Here are some important dates to remember if you’re thinking of competing in the 2012 SBCC:

Proposal Deadline: Monday, November 14, 2011
Regional Competition: Monday, April 16, 2012
Awards: Thursday, April 19, 2012

To learn more about how to write a proposal, please click here.

When you’re ready to make your submission, please click here.

View the 2011 competition video
View the 2010 competition video

For more information, please contact Rosine Hage-Moussa, Regional Coordinator, BC Region at rhage@lifesciencesbc.ca.

Women who drink alcohol while pregnant put their babies at risk of a developmental disability called Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Symptoms can include poor growth, muscle tone and coordination, delayed development, and problems with thinking, speech, movement, and age-appropriate social skills. It is the leading known cause of developmental disability in Canada, according to Health Canada.

Now a ground-breaking study by 18-year-old Coquitlam BC student Vincent Ye sheds new light on the problem by documenting that developing brain cells actually shrink after exposure to alcohol.

Using advanced-imaging technology at the University of British Columbia’s Brain Research Centre, Vincent was able to take 3D images of a living tadpole’s growing brain cells, then compare normal growth with brain cells exposed to alcohol.

His work showed that alcohol exposure shrinks brain cell length. The normal tadpole brain neuron is 100 microns in length – roughly equal to a hair’s width. Vincent found that the neurons exposed to alcohol were 30 microns shorter.

Vincent is a Grade 12 student at Dr. Charles Best Secondary School.

“It’s a powerful study,” says mentor Dr. Kurt Haas. “Vincent demonstrates that alcohol exposure has a direct impact on developing brain cells.”

Not much is known about how alcohol alters brain cell development but Dr Haas’ lab has unique capabilities of doing 3-D imaging of living brain tissues. Images were taken every five minutes to examine the changes in the growth of neurons in tadpoles.

That data then had to be painstakingly analysed and measurements made on the scale of microns.

Vincent admits this started as a “grandiose project involving brain research and seemed terribly daunting.” But beginning work on the project last October he learned that “with hard work and dedication, anything is possible.”

“It was very challenging project,” says Dr Haas. “Vincent learned quickly and became an active contributor. We invited him back this summer to continue working on this.”

Vincent says the sanofi-aventis Biotalent Challenge strengthened his ambition of entering the neuroscience program at McGill University.

Ground-breaking research by a 17-year-old Coquitlam student who found a way to observe the effects of ethanol on early brain development in an intact and awake brain has earned him the top prize in the 2011 British Columbia sanofi-aventis BioTalent Challenge (SABC).

Grade 12 student Vincent Ye from Dr. Charles Best Secondary School whose research provided rare insight into the progression of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and a model that can be used in the future to further study how the brain is affected by ethanol exposure, won the top $3,000 regional prize. He will now compete for British Columbia at the national SABC competition.

SABC is a biotechnology competition for high school students held nation-wide, and coordinated in BC by LifeSciences British Columbia (LSBC) with financial support from Sanofi Pasteur, BioTalent Canada, and the Province of British Columbia’s Year of Science initiative. Under the program, students must come up with a research project of their own design and work with a mentor in their community who provides expert advice and access to a real academic or industry lab.

Don Enns, President of LifeSciences British Columbia commented, “We are proud to be the lead organizer of SABC in BC, and a strong supporter of efforts such as this to encourage more students to consider scientific careers. The students in this competition represent some of the brightest young scientists in Canada, and I congratulate them all on their outstanding achievements.”

Encouraged by his science teacher, Wooje Choi and under the guidance of his mentor Dr. Kurt Haas at the University of British Columbia, Vincent Ye had strong support for his project, and spent much of the summer in the lab doing his research. He commented, “The 2011 sanofi-aventis BioTalent Challenge was an unparalleled experience that gave me a hands-on glimpse of what life is like in the real world of biotechnology. Having the chance to work under the mentorship of Dr. Kurt Haas paved an unprecedented foundation of real science beyond just textbooks.”
Vincent added, “The competition allowed me to present my project to an esteemed panel of judges and outstanding peers. I will certainly be drawing many aspects from this experience as I move forward with my future endeavors.”

