News

The DaCosta lab congratulates Niloufar Khosravi on her two recent awards at the 2017 Canadian Microscopy and Cytometry Conference in Montreal, Quebec: Best Oral Presentation Award (Multiphoton Intravital Microscopy for Wound Healing) and Light Microscopy Travel Award

Dr. Sara Rapic has joined the DaCosta lab as a visiting scientist and is funded by a Beligum government “grant for a short study visit abroad” from the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). This grant supports researchers who wish to spend a short period abroad to further specialize in their research field or to undertake knowledge-gathering assignments, encouraging mobility and international contacts between research groups.

The DaCosta lab congratulates Kathryn Ottolino-Perry on presenting her poster: “Handheld Fluorescence Imaging Device for Real-Time Intra-Operative Margin Assessment of Breast Cancer: ALA-Induced Fluorescence for the Detection of Breast Tumours” at the 15th St Gallen International Breast Cancer Conference in Vienna, Austria. View Conference website

Chad Pelley is an author, songwriter and journalist whose debut novel, Away From Everywhere, has been adapted into a film now making the festival rounds. But he might never have become the celebrated artist he is today. The 36-year-old resident of St. John’s has arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC), a rare heart disorder prevalent in Newfoundland and Labrador where the first and only symptom is often a fatal heart attack. Thanks to genome sequencing that identified the gene responsible for ARVC, Pelley was able to learn through a blood test that he has the disorder. Read the Full Article

Abstract Clinical wound assessment involves microbiological swabbing of wounds to identify and quantify bacterial species, and to determine microbial susceptibility to antibiotics. The Levine swabbing technique may be suboptimal because it samples only the wound bed, missing other diagnostically relevant areas of the wound, which may contain clinically significant bacteria. Thus, there is a clinical need to improve the reliability of microbiological wound sampling. To address this, a handheld portable autofluorescence (AF) imaging device that detects bacteria in real time, without contrast agents, was developed. Here, we report the results of a clinical study evaluating the use of real-time AF…

Fluorescence imaging of microscopic GFP metastatic colonic tumor cells in mouse lung. Fluorescence imaging during resection of GFP tumor in mouse model. Fluorescence imaging of GFP orthotopic colonic tumor (arrow) in mouse abdomen. The Moleculight RD:100, developed in the Dacosta lab, is now available to scientists around the world! In vivo fluorescence imaging of small animals in preclinical research is used widely across a variety of disciplines such as oncology and infectious disease.  It provides a means of detecting a fluorescent signal within a living animal reflecting specific, mostly disease-related, processes, such as parts of the host immune response, inflammation,…