In a time of despair for U.S. scientists, Gairdner Award winners shine brighter than usual

Science and Health

Since they were established in 1957, the Canada Gairdner International Awards have celebrated achievements in biomedical research, from the discovery of stem cells to the development of mRNA vaccines.Founded by James A. Gairdner, a Toronto financier and philanthropist, with added supported from the Canadian government starting in 2008, the awards, which are now valued at $250,000 each, are among the most prestigious that can be won by any scientist in the world in the fields of medicine and human biology.Each year, five names are added to the growing roster of laureates. A separate $100,000 prize for those who have improved global health and two for mid-career researchers who have done exceptional work within Canada completes the slate of eight recipients.The latest set of five Canada Gairdner International Award winners, announced on Friday, are all based in the United States.The sweep is a testament to the resources that the U.S. invests in biomedical research, accounting for nearly half of all the money spent in the field worldwide. Much of this is underwritten by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, including more than 100 projects currently led by Canadian investigators.It is no small irony that this year’s American Gairdner winners are being honoured just as medical researchers across the United States are in a state of collective despair.Funding cuts to the NIH and research universities ordered by the Trump administration have thrown the medical research world into turmoil by sidelining studies, upending clinical trials and threatening to pull the plug on an entire generation of scientists in training.“A catastrophe,” is how one of this year’s American Gairdner winners bluntly described the situation.Janet Rossant, the Gairdner Foundation’s president and scientific director, said that at a time when trust and support in science and scientists are under threat, the awards not only celebrate excellence in research but also its importance to the health and well-being of people everywhere.“We stand up for diverse voices at the table,” Dr. Rossant said. “We stand up to support the next generation of Canadian scientists who are going to make Canada a leader and trusted partner in research and innovation worldwide.”The duo that cracked the code on cystic fibrosis drugsMichael Welsh and Paul Negulescu, Canada Gairdner International AwardOpen this photo in gallery:Open this photo in gallery:Michael Welsh can still summon the multi-sensory memory of his first cystic fibrosis patient.He can hear her loud, violent coughs. He can see her neck muscles straining with every laboured breath. And he can smell the fruity odour of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacterium that commonly infects the lungs of CF sufferers. She was only 7 or 8, but – as with so many CF patients at the time – she was unlikely to survive her teen years.“As a physician, there are certain patients that are burned into your memory,” says Dr. Welsh, a professor of internal medicine with the University of Iowa. “My inability to do something that would truly impact the underlying problem was a terrible feeling.”This was 1973, when Dr. Welsh was still a medical student in Iowa and physicians were powerless to stop the progression of cystic fibrosis, a rare and lethal inherited disease. But today, if Dr. Welsh were to encounter that same patient – and determined her to have the most common type of CF – he could prescribe a drug that not only treats the root cause of her disease but unfurls the possibility of an entire future: High school. Adulthood. Parenthood. Maybe even old age.These drugs, known as CFTR modulators, have transformed cystic fibrosis from being a life-shortening diagnosis to a manageable chronic disease for patients with access to these therapies. And they exist because of groundbreaking research conducted by Dr. Welsh, which paved the way for pioneering drug development led by Paul Negulescu, a senior vice-president with Boston’s Vertex Pharmaceuticals.Cystic fibrosis, which today affects an estimated 160,000 people worldwide, occurs when there are mutations in a gene that encodes a protein called CFTR. This protein helps move chloride – a component of salt – across our cell membranes, a process that maintains the fluidity of mucus in our lungs and other organs. When CFTR malfunctions, it results in the tar-like mucus that builds up in CF patients’ airways, increasing their risk of infections, causing progressively worsening lung damage and eventually leading to an early death.Following the CFTR gene’s discovery in 1989, Dr. Welsh and his team set out to unlock its mysteries. What does CFTR do? How does it work? How do mutations corrupt its function? And, critically, can a faulty CFTR protein be fixed? Dr. Welsh’s studies suggested that the answer to that question was yes, thus providing a road map for developing targeted CF therapies.In the late 1990s, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation was searching for a company willing to tackle this difficult challenge and heard about a San Diego startup called Aurora Biosciences, co-founded by Roger Tsien, Dr. Negulescu’s undergraduate physiology professor.Aurora’s expertise was screening molecules at high speeds in search of potential drugs. “We knew the protein could be fixed,” said Dr. Negulescu, who was Aurora’s fifth hire in 1996. “And even though the odds were long, we were willing to try.”In 2001, Aurora was acquired by Vertex, which has screened millions of molecules to develop five CFTR modulators in the span of two decades. Trikafta, a triple-combination drug that got FDA approval in 2019, has been the biggest breakthrough, effective in 90 per cent of CF patients who have the most common gene mutation. Trikafta is now taken by more than 68,000 patients worldwide, representing more than two-thirds of eligible patients, according to a Vertex spokesperson. More work remains, including developing drugs for patients with the rarest mutations and making CFTR modulators accessible to all. (Its list price is more than $300,000, making it one of the world’s more expensive drugs).Today, the drug’s impact can be seen at the University of Iowa hospital where Dr. Welsh once treated patients. Its CF centre once had maybe a dozen CF patients at any given time, he said; “Now we have maybe one, sometimes none.”– Jennifer YangFrom a fruit fly’s wings, they learned how bodies are builtSpyros Artavanis-Tsakonas, Iva Greenwald and Gary Struhl, Canada Gairdner International AwardOpen this photo in gallery:Open this photo in gallery:Open this photo in gallery:The wingtips of a fruit fly are as round as a butter knife. But when a fruit fly carries a certain mutation, its wings form with irregular notches.That mutation, linked to a gene on the fly’s X-chromosome, was first noticed by geneticists more than a century ago. What no one realized then was this was a clue to one of the key mysteries of life: How do animals, including humans, develop from a single fertilized egg?The answer involves a molecular messaging system called Notch signalling, after the fly wings, which cells use to co-ordinate the building of a body.“If you have one cell that decides to become something and, as a consequence of that, the cell next door decides to become something else, these cells have to be talking to each other,” said Spyros Artavanis-Tsakonas, a professor emeritus of cell biology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, whose work was key to discovering how the system works.Born in Greece, Dr. Artavanis-Tsakonas studied chemistry as an undergraduate. But when the opportunity arose in 1972 to do a PhD in molecular biology at Cambridge University in England, he was hooked.Cambridge was then at the focal point of a scientific renaissance as biologists deployed new molecular tools to understand cell development and function. Surrounded by past and future Nobel Prize winners, Dr. Artavanis-Tsakonas said the experience was life-changing. “Even if you were a complete idiot, by osmosis you’d get something,” he said.His training provided the impetus to take on the Notch gene during post-doctoral stints in Europe and the United States. By the 1980s when he was an assistant professor at Yale University, he and his colleagues had successfully cloned and then sequenced the gene, setting the stage for its further investigation.A key insight from this work was that the gene carried instructions for making a protein that resides on the cell membrane. This was a sign that the protein was involved in exchanging information with other cells, a possibility that had also been discovered by Iva Greenwald.A native of Brooklyn, Dr. Greenwald earned her PhD at MIT where she, too, became interested in how genes orchestrate development. But rather than working with fruit flies she was drawn to a simpler organism – the roundworm – as a basis for studying cellular processes.This led her to a gene called lin-12 that performs the same function in roundworms as Notch does in fruit flies. While doing post-doctoral work at Cambridge she further discovered that some of its components were similar to those found in human cells. Here was an exciting hint that something more universal was at work.