Medical research at U of T honoured

For doctors, a big challenge in treating people with bipolar disorder is knowing when episodes will strike.

Predicting the course of the illness and tracking its symptoms is tricky because people with the condition cycle between mania and depression. Doctors rely on observation of behavior or patient description of symptoms, which is imprecise.

What if a simple blood test could help tell a doctor when a patient has — or is about to experience — symptoms of bipolar disorder?

Benjamin Goldstein, an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, is studying several proteins in blood that could provide a quick test to do just that.

For this work and other research, the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance recently honoured Goldstein with the Gerald Klerman Young Investigator Award. The alliance is the largest patient-run organization dedicated to depression and bipolar disorder in the U.S.

“It’s a huge honour,” said Goldstein, who is also the director of the Centre for Youth Bipolar Disorder at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. “What more can you hope for, than to be acknowledged by the very people you’re trying to help?”

Goldstein was one of more than 160 Faculty of Medicine researchers honoured recently at the Faculty’s 2013 Research Awards Celebration. The event featured talks by several award-winning faculty members, who shared their research insights and personal experiences.

“This event is a wonderful opportunity for us to celebrate the achievements of many members of our Faculty whose dedicated work, international leadership and profound impact have been recognized at home and abroad,” said Professor Catharine Whiteside, dean of the Faculty of Medicine.

Other awardees included the Department of Medicine's Professor Peter St. George-Hyslop, who won the BIAL Merit Award in Medical Sciences — one the world’s top health research awards — for his research into the origins of neurodegenerative diseases, and Mary Gospodarowicz, a professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology, who won the 2013 American Radium Society’s Janeway Medal for her outstanding scientific contributions.

The Faculty acknowledged more than three dozen professors who received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, and more than 20 faculty members who received new or renewed Canada Research Chairs. The Faculty is home to 121 Canada Research Chairs — the most of any medical school in Canada — and conducts more than $1 billion in research annually.

“Research is thriving at U of T Medicine,” said Professor Alison Buchan, vice-dean of research and international relations in the Faculty of Medicine. “We are driven by the spirit of discovery, but we also work to ensure the new knowledge we generate can become new treatments, cures and solutions, improving health and prosperity locally and across the globe.”

Jim Oldfield is a writer with the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto.