bowdish Lab

Macrophage Biology at McMaster University

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