“Just knowing if I kept working I might discover something else new and unexpected was thrilling,” Dr. Greenwald said.Through the 1980s, Dr. Greenwald continued working on the idea that the lin-12 protein operated like a switch that could steer a cell’s fate based on the signal it received from a neighbouring cell. In this way, cells destined for different functions would know which path to take.By 1991, she was at Princeton University and had teamed up with Gary Struhl, a developmental biologist and fellow New Yorker whose academic journey had similarly included time at MIT and Cambridge before he became a professor at Columbia University.He was also her husband – Dr. Greenwald and Dr. Struhl had married only months before, but now they discovered they had a shared professional interest in establishing how the Notch/lin-12 system worked.Aided by methods that Dr. Struhl had previously developed to study other genetic pathways in fruit flies, their collaboration led to the discovery of an elegant molecular pathway that would prove to be common to animal cells.The pathway begins with the receptor that resides on the cell’s membrane. During communication, it can be latched onto and pulled by a counterpart structure on a neighbouring cell. This allows the receptor to be cut, triggering the release of an interior component that makes its way to the cell’s nucleus. There, it interacts with the cell’s DNA to promote particular genes, such as those that can determine the cell’s destiny.Variants in the human version of Notch genes have been linked to forms of cancer and neurodegenerative disease. Researchers have also imitated the mechanism to create a synthetic version of Notch signalling for new therapies and for engineering new tissues.Dr. Struhl said the applications opened up by the discovery underscore the values inherent in basic research, particularly involving organisms such as roundworms and fruit flies, which allow ideas about gene function to be tested.“For me, the award represents the recognition and justification of these values,” he said.– Ivan SemeniukFighting malnutrition and saving millions of lives with a revolutionary peanut pasteAndré Briend, John Dirks Canada Gairdner Global Health AwardOpen this photo in gallery:In the late 1990s, about 20 million children worldwide were suffering from severe malnutrition annually and more than half of them died. Standard treatments included administering IV fluids in hospital and feeding malnourished children powdered milk formulas mixed with water.But in developing countries where children were starving to death, health facilities and clean water were in short supply.Dr. André Briend, a pediatric nutritionist, was frustrated by the inability to get high nutrition food to children in a form that didn’t require clinical, sanitary conditions.Working with nutritional engineer Michel Lescanne, Dr. Briend tried making cookies, bars and other products, but they all failed.Then, one day, at his breakfast table, he mulled over a jar of Nutella – a product that requires no cooking and no liquid.The pair went on to invent Plumpy’Nut, a high-energy peanut paste containing sugar, vegetable oil and skimmed milk powder, and enriched with vitamins and minerals. Packaged in foil, it can easily be transported anywhere. Three sachets a day for six to eight weeks is all it takes to save a child’s life – and, in the past 25 years, the product has saved millions of lives.But it was a tough sell at first. “Most people refused to use the product. They were skeptical,” Dr. Briend said.But, studies were done in Chad and Senegal, followed by a high-profile study published in The Lancet.The ready-to-use therapeutic food invention is used to treat more than five million children a year in 50 countries.“It’s gratifying to see a child come back to life,” said Dr. Briend, a long-time researcher at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement in Marseilles.– André PicardQueen of pain: The nurse who helps children rest easierJennifer Stinson, Peter Gilgan Canada Gairdner Momentum AwardOpen this photo in gallery:As a nurse and clinician-scientist who “fell in love with pain” early in her career, Jennifer Stinson has devoted her life to better understanding pediatric pain and innovating digital interventions that are kid-friendly, evidence-based and scalable.This work has already “revolutionized pediatric pain management,” thanks to Dr. Stinson’s unique ability to conduct research that is as humane as it is scientifically rigorous, according to Bonnie Bassler, a member of the advisory committee for the Peter Gilgan Canada Gairdner Momentum Award. As a 2025 recipient of this award, Dr. Stinson becomes the first nurse to ever win a Gairdner prize.When she started nursing at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, Dr. Stinson saw first-hand the profound impact that pain can have on young patients, robbing them of their personalities and childhood. Painful procedures in early life can also set children up for a lifelong trajectory of being more sensitive to pain, which chronically afflicts one in five Canadian children.Yet, pediatric pain remains largely invisible. Its sufferers are often unable to articulate or communicate their pain, and pediatric pain has been historically overlooked by both researchers and health care providers.Dr. Stinson aims to change that. She involves patients and families at every step, from setting the research priorities to guiding study design. She uses technology from kids’ everyday lives – everything from mobile apps to robots and virtual reality – to create validated tools for helping kids manage pain. Just one example: an app shown to reduce pain and improve mood for sickle cell patients, which Dr. Stinson is now working to roll out in clinics across Canada.Dr. Stinson recognizes that lasting impact comes from training the next generation. At SickKids, where she is co-director of the Pain Centre, a program she oversees has now trained 400 pediatric pain researchers, making Canada a leader in the field. “No one discipline owns pain. Pain should be the responsibility of every single health care professional.”– Jennifer YangHis findings on ‘jumping genes’ were a leap forwardDaniel De Carvalho, Peter Gilgan Canada Gairdner Momentum AwardOpen this photo in gallery:DNA is often portrayed as a kind of central library where cells can access instructions on how to perform a host of biological functions.In reality, DNA is far more dynamic, full of “jumping genes” that move about in pursuit of their own selfish ends, like a library where the books can rearrange themselves and battle each other for shelf space.Under normal circumstances, cells work to keep a lid on such shenanigans, but that can change when a cell becomes cancerous and loses control of its own genome. At such times jumping genes are far less constrained, to the point that a cell can look like it is under attack by a virus trying to insert its own foreign DNA into the cell’s genetic mix.It is this situation that most intrigues Daniel De Carvalho, a senior scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and professor at the University of Toronto.When too many jumping genes are on the loose, he said, “you can activate a very strong antiviral response against the cancer cell, which we call ‘viral mimicry.‘”His research involves harnessing viral mimicry both as a means of treatment and as a form of early cancer detection.A native of Brazil, Dr. De Carvalho grew up in the capital city, Brasilia, where he attended high school and dreamed of being a professional soccer player. But he was also interested in science and was particularly fascinated when he read about Dolly the Sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell in 1996.His interest in biology led him to do a PhD in Sao Paulo followed by post-doctoral research at the University of Southern California. A job opening brought him to Toronto in 2012 and it proved a perfect fit.Since then, he has worked on clinical trials involving thousands of patients where viral mimicry has been used to make cancer cells more visible to the body’s immune system, and as a screening tool for genetic factors that may reveal where in the body a cancer cell is active well before any symptoms are apparent.“At first, the reward was the science itself. I was driven by my deep need to understand how things work,” he said. “But more recently, as these things move to the clinic and you start to see the impact on patients – that’s become the biggest motivation.”– Ivan Semeniuk

