RI-MUHC Annual Report

RI-MUHC ANNUAL REPORT 2023

YEAR IN REVIEW

INFECTIOUS DISEASES AND IMMUNITY IN GLOBAL HEALTH (IDIGH) PROGRAM

RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

Top row: RI-MUHC researchers Sapha Barkati, MD, M.Sc., and Martin Olivier, PhD; bottom row: former doctoral student Emily MacLean, PhD, and senior scientist Madhukar Pai, MD, PhD.

Montreal organizes rapidly during monkeypox outbreak

Dr. Sapha Barkati's team, with several colleagues from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC), worked in collaboration with public health, national and provincial public health laboratories and the various sexually transmitted infection clinics in Montreal to report on the Montreal experience and success in managing and controlling the simian smallpox, or monkeypox (mpox), outbreak. The team would like to acknowledge the exceptional work of Luke B. Harrison, fellow in medical microbiology and infectious diseases, who, in addition to co-authoring a study in The New England Journal of Medicine, was also lead author of a study on the subject in another prestigious journal, Annals of Internal Medicine.

Validation and integration of rapid testing for COVID-19 and TB

In collaboration with a team in Peru (Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia), Dr. Madhukar Pai’s team conducted a study to respond to the double burden of disease of COVID-19 and tuberculosis (TB). The study is one of the first investigating the diagnostic accuracy and feasibility of integrated molecular COVID-19 and TB testing on the GeneXpert platform. During her doctoral work supervised by Dr. Pai, Emily MacLean, PhD, led the collaborative study. (The Lancet Microbe, doi: 10.1016/S2666-5247(23)00042-3)

A new mechanism of transmission of drug resistance discovered in eukaryotic cells

Martin Olivier, PhD, is co-principal investigator in a collaboration between the Université de Montréal, the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) and McGill University that has uncovered a mechanism for the transmission of drug resistance between Leishmania parasites, which are responsible for a devastating infection known as leishmaniosis. The researchers demonstrated that drug-resistant Leishmania release extracellular vesicles (cell-secreted nanoparticles) that contain drug resistance genes. These resistance genes are transmitted to drug-sensitive (non-resistant) parasites via the vesicles. As the parasites receive these vesicles, they in turn become drug-resistant and more vigorous, which promotes the proliferation of the infection. The study was named one of Quebec Science's Top Ten Discoveries of 2022. (Cell reports, doi:10.1016/j.celrep.2022.111121)

Martin Olivier, PhD, is co-principal investigator of a study on drug resistance in leishmaniosis, named one of Quebec Science's Top Ten Discoveries of 2022. — Martin Olivier, PhD, is co-principal investigator of a study on drug resistance in leishmaniosis, named one of *Quebec Science's* Top Ten Discoveries of 2022.

Selected IDIGH Program news links

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

MacLean, E.-L., Villa-Castillo, L., Espinoza-Lopez, P., Caceres, T., Sulis, G., Kohli, M., Pai, M. & Ugarte-Gil, C. (2023). Integrating tuberculosis and COVID-19 molecular testing in Lima, Peru: a cross-sectional, diagnostic accuracy study. The Lancet. Microbe, vol. 4, p. e452-60. doi: 10.1016/s2666-5247(23)00042-3

Harrison, L. B., Bergeron, G., Cadieux, G., Charest, H., Fafard, J., Levade, I., Blais, A. C., Huchet, E., Trottier, B., Vlad, D., Szabo, J., Thomas, R., Poulin, S., Greenaway, C., Zaharatos, G. J., Oughton, M., Chakravarti, A., Pilarski, R., Bui-Nguyen, A., Benomar, K., Libman, M. D., Vinh, D. C., Duggan, A. T., Graham, M., Klein, M. B. & Barkati, S. (2023). Monkeypox in Montréal: Epidemiology, Phylogenomics, and Public Health Response to a Large North American Outbreak. Annals of internal medicine, vol. 176, p. 67-76. doi: 10.7326/m22-2699

Caya, C., Singh, A. E., Serhir, B., Morin, V., Libman, M. D., Corsini, R., Goldfarb, D. M., Wong, T., Xia, Y., Maheu-Giroux, M. & Yansouni, C. P. (2023). Rapid diagnostic testing for syphilis in Arctic communities (the STAR study): A multisite prospective field diagnostic accuracy study in an intended-use setting. Clinical microbiology and infection: the official publication of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. doi: 10.1016/j.cmi.2023.06.013

