Molecular Design Research Group
Health Research Groups

U of S Research Strengths in Infectious Disease through Molecular Design

• Designing treatment for infectious disease is a priority of the U of S, in alignment with the institution’s strategic research priority themes in human and animal health and fundamentals of science.
• The U of S has invested well over $800 million in health research facilities and infrastructure, and in the past 5 years, the University has provided over $3 million in direct research support to molecular design and infectious disease researchers.
• The U of S has more inter-related health-related facilities that any other Canadian university. This alignment of research-intensive health infrastructure on a single university campus is unique to Canada.
• The Canadian Macromolecular Crystallography Facility (CMCF) beamline at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) allows researchers to probe structures at the molecular level, paving the way for new kinds of drugs. Pharmaceutical companies all over the world now use synchrotrons as their tool of choice for their cutting-edge research. In addition, the $20.6 million CLS Life Science Beamline for X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (BioXAS) project is developing three beamlines that will be used to study metals in biological systems with impacts for human complaints such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, metal-containing drugs, and novel antibacterial agents.
• In 2007 the University established a School of Public Health which promotes community-involved, multidisciplinary activities targeted at enhancing all health-related research on campus and include a significant emphasis on infectious diseases and immunology.
• The University’s research cluster is extensive, including the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO/InterVac), a recognized global leader in the field of vaccine development and is an autonomous research entity of the University. InterVac, currently under construction, will be the largest facility for vaccinology and immunotherapeutics in the world, and will provide strong competitive advantages for the University as a site for advanced research on vaccine technologies.
• The Saskatchewan Structural Science Centre has been providing life-science researchers with a wide array of advanced spectroscopic and molecular analysis techniques.
• The Academic Health Sciences Centre, currently under construction on the U of S campus, will integrate the Colleges of Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing, Pharmacy & Nutrition with the School of Physical Therapy and the new School of Public Health. The facility will feature more than 195,000 square feet of biomedical research space.