Asanga Samarakoon

ASANGA SAMARAKOON

"Canada has one of the highest incidences of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) in the world. This not only creates a huge burden on the health care system but on individuals affected by this chronic, debilitating disease," says Asanga Samarakoon, a graduate student (PhD) at the University of British Columbia and recent recipient of a research award jointly funded by the Canadian Digestive Health Foundation (CDHF) and Canadian Institute for Health Research's(CIHR) Small Health Organization Partnership Program.

Asanga says the goal of finding a cure for IBD, which includes Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis, is actively being pursued when Canadian digestive health research is funded. At the Life Sciences Centre in BC, she and her colleagues are investigating how CD45 (an important protein on immune cells) affects inflammation in colitis. Her research will provide insights into the basic mechanism of how immune cells cause inflammation in the gut as well as how inflammation is regulated.

Asanga believes that it is vitally important that foundations like the CDHF continue to support researchers because basic research not only leads to newer and more effective therapies to be used in the clinic, it is essential to finding a cure. The importance of basic research, Asanga notes, too often seems to be ignored by government and the general public.

"This fellowship rewards my current success as a researcher and is a motivating factor for me to continue conducting excellent research to help understand the biology and find a cure for inflammatory bowel disease," says Asanga. "It is my hope that these new and important insights will ultimately lead to the development of new therapies for treatment of this devastating disease."