In a time of despair for U.S. scientists, Gairdner Award winners shine brighter than usual

Science and Health

Since they were established in 1957, the Canada Gairdner International Awards have celebrated achievements in biomedical research, from the discovery of stem cells to the development of mRNA vaccines.Founded by James A. Gairdner, a Toronto financier and philanthropist, with added supported from the Canadian government starting in 2008, the awards, which are now valued at $250,000 each, are among the most prestigious that can be won by any scientist in the world in the fields of medicine and human biology.Each year, five names are added to the growing roster of laureates. A separate $100,000 prize for those who have improved global health and two for mid-career researchers who have done exceptional work within Canada completes the slate of eight recipients.The latest set of five Canada Gairdner International Award winners, announced on Friday, are all based in the United States.The sweep is a testament to the resources that the U.S. invests in biomedical research, accounting for nearly half of all the money spent in the field worldwide. Much of this is underwritten by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, including more than 100 projects currently led by Canadian investigators.It is no small irony that this year’s American Gairdner winners are being honoured just as medical researchers across the United States are in a state of collective despair.Funding cuts to the NIH and research universities ordered by the Trump administration have thrown the medical research world into turmoil by sidelining studies, upending clinical trials and threatening to pull the plug on an entire generation of scientists in training.“A catastrophe,” is how one of this year’s American Gairdner winners bluntly described the situation.Janet Rossant, the Gairdner Foundation’s president and scientific director, said that at a time when trust and support in science and scientists are under threat, the awards not only celebrate excellence in research but also its importance to the health and well-being of people everywhere.“We stand up for diverse voices at the table,” Dr. Rossant said. “We stand up to support the next generation of Canadian scientists who are going to make Canada a leader and trusted partner in research and innovation worldwide.”The duo that cracked the code on cystic fibrosis drugsMichael Welsh and Paul Negulescu, Canada Gairdner International AwardOpen this photo in gallery:Open this photo in gallery:Michael Welsh can still summon the multi-sensory memory of his first cystic fibrosis patient.He can hear her loud, violent coughs. He can see her neck muscles straining with every laboured breath. And he can smell the fruity odour of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacterium that commonly infects the lungs of CF sufferers. She was only 7 or 8, but – as with so many CF patients at the time – she was unlikely to survive her teen years.“As a physician, there are certain patients that are burned into your memory,” says Dr. Welsh, a professor of internal medicine with the University of Iowa. “My inability to do something that would truly impact the underlying problem was a terrible feeling.”This was 1973, when Dr. Welsh was still a medical student in Iowa and physicians were powerless to stop the progression of cystic fibrosis, a rare and lethal inherited disease. But today, if Dr. Welsh were to encounter that same patient – and determined her to have the most common type of CF – he could prescribe a drug that not only treats the root cause of her disease but unfurls the possibility of an entire future: High school. Adulthood. Parenthood. Maybe even old age.These drugs, known as CFTR modulators, have transformed cystic fibrosis from being a life-shortening diagnosis to a manageable chronic disease for patients with access to these therapies. And they exist because of groundbreaking research conducted by Dr. Welsh, which paved the way for pioneering drug development led by Paul Negulescu, a senior vice-president with Boston’s Vertex Pharmaceuticals.Cystic fibrosis, which today affects an estimated 160,000 people worldwide, occurs when there are mutations in a gene that encodes a protein called CFTR. This protein helps move chloride – a component of salt – across our cell membranes, a process that maintains the fluidity of mucus in our lungs and other organs. When CFTR malfunctions, it results in the tar-like mucus that builds up in CF patients’ airways, increasing their risk of infections, causing progressively worsening lung damage and eventually leading to an early death.Following the CFTR gene’s discovery in 1989, Dr. Welsh and his team set out to unlock its mysteries. What does CFTR do? How does it work? How do mutations corrupt its function? And, critically, can a faulty CFTR protein be fixed? Dr. Welsh’s studies suggested that the answer to that question was yes, thus providing a road map for developing targeted CF therapies.In the late 1990s, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation was searching for a company willing to tackle this difficult challenge and heard about a San Diego startup called Aurora Biosciences, co-founded by Roger Tsien, Dr. Negulescu’s undergraduate physiology professor.Aurora’s expertise was screening molecules at high speeds in search of potential drugs. “We knew the protein could be fixed,” said Dr. Negulescu, who was Aurora’s fifth hire in 1996. “And even though the odds were long, we were willing to try.”In 2001, Aurora was acquired by Vertex, which has screened millions of molecules to develop five CFTR modulators in the span of two decades. Trikafta, a triple-combination drug that got FDA approval in 2019, has been the biggest breakthrough, effective in 90 per cent of CF patients who have the most common gene mutation. Trikafta is now taken by more than 68,000 patients worldwide, representing more than two-thirds of eligible patients, according to a Vertex spokesperson. More work remains, including developing drugs for patients with the rarest mutations and making CFTR modulators accessible to all. (Its list price is more than $300,000, making it one of the world’s more expensive drugs).Today, the drug’s impact can be seen at the University of Iowa hospital where Dr. Welsh once treated patients. Its CF centre once had maybe a dozen CF patients at any given time, he said; “Now we have maybe one, sometimes none.”– Jennifer YangFrom a fruit fly’s wings, they learned how bodies are builtSpyros Artavanis-Tsakonas, Iva Greenwald and Gary Struhl, Canada Gairdner International AwardOpen this photo in gallery:Open this photo in gallery:Open this photo in gallery:The wingtips of a fruit fly are as round as a butter knife. But when a fruit fly carries a certain mutation, its wings form with irregular notches.That mutation, linked to a gene on the fly’s X-chromosome, was first noticed by geneticists more than a century ago. What no one realized then was this was a clue to one of the key mysteries of life: How do animals, including humans, develop from a single fertilized egg?The answer involves a molecular messaging system called Notch signalling, after the fly wings, which cells use to co-ordinate the building of a body.“If you have one cell that decides to become something and, as a consequence of that, the cell next door decides to become something else, these cells have to be talking to each other,” said Spyros Artavanis-Tsakonas, a professor emeritus of cell biology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, whose work was key to discovering how the system works.Born in Greece, Dr. Artavanis-Tsakonas studied chemistry as an undergraduate. But when the opportunity arose in 1972 to do a PhD in molecular biology at Cambridge University in England, he was hooked.Cambridge was then at the focal point of a scientific renaissance as biologists deployed new molecular tools to understand cell development and function. Surrounded by past and future Nobel Prize winners, Dr. Artavanis-Tsakonas said the experience was life-changing. “Even if you were a complete idiot, by osmosis you’d get something,” he said.His training provided the impetus to take on the Notch gene during post-doctoral stints in Europe and the United States. By the 1980s when he was an assistant professor at Yale University, he and his colleagues had successfully cloned and then sequenced the gene, setting the stage for its further investigation.A key insight from this work was that the gene carried instructions for making a protein that resides on the cell membrane. This was a sign that the protein was involved in exchanging information with other cells, a possibility that had also been discovered by Iva Greenwald.A native of Brooklyn, Dr. Greenwald earned her PhD at MIT where she, too, became interested in how genes orchestrate development. But rather than working with fruit flies she was drawn to a simpler organism – the roundworm – as a basis for studying cellular processes.This led her to a gene called lin-12 that performs the same function in roundworms as Notch does in fruit flies. While doing post-doctoral work at Cambridge she further discovered that some of its components were similar to those found in human cells. Here was an exciting hint that something more universal was at work.