LAB NEWS
2024
January - February
The Sun Lab has officially started at UBC!! Check out our new (still mostly empty) lab space as we begin to fill it up.
We are super excited to have Dr. Grace Choi join our team at UBC MBIM as a Research Associate! Dr. Peng (Allen) Xu and Jake Felker have also moved to UBC with us! Everyone is hard at work preparing the lab so that we can start our research soon!
A few media releases on our new exciting TAIMA TB wastewater monitoring study:
2023
May - July
Congratulations to Nusrah Rajabalee on her publication in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology: ATF2 orchestrates macrophage differentiation and activation to promote antibacterial responses!
The lab is awarded a CIHR Project Grant to perform the TAIMA TB wastewater surveillance study in Iqaluit, Nunavut in collaboration with lead-PI Dr. Gonzalo Alvarez and co-PIs: Robert Delatolla and Jean Allen.
Proud of our students for their recent achievements:
Hannah Siushansian and Jake Felker: OGS scholarships!
Milani Weerapura: OGS and CGS-M scholarships!
Yichu Liang: 1st place oral presentation at graduate student symposium!
Nusrah Rajabalee: 3rd place poster presentation at graduate student symposium!
Katie Madden: 3rd place in Faculty 3MT competition & QEII scholarship!
Fjolla Berbatovci: Selected for oral presentation at CSI2023 workshop in Orford, QC!
February
The lab is awarded a CIHR Project Grant to develop host-directed therapies for TB! Many thanks to the reviewers for their hard work and support of our research!
Congrats to Katie Madden for publishing her first primary article in microLife: Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection triggers epigenetic changes that are enriched in a type I IFN signature!
2022
September
Our long awaited lab expansion/move finally happened in September! Super excited to have shiny and more importantly, sufficient space for our lab to science and integrate together as one unit. See photos here!
Congrats to Milani Weerapura for being awarded the QEII scholarship award!
July
Excited to share two new publications from the lab led by Yichu Liang and Ankita Dabla!
Our Cell Chem Biol paper was selected as the cover art for the July issue! Thanks to Patrick and Sophie Lane at Sceyence Studios for the graphical creation! See the cover here!
June
Our students finally had a chance to experience some in-person conferences this summer since the pandemic started and it was a great experience for all! Our lab was well represented at the departmental symposium in Montebello, the CSI meeting in Halifax, and the CSM meeting in Guelph! See photos here!
Congrats to Yichu Liang for being selected to give an oral presentation for the student symposium at the CSM meeting in Guelph!
March
We are elated to share three new papers since the last news update. Congrats to Afrakoma, Stefania, Yichu, and Katie for your amazing work to lead these amazing projects/papers!
Cell Chem Biol: A selective PPM1A inhibitor activates autophagy to restrict the survival of Mycobacterium tuberculosis!
Front Immunol: Mycobacterium tuberculosis Exploits Focal Adhesion Kinase to Induce Necrotic Cell Death and Inhibit Reactive Oxygen Species Production!
Infect Immun: Surveying the Epigenetic Landscape of Tuberculosis in Alveolar Macrophages!
We also welcomed members to our lab: Yudhvir Bhatti and Sanjeevani Kumar who joined for their TMM rotations - we hope you enjoy your time here and look forward to continuing working together over the summer/fall! Special shoutout to Sanjee who created the beautiful illustration to symbolize our research, which is on display on the header of our website!
Congrats to Milani Weerapura and Yudhvir Bhatti for winning the CI3 summer scholarship for 2021 and 2022, respectively! Many thanks to the uOttawa CI3 for supporting us with a Big-Data Grant to do pilot work on their projects!
Thrilled to also announce that Dr. Sun was awarded the Lung Health Foundation Young Investigator Award!
