Latest News

Galen was invited to present at the 18th Annual HD Therapeutics Conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia, in April 2023. This event is organized by the CHDI and brings together experts in the field of Huntington disease, both from academia and the industry.

The group received funding from the CIHR ($70,000) under the catalyst grant program: Analysis of CLSA Data. This grant, Bioinformatic investigation of previously neglected regions of the genome and their association with age-related hearing loss, is being led by Dr.

Exciting news! Members of the Wright Lab, Alana Slike and Lucy Namuli, attended and presented at the International Congress of Human Genetics in South Africa. Both trainees received travel awards to attend the conference - congratulations!

The group received a University of Manitoba Internal Grant ($10,000) for our new project: Population screening of RFC1 expansions related to an underreported ataxia. This project aims to establish a genotyping platform for the causative mutation linked to an movement disorder, Cerebellar Ataxia, Neuropathy, Vestibular Areflexia Syndrome (CANVAS).

Galen was invited to present in the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences Edge of Science and Medicine Seminar Series. His presentation, “Using human genomics to understand neurological disease outcomes”, included new results coming out of the lab.

Congratulations to Alana Slike who attended the week-long Brain Organogenesis Workshop at Stanford. She was the first Canadian trainee participating in this workshop and was one of 25 applicants selected from around the world.

We had a great year-end lab event last week! The group decided on rock climbing - it was really fun and we had the place to ourselves 🧗‍♀️ Looking forward to more science and collaboration in the New Year!

Galen was invited to present at the European Huntington’s Disease Network (EHDN) 2022 Plenary Meeting, in Bologna, Italy. His talk, HD genomic modifiers: emerging biological, clinical and therapeutic insights, was in the New Genetics of HD session and a link to the recording is available below.

The group received funding ($130,000) for our new project: Identification of causal genetic variants and genes in neuromuscular disorders. We will be using whole genome sequencing paired with gene expression information (RNA-seq) to identify pathogenic mutations in individuals affected by neuromuscular disorders.

The group welcomed two new graduate students to the group at a lab event at the Forks Market! Lucy Namuli will be working on genetic modifiers of repeat expansion disorders using bioinformatic approaches.