By Laura Eggertson

Dalhousie researchers lead the way in investigating how older people respond to novel pathogens like COVID-19, Dr. Lisa Barrett told the Faculty of Medicine’s Breakthrough Breakfast on March 26.

During the first wave of the pandemic, Dr. Barrett and her colleagues enrolled more than 350 residents of long-term care facilities in the Long-term Care Immunity and Frailty in Elderly COVID Study, to investigate the strength of their immune systems.

Since most research studies do not include older frail adults, public health officials had little information about how much immunity those adults could generate to withstand the SARS-CoV-2 virus, Dr. Barrett told about 150 colleagues and community members at the breakfast at Pier 21 in Halifax.

Public health officials were also uncertain how well older people would respond to the new COVID vaccines, Dr. Barrett said. They were looking for clues to prevent further deaths of long-term care residents and other seniors.

Dr. Barrett, an assistant professor and the Principal Investigator of the Senescence, Aging, Infection, and Immunity (SAIL) laboratory, was one of three researchers who described their work during TED Talk-style presentations. Dalhousie President Kim Brooks moderated and Faculty of Medicine Dean David Anderson introduced the breakfast, a quarterly event the faculty is organizing to share research insights with the community.

Although most of those who died in Nova Scotia during the first wave of COVID were long-term care residents, Dr. Barrett’s study indicated many older adults can muster a strong immune response. The study also generated further questions about a potential correlation between people who had a common virus called cytomegalovirus (CMV), which may have weakened their immune cells that left them vulnerable to further infections, she said.

“There is a huge knowledge gap in older person immunity, and with those folks being the people who die the most of infections in our population, we need to reprioritize them both with funds and with education to enable that research to happen quickly,” Dr. Barrett said.

The Dalhousie research study generated valuable information that is being added to Canada-wide database, she said.

She thanked the older adults who participated in the research, pointing out that every person the researchers asked agreed to join the study, which she described as the first such novel pathogen investigation involving people more than 100 years old.

“Dalhousie is leading here. Nova Scotians are leading,” Dr. Barrett said.

Dalhousie’s expertise in infectious diseases, inflammation, immunology, and vaccinology (I3V) was the centrepiece of the Breakthrough Breakfast, which also featured Dr. Scott Halperin, director of the Canadian Center for Vaccinology.

The Center is home to one of only two Human Challenge units in Canada, Dr. Halperin said. In the 10-bed unit, researchers test new treatments and vaccines on people who volunteer to be infected with viruses such as whooping cough. Doctors then treat them, under carefully controlled conditions, before the virus can progress far enough to harm them.

“Under those carefully controlled conditions we can actually determine the immune response to the bacteria,” said Dr. Halperin. “By understanding the immune response better, we can develop better vaccines.”

There are about 150 researchers, staff, and students working at the Center, where Dr. Halperin and his colleagues are developing and testing a new vaccine for whooping cough (pertussis), as well as evaluating scores of other vaccines and new therapeutics.

The I3V group is also eager to eventually utilize a new biomanufacturing facility Dalhousie plans to have operating soon. That facility will allow researchers to not only develop new drugs and vaccines, but also create small batches of products manufactured under Good Manufacturing Process standards, and conduct pilot or proof-of-concept studies that could lead to larger clinical trials.

“A GMP facility has a wide variety of potential and it will put Nova Scotia on the map in terms of being able to do the type of research we need to do to have innovative therapies, treatments, and preventions,” Dr. Halperin said.

Both Dr. Brooks and Dr. Anderson emphasized the importance of having biomanufacturing capacity in order to translate the discoveries Dalhousie researchers are making into tangible health-care solutions.

“The new facility will not only fill a critical gap in the research pipeline in Atlantic Canada, it will add much-needed capacity to Canada’s entire manufacturing and life sciences sector,” said Dr. Brooks.

The prospect of a new manufacturing facility is enticing for research trainees, including graduate students and post-doctoral fellows working in the I3V researchers’ labs, said Dr. Craig McCormick, who investigates the way host systems respond to viruses, and how viruses evade those immune responses. His research focuses on new and emerging viruses with pandemic potential, including influenza and coronaviruses.

Research trainees in Dr. McCormick’s lab learn by deconstructing viruses to figure out how they work, he said. Among their current projects is a new antiviral drug candidate they are developing against the family of corona viruses that caused COVID-19.

“This is an incredibly exciting time for us, because there are significant investments happening in pandemic preparedness and the biomanufacturing sector,” Dr. McCormick said. “This means more jobs for our young people and I know they are excited about being able to contribute to the economy in this way.

Learn more about future Breakthrough Breakfast events the Faculty of Medicine is planning by visiting our website.