Two pictures by our trainees are amongst the finalists for the image contest “La preuve par l’image” organized by ACFAS: “Un portrait de la douleur”, by Louis-Étienne Lorenzo, and “Dans le vif du sujet” by Feng Wang and Erik Bélanger. You can view the images, and vote for your favorite, on the contest page:
http://ici.radio-canada.ca/concours/la_preuve_par_l_image/2014/index.asp
Congratulations to all for their nomination!

Découvrir, the magazine of the Association Francophone pour le Savoir (ACFAS), published an interview recently about chronic pain with Quebec Pain Research Network founder Yves De Koninck. Read the interview on the ACFAS website: http://www.acfas.ca/publications/decouvrir/2014/05/douleur-chronique-sort-silence

The Beauport express was present for the event titled «24h de science» during which the Neurophotonics Centre, and the Institut Universitaire en Santé Mentale, opened its doors to the public. Journalist Alison Charland published a report on her visit in the newspaper: http://www.beauportexpress.com/

The Open House was held for Mental Health week. The general public was invited to discover, in three steps, different facets of the most fascinating organ of all, the brain!
All the details about this event, titled “Histoire, art et neurosciences, 1, 2, 3, cerveau!” are on the Institut Universitaire en Santé Mentale de Québec website.

We are proud to announce that Francesco Ferrini and Marc Bergeron are amongst the top three Brain Star Awardees for 2013. Both researchers are recognized for work that was done in Yves De Koninck’s laboratory, published in 2013, in Nature Neuroscience (Ferrini, Trang et al.) and in Nature Medicine (Gagnon, Bergeron, et al.)

The CIHR-INMHA Brain Star Awards is a Canada-wide program which aims to recognize the excellence of research done in Canada by students and trainees. Every year, the top three winners are invited to attend and present their award-winning work at the Canadian Association for Neuroscience Annual Meeting.

Daniel Côté is part of a team on international researchers who have located blood stem cells within the bone marrow, in a study published recently in Nature.

Read an article by Jean Hamann in Le Fil de l’université Laval about this story (in French): Au coeur de la moelle
Les cellules souches du sang auraient une niche préférée dans la moelle osseuse, révèle une étude publiée dans Nature

View the original research article in Nature:
Spencer JA, Ferraro F, Roussakis E, Klein A, Wu J, Runnels JM, Zaher W, Mortensen LJ, Alt C, Turcotte R, Yusuf R, Côté D, Vinogradov SA, Scadden DT, Lin CP. Direct measurement of local oxygen concentration in the bone marrow of live animals. Nature. 2014 Mar 2. doi: 10.1038/nature13034.

Yves De Koninck, Director of the Neurophotonics Centre, discusses the process of finding the right candidate to fill the Canada Excellence Research Chair awarded to the Centre in the latest issue of University Affairs.
Read the article by Mark Cardwell here: Super CERC me! The whole issue is available here: University Affairs – April 2014 (article begins on page 11).

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Biophotonics magazine features an image by Erik Bélanger, Sophie Laffray and Daniel Côté on its January 2014 cover, and also features an article about CARS microscopy, a technique used at the Neurophotonics center for label-free imaging of tissues.

The ability to avoid use of often deleterious dyes for imaging allows researchers using CARS microscopy, such as Daniel Côté, to study the same animal over time, which is not possible with many other imaging techniques. Though it is a challenging technique, its advantages make it a promising alternative when labelling dyes need to be avoided (live animals, food processing, pharmaceutical research).

Read the article in Biophotonics here.

Listen to a recent interview with Yves De Koninck in which he explains the importance of the new drug tests that will soon start in the collaboration between Roche and Université Laval. The very promising drugs being tested were discovered over the last ten years of research in professor De Koninck’s laboratory.

If successful, these could lead to the development of new drugs to treat many neurological disease in as few as five years. The disease that could be treated include autism, chronic pain, epilepsy, even schizophrenia.

The interview is available here: http://www.cbc.ca/breakaway/2014/01/22/universite-laval-researches-autism-drug/

Work done by Yves De Koninck and his team has lead to the identification of novel compounds that could be used to treat many neurological disorders. A new phase in the development of new drugs based on these discoveries is beginning following the announcement that the pharmaceutical company Roche has reached an agreement with Université Laval to collaborate on testing the efficacy of these novel compounds.
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