Healing Through Innovation
By Sara Elliott
Doctors Dorota Lubanska and Alioune Ngom discuss their research in a UWindsor Lab. | Photo by Peter Marval.
By connecting researchers, clinicians and community partners, WE-SPARK is redefining what it means to build healthier communities.
The University of Windsor’s WE-SPARK Health Institute’s coordinated grants provide opportunities to advance healthy communities. Through a variety of interdisciplinary research projects, supported by numerous community organizations, a focus on improving regional public health has led to meaningful outcomes. During the 2024-25 grant season alone, $499,000 was distributed by the WE-SPARK Health Institute and its partners.
Formed in 2019, WE-SPARK quickly became a leader in fostering interdisciplinary collaboration through its commitment with its founding partners – Erie Shores HealthCare, Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, St. Clair College, University of Windsor and Windsor Regional Hospital.
One of these projects, led by the Faculty of Nursing’s Laurie Freeman, investigates the success of a unique program that paired police officers from the Windsor Police Service with nurses from Windsor Regional Hospital’s emergency department to jointly patrol Windsor’s streets.
Responding to emergencies on the street, primarily involving individuals with mental health or substance-use issues, nurses provided wound care, health education and crisis intervention.
The research project, launched through a WE-Spark Ignite Discovery grant, saw Dr. Freeman interview seven police officers and seven nurses. Findings will be published in a forthcoming paper.
Another healthcare research initiative involves psychology professor Alexander Daros, who collaborated with Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare to investigate providing a free, online, self-guided behavioural therapy intervention for adolescents and adults with mental health challenges.
Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) is a well-established intervention, but its accessibility is often limited to those with severe symptoms, leaving individuals with low-to-moderate needs underserved. The researchers are investigating the possibility of an internet-based version — iDBT — which could provide care to patients in the Windsor-Essex region by integrating the program into existing mental health services.
WE-SPARK Health Institute is supported by an innovative research partnership between Erie Shores HealthCare, Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, St. Clair College, the University of Windsor, and Windsor Regional Hospital.
Core Principal Members
Health researchers funded provincially or nationally.
In external health research funding
Projects led by Core Principal Members in 2024-25.
Collaborators
Local, provincial, national and international.
This intervention aims to enhance mental health by offering a scalable, self-guided treatment that addresses a range of symptoms and promotes early intervention. Vulnerable populations, especially those with low-to-moderate mental health symptoms, often face barriers to accessing timely and effective care.
Another example of a 2024 Igniting Discovery grant was funded by ChildCan, an agency designed to support families affected by childhood cancer. Researchers from different scientific fields combined tools from biology and computer science to enhance treatment outcomes for the extracranial childhood cancer neuroblastoma. “In the neuroblastoma tumour, we know there are populations of cancer stem cells, immature cells that drive the aggressiveness and therapy resistance, and our lab focuses on the biology of those cells — especially cell cycle regulation,” says biomedical science’s Dorota Lubanska.
“With this project, we will be addressing different aspects of therapy resistance by collaborating with computer science.”
Biomedical science researchers will grow novel 3D organoid models — tumours in a dish — with live-cell imaging to study cell cycle regulation in cancer stem cells. This study will focus on how proteins like Spy1 influence the behaviour of these cells within the tumour.
With the copious amounts of data collected, computer science researchers, led by professor Alioune Ngom, will apply bioinformatics and deep-learning methods to rapidly create cell cycle characterization models. These models will aid in predicting tumour behaviour and treatment response.
Biomedical science alum Antonio Roye-Azar, who also holds a computer science degree, will liaise between the two disciplines. The findings are expected to address critical gaps in current tumour models and provide new strategies for more effective treatment of neuroblastoma.