2020-2021
August 2021
"Post"-pandemic updates
Hopefully the worst is behind us! During this time, our lab bid farewell to Robin Smyth, Carolyn Moonen, Courtney Irwin, and Amy Dagenais. Thank you all for your contributions to our lab and best wishes to everyone in your next adventures! Special thanks to Robin, who contributed a lot to our lab over the past few years - check out her new publications:
We also welcomed Fjolla Berbatovci, Milani Weerapura, Hannah Siushansian and Myriam Zaguia to our lab - we hope you enjoy your time with us!
May 2020
Our lab has been shutdown since March 15th due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. But there have been a number of wonderful achievements by our trainees worth celebrating once we can get back together! Virtual congratulations to all and we appreciate all the hard work by our talented trainees! (see Photos here)
Nusrah Rajabalee: NSERC-PhD Graduate Scholarship and the Award of Excellence in MIC program
Yichu Liang: CIHR-CGS Masters Scholarship
Afrakoma Afriyie-Asante: 2nd place poster presentation award for Postdoctoral Research Day
Carolyn Moonen: 3rd place poster presentation award for Postdoctoral Research Day
Big congrats also to Robin Smyth for being admitted to medical school, And Nusrah for passing her PhD Transfer exam with flying colors!
We are grateful to the Lung Health Foundation for renewing our grant to improve host directed therapies for TB!
We thank the NSERC Discovery Grant program for their support in funding our work to improve our fundamental knowledge on how macrophages phagocytose microbes! We look forward to training new summer NSERC USRA students as a part of this project!
2019
October - December
Our lab is expanding! Welcome to Afrakoma Afriyie-Asante, Carolyn Moonen, and Katie Madden. The lab had some fun at the department Thanksgiving and Christmas parties: We won 2nd place at the pumpkin carving contest and 3rd place at the gingerbread house contest! See photos here!
June - July
Check out the video our lab made for the 2019 BMI Science Video Showcase!
Our lab was awarded with a 5 year grant from the National Sanitarium Association to uncover novel host targets for TB therapy! The Sun Lab is super grateful for this grant and is looking forward to making some exciting discoveries in the coming years. Thank you to the reviewers and selection committee for trusting in our research program.
Congratulations to Robin Smyth and Nusrah Rajabalee for being awarded the OGS and CGS Masters scholarships!
Congratulations to Jessie Willis for being admitted to the uOttawa Medical School!
March
We received our first CIHR Project Grant to study targeting PPM1A for host-directed TB therapy!! This is only possible thanks to my mentors, colleagues, collaborators, and most importantly the trainees in my lab! Thanks to peer reviewers and CIHR for entrusting our research program and we will deliver new discoveries to make this funding count! Fancy celebration dinner photos here!
We also welcomed Therese Chan, undergraduate TMM rotation student, who will perform research in our lab with support from a CI3 summer studentship award - Congrats!
2017-2018
September 2018
It has been awhile since our last update as so many things are going on in the lab! We welcomed Robin Smyth and Yichu Liang as summer research students. Robin has joined as a MSc student and Yichu will be doing his Honor's Thesis in our lab!
The lab received our first ever external grant! We are grateful to the Ontario Lung Association for their grant-in-aid to support our research on improving the innate immune response against tuberculosis!
New collaborative publication: exciting new work that reveals a novel mechanism of necroptosis triggered by Mtb infection. I am happy and proud to have been part of the team that contributed to this excellent study by Pajuelo et al. in Cell Rep. (news release here)!
November 2017
Our lab welcomes Dr. Stefania Berton! We are pleased to have Stefania join our team as a Research Associate. She will be working on the role of PPM1A in autophagy during Mtb infection. First lab lunch photos here!
August - September 2017
September 20: The lab is up and running: we have finished stocking the lab with equipment and supplies. The first experiments have begun! See photos here!
August 14: Our lab renovations have finished and equipment ordering has begun! We are actively recruiting motivated graduate students and postdocs who are interested in cellular microbiology of tuberculosis pathogenesis. Undergraduate students are also encouraged to apply for opportunities for honours project and co-op studies.
August 14: Welcome to the launch of the official website of the Sun Lab!