“Just knowing if I kept working I might discover something else new and unexpected was thrilling,” Dr. Greenwald said.Through the 1980s, Dr. Greenwald continued working on the idea that the lin-12 protein operated like a switch that could steer a cell’s fate based on the signal it received from a neighbouring cell. In this way, cells destined for different functions would know which path to take.By 1991, she was at Princeton University and had teamed up with Gary Struhl, a developmental biologist and fellow New Yorker whose academic journey had similarly included time at MIT and Cambridge before he became a professor at Columbia University.He was also her husband – Dr. Greenwald and Dr. Struhl had married only months before, but now they discovered they had a shared professional interest in establishing how the Notch/lin-12 system worked.Aided by methods that Dr. Struhl had previously developed to study other genetic pathways in fruit flies, their collaboration led to the discovery of an elegant molecular pathway that would prove to be common to animal cells.The pathway begins with the receptor that resides on the cell’s membrane. During communication, it can be latched onto and pulled by a counterpart structure on a neighbouring cell. This allows the receptor to be cut, triggering the release of an interior component that makes its way to the cell’s nucleus. There, it interacts with the cell’s DNA to promote particular genes, such as those that can determine the cell’s destiny.Variants in the human version of Notch genes have been linked to forms of cancer and neurodegenerative disease. Researchers have also imitated the mechanism to create a synthetic version of Notch signalling for new therapies and for engineering new tissues.Dr. Struhl said the applications opened up by the discovery underscore the values inherent in basic research, particularly involving organisms such as roundworms and fruit flies, which allow ideas about gene function to be tested.“For me, the award represents the recognition and justification of these values,” he said.– Ivan SemeniukFighting malnutrition and saving millions of lives with a revolutionary peanut pasteAndré Briend, John Dirks Canada Gairdner Global Health AwardOpen this photo in gallery:In the late 1990s, about 20 million children worldwide were suffering from severe malnutrition annually and more than half of them died. Standard treatments included administering IV fluids in hospital and feeding malnourished children powdered milk formulas mixed with water.But in developing countries where children were starving to death, health facilities and clean water were in short supply.Dr. André Briend, a pediatric nutritionist, was frustrated by the inability to get high nutrition food to children in a form that didn’t require clinical, sanitary conditions.Working with nutritional engineer Michel Lescanne, Dr. Briend tried making cookies, bars and other products, but they all failed.Then, one day, at his breakfast table, he mulled over a jar of Nutella – a product that requires no cooking and no liquid.The pair went on to invent Plumpy’Nut, a high-energy peanut paste containing sugar, vegetable oil and skimmed milk powder, and enriched with vitamins and minerals. Packaged in foil, it can easily be transported anywhere. Three sachets a day for six to eight weeks is all it takes to save a child’s life – and, in the past 25 years, the product has saved millions of lives.But it was a tough sell at first. “Most people refused to use the product. They were skeptical,” Dr. Briend said.But, studies were done in Chad and Senegal, followed by a high-profile study published in The Lancet.The ready-to-use therapeutic food invention is used to treat more than five million children a year in 50 countries.“It’s gratifying to see a child come back to life,” said Dr. Briend, a long-time researcher at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement in Marseilles.– André PicardQueen of pain: The nurse who helps children rest easierJennifer Stinson, Peter Gilgan Canada Gairdner Momentum AwardOpen this photo in gallery:As a nurse and clinician-scientist who “fell in love with pain” early in her career, Jennifer Stinson has devoted her life to better understanding pediatric pain and innovating digital interventions that are kid-friendly, evidence-based and scalable.This work has already “revolutionized pediatric pain management,” thanks to Dr. Stinson’s unique ability to conduct research that is as humane as it is scientifically rigorous, according to Bonnie Bassler, a member of the advisory committee for the Peter Gilgan Canada Gairdner Momentum Award. As a 2025 recipient of this award, Dr. Stinson becomes the first nurse to ever win a Gairdner prize.When she started nursing at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, Dr. Stinson saw first-hand the profound impact that pain can have on young patients, robbing them of their personalities and childhood. Painful procedures in early life can also set children up for a lifelong trajectory of being more sensitive to pain, which chronically afflicts one in five Canadian children.Yet, pediatric pain remains largely invisible. Its sufferers are often unable to articulate or communicate their pain, and pediatric pain has been historically overlooked by both researchers and health care providers.Dr. Stinson aims to change that. She involves patients and families at every step, from setting the research priorities to guiding study design. She uses technology from kids’ everyday lives – everything from mobile apps to robots and virtual reality – to create validated tools for helping kids manage pain. Just one example: an app shown to reduce pain and improve mood for sickle cell patients, which Dr. Stinson is now working to roll out in clinics across Canada.Dr. Stinson recognizes that lasting impact comes from training the next generation. At SickKids, where she is co-director of the Pain Centre, a program she oversees has now trained 400 pediatric pain researchers, making Canada a leader in the field. “No one discipline owns pain. Pain should be the responsibility of every single health care professional.”– Jennifer YangHis findings on ‘jumping genes’ were a leap forwardDaniel De Carvalho, Peter Gilgan Canada Gairdner Momentum AwardOpen this photo in gallery:DNA is often portrayed as a kind of central library where cells can access instructions on how to perform a host of biological functions.In reality, DNA is far more dynamic, full of “jumping genes” that move about in pursuit of their own selfish ends, like a library where the books can rearrange themselves and battle each other for shelf space.Under normal circumstances, cells work to keep a lid on such shenanigans, but that can change when a cell becomes cancerous and loses control of its own genome. At such times jumping genes are far less constrained, to the point that a cell can look like it is under attack by a virus trying to insert its own foreign DNA into the cell’s genetic mix.It is this situation that most intrigues Daniel De Carvalho, a senior scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and professor at the University of Toronto.When too many jumping genes are on the loose, he said, “you can activate a very strong antiviral response against the cancer cell, which we call ‘viral mimicry.‘”His research involves harnessing viral mimicry both as a means of treatment and as a form of early cancer detection.A native of Brazil, Dr. De Carvalho grew up in the capital city, Brasilia, where he attended high school and dreamed of being a professional soccer player. But he was also interested in science and was particularly fascinated when he read about Dolly the Sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell in 1996.His interest in biology led him to do a PhD in Sao Paulo followed by post-doctoral research at the University of Southern California. A job opening brought him to Toronto in 2012 and it proved a perfect fit.Since then, he has worked on clinical trials involving thousands of patients where viral mimicry has been used to make cancer cells more visible to the body’s immune system, and as a screening tool for genetic factors that may reveal where in the body a cancer cell is active well before any symptoms are apparent.“At first, the reward was the science itself. I was driven by my deep need to understand how things work,” he said. “But more recently, as these things move to the clinic and you start to see the impact on patients – that’s become the biggest motivation.”– Ivan Semeniuk

