Exchange Magazine for Business/Economic Development/Entrepreneurs
March 3, 2011
http://www.exchangemagazine.com/morningpost/2011/week9/Thursday/030304.htm
Ottawa – Nikolai Chepelev, a PhD biology student at Carleton University, will be leaving Saturday to work with some of the top world experts on aging. He will join scientists at the University of Southern California Davis School of Gerontology for a month, thanks to a $2,500 research fellowship awarded to him by the Society for Free Radical Biology and Medicine.
“Carleton really helped me to land this opportunity,” says Chepelev. “I am very grateful to the university and my supervisor Bill Willmore for his support, encouragement and training.”
For the last four years, Chepelev has been working in Willmore’s Lab at Carleton, looking at how a protein called Nrf1, a potentially vital player in the aging process, human health and antioxidant defence against disease is regulated in human cells.
Researchers have made breakthroughs concerning a related protein, Nrf2, and its role regarding asthma and acute lung injury disease. However, the involvement of Nrf1 with respect to diseases and the aging process has not yet been discovered.
“No one knows why proteins like Nrf1 fail to function properly as we age or get sick,” says Chepelev. “If we did figure this out, it would be a huge scientific discovery.”
“Nikolai’s work could lead to breakthroughs in a healthier aging process and find solutions to real-world problems associated with multiple diseases, including cancer chemoprevention and therapeutics against chronic cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases,” points out Willmore, an associate professor in the Institute of Biochemistry and the Departments of Biology and Chemistry.
Chepelev joined the Willmore lab as an undergraduate student. His BSc honours thesis work was published in a peer-reviewed journal − the Journal of Enzyme Inhibition and Medicinal Chemistry – a rare achievement for an undergraduate researcher. Chepelev and Willmore have recently been published in the prestigious journal Free Radical Biology and Medicine.
The doctoral student won a Young Investigator Award for his work on Nrf1 at the 16th annual meeting of the SFRBM in San Francisco in 2009 and a travel award for his presentation at the sixth Canadian Oxidative Stress Consortium in Manitoba earlier that year.
Researchers in the Willmore lab are investigating the molecular aspects of free radicals and aging in individuals, as well as oxygen deprivation (hypoxia). This research leads to insights on how the heart and brain respond to cardiac arrest and stroke. With many collaborators, both at Carleton and at Health Canada, this research will advance our understanding of how tissues and organs adapt to changes in oxygen availability at the cellular level.