Jenny Bruin, a Carleton biology professor, just received $750,000 from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) to support her ongoing research of diabetes and its possible link to pollutants in the environment.
“I’d like to look more broadly at chemicals that we know are being released into our environment to see which of these chemicals are influencing our beta cells,” Bruin said. “Because if you have beta cells that aren’t making enough insulin, then that is going to drive us towards becoming diabetic.”
Rafik Goubran, Carleton’s vice-president (research), said in a press release that this funding is a good step towards looking into factors that impact this serious health issue, and contribute towards policy development related to it.
“This funding will enable Bruin’s team to carry out thorough studies,” Goubran said.
According to a Statistics Canada report, about 2.1 million Canadians (seven per cent of the total population) over the age of 12 had diabetes in 2016. That number is projected to go up to nearly 11 per cent by 2020.
The CIHR runs competitions for researching professors twice a year.
“The success rates [of winning these competitions] are really low so you have to be very convincing,” Bruin said. “Part of it is about the time of what you’re doing, if there’s a really important need for the research, but also if it’s creative and innovative.”
“There [are] a few people looking at pollutants in diabetes and trying to understand that connection. Not very many people are looking at pollutants and the cells that secrete insulin in the pancreas,” she added.
Research in Bruin’s lab has already begun, with some students looking at pollutants in chemicals such as flame retardants that lead to diabetes.
For Sarah Craft, a second-year psychology student at Wilfrid Laurier University, diabetes is familial concern. Craft’s grandmother and two siblings have type one diabetes.
“Diabetes is one of those illnesses that people blame you for,” Craft said. “There’s a lot of stigma with diet and lifestyle around diabetes and I’ve felt that all my life, especially being a ‘not-skinny’ little girl with diabetes.”
Craft said she is hopeful for new research to reveal causes of diabetes because “it will help people understand a disease that is affecting so many Canadians.”
Bruin said she is hopeful that her research will influence government policies on new chemicals in the markets.
“What I’d like to able to do is test chemicals that are just coming out on the market that we don’t know anything about at all and at least look at them from the perspective of diabetes,” she said. “If we can start developing a system to screen new chemicals that we know very little about then we could potentially identify chemicals that are red flags for diabetes risk.”
Bruin’s research will be conducted at Carleton, in her lab in the Nesbitt Building. Her team has been allotted five years to use the grant they received, and will produce annual scientific papers based on their research.
Photo by Jordan Haworth