Survey Shows Strong Support for 20% Small Business Deduction

Business News

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new survey released by the National Federation of Independent Business, Ohio’s leading small business advocacy organization, shows broad, bipartisan support for America’s small businesses, along with overwhelming support for keeping the 20% Small Business Tax Deduction in the tax code.

According to the survey, more than 8 in 10 Americans feel it is important for the federal government to support small businesses, including strong majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents. That support translates to strong agreement (93%) that making the 20% Small Business Tax Deduction permanent should be a top priority for Congress, with nearly all Americans (95%) expressing some concern about the impact an expiration of the deduction would have.

“This research highlights the value of the 20% Small Business Deduction to small business owners and everyday Americans alike,” said Chris Ferruso, NFIB Ohio state director. “The 20% Small Business Deduction helps boost the small business economy, and owners are concerned about the devastating consequences if Congress fails to act. NFIB and Ohio small business owners strongly urge Congress to make the deduction permanent and deliver the certainty that small businesses need to continue to grow, hire and give back to their communities.”

Key findings from the nationwide poll include:

83% of respondents said it is important for the federal government to support small businesses; 45% believe supporting small businesses is extremely important.

More than two-thirds of Republicans (83%), Democrats (86%) and independents (79%) said federal support for small businesses is important.

Nearly 8 in 10 (79%) want to see more support for small businesses.

62% of respondents want to keep the Small Business Tax Deduction in the tax code, while only 1 in 5 supports letting it expire.

77% agree that the Small Business Tax Deduction helps level the playing field for small businesses by keeping their tax rates closer to those of larger corporations. 

91% agree that small businesses rely on the Small Business Tax Deduction.

79% believe the Small Business Tax Deduction has a positive impact on the economy overall.

75% believe the Small Business Tax Deduction has a positive impact on the local economy where they live.

51% are extremely or very concerned about the impact on the economy if the Small Business Tax Deduction expires. Nearly all Americans (95%) express some concern about the impact an expiration of the deduction would have.

The 20% Small Business Deduction was established under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act to level the playing field between small businesses and their large, corporate competitors. However, the deduction is set to expire at the end of 2025. Without Congressional action, 9 out of 10 small businesses will be hit with a massive tax hike.

Multimillionaire Ryan Thomas makes huge holiday blunder as he books himself into cheap hostel with strangers

Arts & Culture, Books

RYAN Thomas shared a hilarious hotel booking blunder with fans last night leaving them in hysterics.The Dancing On Ice winner and former Coronation Street star, 40, has built up an estimated £2.5m fortune since filing for bankruptcy in 2013.4Ryan Thomas could only laugh after his hotel booking blunderCredit: Instagram4He unwittingly checked into a basic hostelAnd just last week he dressed to the nines with partner Lucy Mecklenburgh to watch pal Richard Fleeshman perform in the five-star Savoy in London.But last night he was forced to slum it in a cheap German hostel after unintentionally booking himself into a basic hostel with strangers.The reality TV star has travelled to Germany to take part in a Hyrox event; a timed fitness competition made up of eight kilometres of running and eight functional workout stations.Recording himself from a bunk bed, Ryan explained how he’d settled for a cheap and cheerful option after finding other hotels were fully booked.READ MORE ON RYAN THOMASHowever, he didn’t realise he was going to be in a multi-occupancy room.He was still alone at 9.30pm and grew increasingly concerned who was going to turn up given reception confirmed the room would have three guests.He said: “It’s the uncertainty of who is going to come into this room tonight.”Who’s coming in this room? Are they gonna wake me up?”He then revealed he’d left his wallet at home meaning he couldn’t pay the four euros in cash needed to get a towel.”I’m going to bed with no shower and I might not even sleep tonight,” he said. “And I’m doing Hyrox tomorrow night [laughs].”First look at Ryan and Adam Thomas’s huge new ITV gameshow 99 To Beat with tears and tantrums as contestants battle for £25k prizePartner Lucy wrote in the comments: “This is why I organise and book all our holiday.”Ryan’s brother Adam had little sympathy, commenting: “Hahahahahahaha.”Some followers asked if he’d tried to book out the other beds too, while others predicted his brothers were the late arrivals.Since his financial struggles, which stemmed from an unpaid £40,000 tax bill, Ryan has gone on to amass a fortune through TV work and investments.He now fronts the gameshow 99 To Beat with brother Adam, and has previously taken part in Celebrity Big Brother and appeared in ITV’s Mancs In Mumbai where he and his brothers explored their Indian heritage.4Ryan is usually used to the finer things in lifeCredit: Getty4Ryan’s partner Lucy Mecklenburgh said his error is why she books all of their tripsCredit: Instagram

KL Wellness City promotes Malaysia’s medical tourism at Top Wellness Global Summit MoU signing in China

Travel

KL WELLNESS CITY (KLWC) has recently featured Malaysia’s medical tourism sector in Guangzhou, China and is set to present the country’s strengths in the sector in Bangkok, Thailand, later this year. On Tuesday (April 8), KL Wellness City highlighted the country’s medical tourism at the Press Conference and Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signing ceremony in Guangzhou, China, hosted by CISW Holding Group. The event saw the participation of esteemed partners from Thailand, China, Singapore, and Malaysia, reinforcing multilateral efforts to strengthen cross-border healthcare and investment collaboration. The Guangzhou event marks the beginning of a strategic partnership for three major international events scheduled to take place in Bangkok, Thailand, from October 21 to 22, 2025. Bringing together stakeholders from the healthcare, business, and investment sectors, the collaboration aims to expand regional ties and enhance knowledge exchange in wellness and medical tourism. Executive Director of KL Wellness City, Datuk Seri Dr Vincent Tiew delivered a keynote address at the event, playing up Malaysia’s emergence as a global healthcare destination. He will also join expert panel discussions at the Top Global Wellness Summit in Bangkok and present further insights into the nation’s medical tourism advancements. KL Wellness City and the KL International Hospital (KLIH) will be showcased at booth No. 4 during the summit. The event will act as a powerful platform for industry leaders from seven countries to explore key trends in healthcare, medical tourism, and holistic wellness. Malaysia is internationally recognised for its state-of-the-art medical infrastructure, affordable healthcare services, and a highly skilled pool of medical professionals, making it a preferred destination for patients seeking top-tier treatments and holistic wellness experiences. In his keynote, Tiew will underscore Malaysia’s competitive edge in medical tourism, KL Wellness City’s vision as a fully integrated healthcare hub and holistic wellness initiatives. “Malaysia is at the forefront of medical tourism, offering an unparalleled combination of quality healthcare, affordability, and exceptional patient care. KL Wellness City is pioneering a first-of-its-kind ecosystem that integrates healthcare, medical services, wellness, and hospitality, creating an unparalleled experience for international medical travellers,” he said. With its Smart Hospital, cutting-edge technology, and comprehensive wellness initiatives, KL Wellness City is redefining medical tourism in Malaysia – placing strong emphasis on patient-centred care aligning with evolving global healthcare trends. KL Wellness City’s participation reflects Malaysia’s commitment to reinforcing its leadership in the medical tourism sector and fostering meaningful, long-term partnerships with international stakeholders.

