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News
CIHR grant
We are excited to work with Tamara Bodnar (PI), Parker Holman, and Lori Vitale Cox in the newly awarded CIHR Indigenous Gender and Wellness Development Grant.
The objective of this grant is to engage Indigenous communities in knowledge exchange to co-create culturally appropriate, hands-on and inquiry-based activities to learn about the effects of alcohol on health and well-being across gender.
New paper in Journal of Neuroinflammation
Our new paper with Tamara Bodnar (first author) and Joanne Weinberg, in collaboration with Tina Chambers and Claire Coles, investigating immune profiles of children prenatally exposed to alcohol was published in the Journal of Neuroinflammation (link).
The exciting results suggest that cytokines may serve as important biomarkers of alcohol-dependent and alcohol-independent changes in neurodevelopment.
We are excited to continue this work in the Collaborative Initiative on FASD (CIFASD) to further refine and validate this novel approach.
NIH/NIAAA R01 grant
The Raineki Lab is excited to receive a NIH/NIAAA R01 grant entitled "Prenatal Alcohol and Neuroimmunity". This grant is a collaborative effort among three investigators: Drs. Charlis Raineki, Tamara Bodnar, and Joanne Weinberg.
In this grant we will use a translational approach to investigate whether altered gut structure and function and shifts in microbiota (bacteria) composition, which are known to increase inflammation in both the brain and the body, may underlie the increased susceptibility to mental health problems seen following prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE).
Our overall working hypothesis is that PAE: a) impacts the structure and function of the gut barrier, leading to increased permeability to luminal products; b) causes shifts in gut microbiota composition and alters signaling within the gut-brain axis; and that c) together, these changes may be key drivers in the early-proinflammatory bias and lifelong perturbations in immune function that ultimately negatively impact mental health status.