Marathe, G., Moodie, E. E. M., Brouillette, M.-J., Lanièce Delaunay, C., Cox, J., Martel-Laferrière, V., Gill, J., Cooper, C., Pick, N., Vachon, M.- L., Walmsley, S., Klein, M. B. & Canadian Co-Infection Cohort (2023). Impact of Hepatitis C Virus Cure on Depressive Symptoms in the Human Immunodeficiency Virus-Hepatitis C Virus Coinfected Population in Canada. Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, vol. 76, p. e702-e709. doi: 10.1093/cid/ciac540

Alvarez, F., Istomine, R., Da Silva Lira Filho, A., Al-Aubodah, T.-A., Huang, D., Okde, R., Olivier, M., Fritz, J. H. & Piccirillo, C. A. (2023). IL-18 is required for the TH1-adaptation of TREG cells and the selective suppression of TH17 responses in acute and chronic infections. Mucosal immunology. doi: 10.1016/j.mucimm.2023.05.004

Gobeil, P., Pillet, S., Boulay, I., Charland, N., Lorin, A., Cheng, M. P., Vinh, D. C., Boutet, P., Van Der Most, R., Roman, F., Ceregido, M. A., Landry, N., D'Aoust, M.-A. & Ward, B. J. (2022). Durability and cross-reactivity of immune responses induced by a plant-based virus-like particle vaccine for COVID-19. Nature communications, vol. 13, p. 6905. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-34728-1

Prosty, C., Gabrielli, S., Mule, P., Noorah, N., Baum, S., Greenberger, S., Ensina, L. F., Zhang, X., Netchiporouk, E. & Ben-Shoshan, M. (2022). Validation of the Urticaria Control Test (UCT) in Children With Chronic Urticaria. The journal of allergy and clinical immunology. In practice, vol. 10, p. 3293-3298.e2. doi: 10.1016/j.jaip.2022.07.037

Widdifield, J., Kwong, J. C., Chen, S., Eder, L., Benchimol, E. I., Kaplan, G. G., Hitchon, C., Aviña-Zubieta, J. A., Lacaille, D., Chung, H. & Bernatsky, S. (2022). Vaccine effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 infection and severe outcomes among individuals with immune-mediated inflammatory diseases tested between March 1 and Nov 22, 2021, in Ontario, Canada: a population-based analysis. The Lancet. Rheumatology, vol. 4, p. e430-e440. doi: 10.1016/s2665-9913(22)00096-0

Sebastiani, G., Milic, J., Kablawi, D., Gioe', C., Al Hinai, A. S., Lebouché, B., Tsochatzis, E., Finkel, J., Ballesteros, L. R., Ramanakumar, A. V., Bhagani, S., Benmassaoud, A., Mazzola, G., Cascio, A. & Guaraldi, G. (2023). Fibroscan-aspartate aminotransferase (FAST) score predicts liver-related outcomes, but not extra-hepatic events, in a multicenter cohort of people with HIV. Clinical infectious diseases: an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. doi: 10.1093/cid/ciad203

Perera, D. J., Hassan, A. S., Liu, S. S., Elahi, S. M., Gadoury, C., Weeratna, R. D., Gilbert, R. & Ndao, M. (2022). A low dose adenovirus vectored vaccine expressing Schistosoma mansoni Cathepsin B protects from intestinal schistosomiasis in mice. EBioMedicine, vol. 80, p. 104036. doi: 10.1016/j.ebiom.2022.104036

Schober, T., Morris, S. K., Bettinger, J. A., Bancej, C., Burton, C., Foo, C., Halperin, S. A., Jadavji, T., Kazmi, K., Modler, J., Sadarangani, M., Papenburg, J. & Canadian Immunization Monitoring Program Active (IMPACT) Investigators (2023). Outcomes of immunocompromised children hospitalized for Influenza, 2010-2021, the Canadian Immunization Monitoring Program Active (IMPACT). Clinical microbiology and infection: the official publication of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, vol. 29, p. 924-932. doi: 10.1016/j.cmi.2023.04.001

Fouda, A., Negi, S., Zaremba, O., Gaidar, R. S., Moroz, Y. S., Rusanov, E., Paraskevas, S. & Tchervenkov, J. (2023). Discovery, Synthesis, and In Vitro Characterization of 2, 3 Derivatives of 4, 5, 6, 7-Tetrahydro-Benzothiophene as Potent Modulators of Retinoic Acid Receptor-Related Orphan Receptor γt. Journal of medicinal chemistry, vol. 66, p. 7355-7373. doi: 10.1021/acs.jmedchem.3c00021