Bubble curtain used for first time in UK as RWE deploys noise abatement tech at Sofia offshore wind farm

Technology

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RWE, in collaboration with Hydrotechnik Offshore, a Germany-based bubble curtain developer, has deployed the underwater noise abatement technology during monopile installation at the Sofia offshore wind farm, marking the first time the technology has been used in the UK.

Photo: RWE

Currently under construction on Dogger Bank, 195 kilometers off the UK coast, the 1.4 GW Sofia project is situated within the Southern North Sea Special Area of Conservation (SAC), a protected zone for harbor porpoises where noise disturbance regulations are strictly monitored, RWE says.

The bubble curtain reduces the propagation of underwater noise during piling operations and mitigates disturbances to marine species, such as harbor porpoises, dolphins, and whales, which rely on ultrasound for orientation.

The technology has already been used on several offshore wind projects, including Vattenfall’s DanTysk wind farm offshore Germany back in 2013.

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The bubble curtain system was also deployed at EnBW’s He Dreiht offshore wind farm in Germany last year, as well as the Vineyard Wind 1 project in the United States.

The noise abatement system involves a perforated hose placed on the seabed around the installation site to form a 180-meter-wide ring. Compressed air is then pumped through the hose, generating a continuous stream of bubbles that rise to the surface. This bubble barrier effectively breaks up and slows down the sound waves, significantly reducing noise levels during piling operations, RWE explains.

The monopile foundations at the Sofia project site are being installed by Van Oord using its jack-up vessel Aeolus.

In March, more than 60 out of the 100 wind turbine foundations were in place, with the first wind turbine also installed by Cadeler’s new vessel Wind Peak.

The 1.4 GW offshore wind farm is expected to be commissioned in 2026, when it will be capable of generating enough electricity to power the equivalent of 1.2 million UK homes.

