The COVID-19 pandemic has had long-lasting impacts, from affecting clinical care to inspiring advances in scientific knowledge to encouraging widespread collaboration by clinicians and researchers across Canada and the world.
The Institute for Biomedical Engineering, Science and Technology (iBEST)’s upcoming annual Symposium on May 30 will explore the multifaceted impacts of COVID-19. This public event includes the opportunity to experience keynote addresses by two Canadian scientists at the forefront of COVID-19 research.
Understanding Long COVID
The Government of Canada reports that 3.5 million people are estimated to be experiencing longer-term COVID-19 symptoms as of June 2023. Dr. Angela Cheung co-leads the Long COVID Web project, a pan-Canadian research network focusing on the Post-COVID-19 Condition, also known as Long COVID. The project received $20 million from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and has brought together more than 200 collaborators from across disciplines. Over 800 members, including scientists, patients, clinicians and decision-makers, are collaborating to examine what Dr. Cheung describes as a multi-system disease.
The Long COVID Web’s research network and programs, which will be highlighted in Dr. Cheung’s keynote address at the iBEST Symposium, are examples of how the pandemic brought about more collaboration. The network ensures an equity, diversity and inclusion lens is embedded in research efforts, recognizing that the experiences of racialized minorities and Indigenous populations can be different. “In everything we do, we ask how we can be impactful for Canadians,” Dr. Cheung said. “Through this work, we will better understand some of the processes of post-infectious illness.”
The study of COVID-19 and Long COVID has improved our collective understanding of the human body, she said. It also helped bring to the forefront the interest in personalized medicine, including at a genetic level, and the use of new tools like AI to gain insights into large medical datasets. Dr. Cheung is a senior physician scientist at the University Health Network and the Betty Ho Chair of Integrative Medicine at the University of Toronto.
Shifting clinical research approaches
Dr. John Marshall, a global leader in COVID-19 clinical research, will focus his iBEST Symposium keynote speech on how the disease is changing clinical research. “Pandemics over the course of the 21st century have been a real stimulus to thinking about how we might do clinical research better,” he said. In the aftermath of the SARS and H1N1 pandemics, he was part of a group working toward better preparation for the next pandemic, including re-thinking how clinical trials are conducted. The group concluded that clinical trials should be embedded in clinical practice and are already recruiting patients for a similar condition.
Dr. Marshall will also highlight the platform trial model advanced by the group, which studies a disease and simultaneously tests multiple interventions. He will also discuss how an ongoing multi-country pneumonia trial was able to pivot to study COVID-19 once the virus emerged. This project resulted in numerous publications on treatments and produced a body of work that describes effective therapies for COVID-19.
The COVID-19 research experience showed that researchers were prepared to collaborate and share data and results. Another outcome of this pandemic was the sensitizing of funders and policymakers to the role of clinical trials in the health-care ecosystem and the need to build worldwide trial capacity. Dr. Marshall is a scientist at Unity Health Toronto, a professor of surgery at the University of Toronto, and the Unity Health Chair in Trauma Research.
Attend the Symposium
iBEST is a collaborative effort between Toronto Metropolitan University and St. Michael’s Hospital, Unity Health Toronto, that brings together researchers and clinicians to develop health-care innovations.
The upcoming iBEST Symposium will be held in person on May 30, 2024, at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute. In addition to the keynotes, the day will feature a panel discussion, the annual trainee poster competition and networking opportunities.