Additional British Columbia results from the 2011 SABC were:

2nd place ($2,500): Kevin Oh, Meadowridge School, Maple Ridge for a project that successfully isolated a discriminate phenotype between HIV- and HIV+

3rd place ($2,000): Zi Wei Li, Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School, Vancouver for a discovery that can reduce the aggregation of a specific protein in diabetics.

4th place tie ($1,500): Yukai Hong, Lord Byng Secondary School, Richmond, for a project that provides further insights into why patients with Down’s syndrome develop Alzheimer’s disease….

and Carol Dou and Coco Ooi, Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School, Vancouver, for a project that inhibits the proliferation of cancer cells while also inducing cancer cell death.

All 14 regional winners will now present their projects for judging by a panel of experts at the National Research Council in Ottawa, Monday, May 9th.

At 1 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, May 10, Canada’s top student projects in biotechnology will be announced at National Research Council headquarters, 100 Sussex Drive, Ottawa. Media are invited to hear the announcement live via teleconference: dial 1-303-664-6043, conference ID 8309014.

For more information:
Rosine Hage-Moussa
Marketing and Outreach Manager
LifeSciences British Columbia
Direct: 604-602-5228
Email: rhage@lifesciencesbc.ca

LifeSciences British Columbia is proud to be the lead organizer for the sanofi-aventis BioTalent Challenge (SABC) in BC. This is a high-school competition held nationwide that brings together creative and curious young people interested in solving a problem using biotechnology.

Congratulations to the winners of the 2011 regional competition!

Click here to learn more about the 2011 participants and competition.

For more information, please contact:
Rosine Hage-Moussa, Regional Coordinator
604-602-5228
rhage@lifesciencesbc.ca

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LifeSciences British Columbia is proud to be the lead organizer for the sanofi-aventis Biotalent Challenge (SABC) in BC.

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For more information on the sanofi-aventis BioTalent Challenge in British Columbia, please contact:

Rosine Hage-Moussa, Manager, Marketing & Outreach
Email: rhagemoussa@lifesciencesbc.ca
Life Sciences British Columbia
Suite 900 – 1188 West Georgia Street
Vancouver, British Columbia,V6E 4A2
Tel: (604) 602-5228
Fax: (604) 669-9912

With just under 17,500 residents, Fort St. John in northeast British Columbia has the distinction of being the second-largest city on the Alaska Highway after Whitehorse.

This year it also has the distinction of being the home of Taneille Johnson, whose research into the causes of an early-onset aging disorder called Dyskeratosis Congenita (DC) earned her the right the represent her province in the SABC finals.

Symptoms of the disease can include premature graying, degeneration of nails, lesions, anemia, testicular atrophy and predisposition to cancer. The lives of patients with more serious forms of the disease are often cut short.

Working with Dr. Tara Beattie at the University of Calgary (Fort St. John is near the Alberta border), Taneille looked at a DNA enzyme called telomerase, mutations of which are believed to shorten the lifespan of bone marrow stem cells and help cause DC.

Testing four common mutations, she determined that one suppressed telomerase activity while the other three had no effect.

�Understanding how telomerase and its mutations work is an extremely important field of study,� said Taneille, 17, a Grade 12 student at North Peace Secondary School. �Low activity is associated with DC and blood disorders such as anemia but too high levels are associated with many different types of cancer.�

She intends to pursue molecular biology and life sciences at McGill University next fall after a summer of lifeguarding, breaking a two-year tradition of spending her summer holiday in the University of Calgary lab.

Student discovers that rhubarb extract may prevent Alzheimer’s disease

Motivated by working in seniors’ homes, 17-year-old Linda Liu discovered that an extract from rhubarb prevented the misfolding of a protein that is associated with disease. The extract also dissolved previously misfolded proteins offering the glimmer of hope of both potential prevention and treatment for the disease.