Film Fest starts soon

Arts & Culture, Film & TV

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Sabbath Queen is a film about the life of Amichai Lau-Lavie, part of a rabbinic dynasty going back 38 generations. (still from film)
The 36th annual Vancouver Jewish Film Festival runs April 24 to May 4, beginning with opening night film Midas Man, which “offers Beatles fans a fresh look at the pivotal role Brian Epstein played in the band’s meteoric rise.” An enormous range of dramatic and documentary films, features and shorts, fill out the festival’s run, and the Independent reviews some of them here.
Tradition!
Hester Street, based on Abraham Cahan’s 1896 Lower Eastside immigrant novel Yekl, was released in 1975, about the same time as Fiddler on the Roof. The movie approaches some of the same topics of assimilation and tradition, without the song and dance.
Yankl (now Americanized Jake, played by Steven Keats) transforms from a yeshivah bocher to a shmatte sweatshop worker. Along comes Gitl, the wife who had waited behind in Russia, and young son Yossele who, payos cut off, becomes Joey.
The 50th anniversary of the film’s release reminds us that the 1970s were a time of nostalgia and of Jewish narratives that both idealized and lamented the American dream. In Hester Street, which is in black-and-white for mood, the boarder Bernstein (Mel Howard) represents tradition and continuity, contrasting with Jake in the fight of money versus learning, of getting ahead versus getting an education. Bernstein’s presence in the home of the primary couple puts Gitl in a predictable three-cornered bind both romantic and cultural.
Hester Street, which is filmed in black-and-white for mood, confronts the themes of tradition and assimilation. (still from film)
Younger viewers might take some time to recognize Gitl (Carol Kane) as the kooky landlady from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Meanwhile, the tough-talking landlady in Hester Street is recognizable as Doris Roberts, who contemporary viewers will recognize as the buttinsky mother-in-law from Everybody Loves Raymond.
There are subversive components of the film, including the role of divorce in perpetuating traditional values. Subversion twists again and indeed Gitl assimilates in her particular ways. As the last line in the film declares ambivalently, “We mustn’t be too quick to say this or that.”
Director Joan Micklin Silver was a pioneering woman in male-dominated 1970s Hollywood. 
Kosher queen
Tradition, continuity and modern times are absolutely the themes of Sabbath Queen, a film by Sandi DuBowski about the life of Amichai Lau-Lavie.
The scion of a rabbinic dynasty going back 38 generations, Amichai is the son of politician, ambassador (“and we suspect a spy”) Naphtali Lau-Lavie and nephew of Israel Meir Lau, former chief rabbi of Israel. Filmed over 21 years, the documentary follows Amichai as he is ordained as a rabbi, via the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary. But choosing the Conservative movement over orthodoxy is the least of Amichai’s rifts with his traditional family.
In 1993, Amichai was outed as a gay man in a news report and, it seems, he never looked back. After fleeing to New York a couple of years later and getting involved with the Radical Faeries, a queer, shamanistic spirituality group, “one vodka too many” leads to his alter ego emerging “out of my head like Athena.” 
The drag queen Hadassah Gross – a Hungarian sex advisor, kabbalist, matchmaker and widow of six rabbis – was born. Amichai describes his drag persona as “something between channeling and performing” and it is all about exploring the intersections of feminine and masculine. (“What the goyim call the yingele and the yangele,” says Hadassah.)
“Artists are the new rabbis,” he declares, but eventually seems to decide that being an artist is not enough and he seeks his rabbinical smicha, in large part, it seems, to combat his brother and the larger establishment on Orthodox dogma.
He becomes the spiritual leader of a decidedly unorthodox congregation called Lab/Shul. And, when his officiating of interfaith partnerships clashes with the Conservative movement, the rabbi faces the consequences.
Amichai’s brother, father and mother have their reservations, to put it mildly, about Amichai’s activities.
“We’re pushing a lot of boundaries here,” he acknowledges. Or, as his Orthodox rabbi brother puts it, not entirely sympathetically, “He’s playing with Judaism.” 
One feels invasive as the camera goes close up on Amichai at his father’s funeral and that sense of voyeurism repeats throughout the film, as does the feeling that the documentary’s subject is something of an emotional exhibitionist.
The relationship between Amichai and his immediate family represents the larger cultural dissonance between queer and other nonconforming Jews and the orthodoxy of the tradition, though there is an astonishing, uplifting conclusion to some of these challenges by the film’s ending.
A family affair
I first saw A Real Pain on a flight home from Israel last month. Selecting a Hollywood treatment of two cousins doing a Holocaust road trip to their grandmother’s hometown in Poland, I girded myself for cringe-inducing, inappropriate or otherwise disappointing fare. My expectations were pleasantly upended. This is a profound, beautifully presented film that hits the right notes in so many ways.
