Herbert Gaisano

CDHF Funding is the Catalyst to Successful Digestive Health Discoveries

Finding funding for research that is not considered 'glamorous' can be difficult. Dr. Herbert Gaisano knows this only too well. In the recent past, Dr. Gaisano was having difficulty finding the money required to support his research on alcoholic pancreatitis – a tragic condition which represents a major health problem in Canada for which there is no specific effective treatment.

"When I started this project," says Dr. Gaisano, "I had no funding to support the personnel required to get the project off the ground. This project was rejected by all the Canadian funding agencies I had applied to."

In 2005, the Canadian Digestive Health Foundation solved the problem. The foundation offered a studentship in cooperation with the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) in the amount of $22,000 a year for a period of three years. These funds have been used to support PhD student, Patrick Lam who is expected to complete his PhD in 2008. The work done by Patrick Lam in Dr. Gaisano's lab on alcoholic pancreatitis has identified a new mechanism for this very common complication of alcohol abuse, for which the underlying mechanism is unknown despite considerable work based on existing theories.

Patrick's work has resulted in his generating two first authored papers and two second authored papers which have been published in the highest ranking scientific journals.