The tragedy of Alzheimer’s is well documented. Every 70 seconds someone develops the disease in North America. Today there are five to six million Alzheimer victims in Canada and the US.

“Having volunteered in seniors’ homes I was inspired by the devastating effects of Alzheimer’s disease,” said Linda, whose goal is to become an MD.

The high school student researched the disease and learned that this common form of dementia can be caused by the misfolding of tau proteins commonly found in the central nervous system. She also learned that traditional medicine in India considers rhubarb as an important plant and may possess the ability to treat Alzheimer�s disease. It also contains antioxidants known to prevent Alzheimer’s.

To test whether rhubarb could be effective Linda used different amounts of extract on tau proteins and added a chemical known as Heparin which causes tau to misfold. There were also control samples that contained the materials listed above but without extract. The extract was able to cut the amount of misfolding by 50% and dissolved 50% of misfolded tau.

What’s even more exciting is that misfolding of tau proteins is associated with many other diseases including Parkinson’s disease, arthritis, diabetes, mad cow disease, atherosclerosis, ALS (Lou Gherig’s disease), and Huntington’s disease.

Linda’s project demonstrates that it may be able to prevent and treat Alzheimer’s as well as other diseases that involve the same basic mechanisms, said her mentor Scott Yuzwa, a researcher at the Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC.

“I was most impressed by Linda’s ability to read and understand primary scientific literature. She was able to propose a project on her own that required extensive literature research followed by careful experimental planning,” Dr Yuzwa said.

Vancouver, British Columbia – BC Biotech presented $10,000 to the winning teams of the sanofi-aventis Biotech Challenge at its annual BC Biotech Biotechnology Awards Ceremony on Wednesday, April 18, 2007. This biotech competition for high school students is one of 13 held nationally and is coordinated by BC Biotech in Vancouver. Each cash prize is split equally between the team members and their respective schools to go towards their science program. This year’s competition was held at the BCIT, Burnaby Campus on Friday, April 13, 2007.

Christina Chiu from Hugh Boyd Secondary School was awarded first place for her project Engineering Gut Cells to Produce Insulin to Treat Diabetes. Christine designed an experiment that examined the ability of using a genetic engineering approach to coax gut cells to produce insulin in a sugar-dependent manner, while also regulatable by a drug.

As the first place winner, Christina and her school will share $3000 and she will compete with the first place student teams from each of the regional sites across Canada in the fifteenth annual National sanofi-aventis Biotech Challenge competition in a two-way, real time videoconference competition on May 10, 2007.

Second place went to Sir Winston Churchill Secondary�s Thomas Sun and Robyn Thom for their project Diblock Copolymers and Epoxidized Carthamus Tinctorious Oil as Novel Polyvinyl Chloride Plasticizers and Third Place was awarded to Xue Chen (Janny) and Karen Yu also of Sir Winston Churchill Secondary for Fiber-Reinforced Cellulose Acetate Composite.
Judges Dr. Paul Barran of NRC-IRAP, Dr. Carl Perez of Chromos Molecular Systems Inc. and Dr. Keith Turner of BCIT praised the teams for the quality of their projects and President of LifeSciences BC, Karimah Es Sabar added, �This gives students a great experience and provided them with the opportunity to connect with mentors in BC�s biotechnology industry.�

LifeSciences BC would like to thank the following supporters who have generously supported this year’s sanofi-aventis Biotechnology Challenge in British Columbia.

National Supporters
sanofi pasteur
sanofi-aventis
Human Resources Social Development Canada
Canadian Institutes of Health Research
VWR International
Genome Canada
National Research Council of Canada
Canadian Louis Pasteur Foundation
Canada Foundation for Innovation
BioTalent Canada

Regional Supporters
LifeSciences British Columbia
British Columbia Institute of Technology
NRC / IRAPFor more information, contact:

Melissa Beaton
Marketing Specialist
LifeSciences BC
tel: 604-602-5227
email: mbeaton@lifesciencesbc.ca

www.lifesciencesbc.ca