I am not the only one impressed. Unbeknownst to me when I chose it, the script and the acting were already grabbing accolades worldwide. Costars Jesse Eisenberg (who won the BAFTA Award for best original screenplay) and Kieran Culkin (who won both an Oscar and a Golden Globe for best supporting actor) deliver moving and multidimensional characters. 
David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Culkin) are the proverbial odd couple but what I had somehow anticipated to be slapstick comedy turned out to be deeply touching. As we find out more about Benji’s story, his erratic behaviour makes more sense.
Moments that could come off as didactic – almost documentary-like scenes at the Polin Museum and the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, among others – somehow work even when you think they shouldn’t. The British tour guide James (Will Sharpe) is repeatedly challenged by Benji and acknowledges his own shortcomings as a non-Jewish facilitator, inviting viewers to ponder insider/outsider roles in the immediate and larger story.
If you ever wondered what corner Baby from Dirty Dancing ended up in, here she is – Jennifer Grey – playing a supporting role as one of the members of the cousins’ small tour group.
Spousal secrets
It is hard to write about Pink Lady without giving too much away. A seemingly ordinary religious Jerusalem couple with three happy kids and an involved extended family are upended when the husband is subjected to violence and blackmail. 
Director Nir Bergman’s Hebrew-language feature film sees Lazer (Uri Blufarb) and Bati (Nur Fibak) pondering the most existential questions of how God challenges even his most dedicated adherents. A deeply serious film with both laugh-out-loud incongruities and eye-covering discomfiture, Pink Lady is a slice-of-life with deep theological questions.
Oct. 7 revisited
Of Dogs and Men, which deals directly with the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, is a blend of fiction and documentary. (still from film)
At least two films in the festival deal directly with the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023.  
Of Dogs and Men is a blend of fiction and documentary. Director Dani Rosenberg’s film follows 16-year-old Dar (Ori Avinoam, also cowriter) as she sneaks back into Nir Oz, her vacated kibbutz, in search of her missing dog Shula. 
While the quest for the dog may be a stand-in for the larger search 
Israelis have undertaken as individuals and collectively to discover the fate of missing people – Dar’s mother’s fate remains unknown – it is hard not to wonder if the choice to centre a (missing) dog in the story is not meant to invite dissonance among overseas viewers. Given the indifference and even celebration with which some people worldwide have responded to the Oct. 7 attacks, is the tragedy of a lost dog a statement on the qualitative value the world places on Jewish life?
Dar tags along with a woman who rescues animals in the abandoned and war-torn areas.
“Aren’t you afraid of dealing with those dogs?” she asks the woman.
“Look what human beings did. So, I should be afraid of dogs?” the woman responds. “There’s no creature more awful, crueler than human beings and I still live among you.”
Through the imagery of destruction and the litany of names of victims, the film breaks down distinctions between Israeli and Palestinian victims.
The documentary 6:30 provides a harrowing, minute-by-minute narrative of Oct. 7 events from different locations and perspectives. The interviews with survivors just a week after the attacks show raw emotion.
Some of the Nova festival-goers thought they were hallucinating as the hellish day unfolded. Several people, including first responders, speak of detachment, of a disconnect between what they were seeing and what they could believe. In retrospect, one survivor wonders if his liberation is real or if he died and that is what he is now experiencing. Others talk of the emotional burdens they will carry forever.
Linor Attias, a United Hatzalah volunteer who arrived at Kibbutz Be’eri in a mass casualty event vehicle, notes with pride that Arabs and Jews were united among the rescue workers trying to save the lives of victims. She loaded people into ambulances, where they released piercing shrieks of agony, having held them in for hours of silence in order to save their lives.
“That howl of pain cuts through the soul,” she says.
The most chilling thing about the film is realizing, amid all these horror stories, that these are the testimonies of the lucky ones.
Full details and tickets are available at vjff.org. 

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Which Canadian stock is still going strong as markets slump? Take our business and investing news quiz

Business News

Save for laterWelcome to The Globe and Mail’s business and investing news quiz. Join us each week to test your knowledge of the stories making headlines. Our business reporters come up with the questions, and you can show us what you know.This week: Stock markets are down, then up, then down again, while tariffs on China are only seeming to rise. But in the middle of it all, one Canadian stock is still going strong. Which one was it? Take our quiz and find out.