Pain hypersensitivity and many other diseases could be associated with a protein that acts as an ion pump in neurons.
The ALS Society of Canada (ALS Canada), together with Brain Canada, announced a new trainee award to Dr. Sahara Khademullah, post-doctoral research in the lab. ALS Canada was also pleased to partner with La Fondation Vincent Bourque who will be providing financial support for Dr. Khademullah's award. This grant has been awarded with the aim of sustaining high-quality Canadian ALS research by providing salary support for the next generation of ALS researchers currently pursuing PhDs or postdoctoral research positions.
The Biophysical Society (BPS) announced that Yves De Koninck will receive the Emily M Gray Award at the Society's annual meeting in Baltimore on March 4th, 2019. From the BPS press release:
De Koninck will be recognized for his work in the development of internationally renowned, transdisciplinary training initiatives in neurophysics and neurophotonics that have provided hands-on training for numerous students and postdoctoral fellows.
Congratulations to Yves De Koninck, who has won, with a team of colleagues from the CERVO Brain Research Centre and the Centre d'optique, photonique et laser (COPL), a prestigious prize for interdisciplinary research, given by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Brockhouse prize. The winning team includes Daniel Côté, Yves De Koninck, Michel Piché, Younès Messaddeq, Benoit Gosselin and Réal Vallée. It is rewarded for its innovative to understanding brain function through the development of new technologies that leverage the expertise of p
A report about Robert Bonin was published in Curium, a scientific magazine targeting youth. In the article, professor Bonin explains what is chronic pain, and results of his research to better understand it, and to improve its treatment. Read the article here (in French only): Robert Bonin - Jeune chercheur étoiles des Fonds de recherche du Québec
The Canadian Pain Society highlighted the research accomplishments of Yves De Koninck and Robert Bonin, a YDK lab alumnus and professor at University of Toronto, at their annual meeting, which took place May 23-26 in Halifax. Congratulations to Professor De Koninck, who received the Distinguished Career Award, and to Professor Bonin, who received the Early Career Investigator Pain Research Grant.
Congratulations to Isabel Plasencia who won the second prize for presentation at the second edition of the Pain Talks organised by the Quebec Network of Junior Pain Investigators. The event took place April 28 at McGill's Thomson House. Isabel's presentation was titled " Painful disinhibition".
Écoutez une entrevue récente avec Yves De Koninck qui explique comment ses recherches récentes ont permis de trouver une cible thérapeutique qui permettrait de diminuer les symptômes du sevrage aux opioïdes, comme la morphine et le fentanyl. Cette découverte, qui a aussi permis d'identifier des médicaments déjà approuvés pour l'utilisation chez l'humain, pourrait permettre d'accélérer l'approbation de médicaments pour traiter les symptômes du sevrage de plusieurs années.
Écoutez l'entrevue sur iheartradio.ca:
A recent publication in Nature Medicine co-authored by Robert Bonin and Yves De Koninck offers new hope for people addicted to morphine and fentanyl. By investigating the underlying causes of withdrawal symptoms, the researchers identified a protein located in immune cells of the spinal cord called pannexin-1 as a major player, which lead them to look for drugs that block pannexin-1 as a way to alleviate symptoms. The team found a drug previously approved to treat gout, called probenecid, that worked in this way.
A discovery made in collaboration with Yves De Koninck of the Neurophotonics Centre has been listed as one of the top 10 discoveries of 2016 by Québec Science, and is a candidate for the magazine's people's choice award for discovery of the year. This discovery, a collaboration between neuroscientists and physicists, offers hope for repair of nerve connections, and even a way to create new ones.
The director of the Neurophotonics Centre, Yves De Koninck, will receive the Canadian Pain Society's 2017 Distinguished Career Award. This award recognizes Dr. De Koninck's longstanding contributions to pain research.
The award will be given at the next Canadian Pain Society meeting, in May 2017 in Halifax.
The Journal of Neuroscience has recently featured on its front page a figure from an article De Koninck laboratory members contributed to. The article studies the localisation of a specific receptor on neurons, the Coxsackievirus Adenovirus Receptor (CAR), in healthy brains, but also during development and in neurodegenerative disease conditions. The study suggests CAR has a role in adult neurogenesis, synapses, and plasticity in the hippocampus.
Sentinel North, a research initiative led by Yves De Koninck and Marcel Babin from Université Laval, and funded through the Canada First Research Excellence Fund, aims to better understand the Canadian North through the use of advanced optics technologies. Its goal is to improve our understanding of humanity, its environment and the impact environmental changes are having on humans and their health in the North. Sentinel North was recently awarded $98 million over seven years, the largest subsidy in the history of Université Laval.
We had the pleasure to celebrate the 10th anniversary of optogenetics research with Karl Deisseroth, who delivered the Keynote and Public lecture at the recent Frontiers in Neurophotonics Symposium. FINS2015 was held October 3-6 in Québec city.
On the picture, Karl Deisseroth, Yves De Koninck and Valentin Nägerl celebrate with a 10th anniversary cake.
Yves De Koninck was recently appointed to the Royal Society of Canada for "seminal contributions to understanding how neurons communicate at the cellular and molecular levels, in normal and pathological pain. Equally ground-breaking are his contributions to developing novel photonics technologies to push the frontiers of neuroscience".
View the Royal Society of Canada - Class of 2015 full listing.
Congratulations!
Rob Bonin has been appointed Assistant Professor at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto, effective August 1, 2015.
Read more about his appointment on the University of Toronto website.
Congratulation Rob!
Yves De Koninck was awarded an honoris causa doctorate from the Université de Montréal for his exceptional contributions to research in neuroscience, and specifically in research to relieve pain. The rector of the Université de Montréal highlighted Dr. De Koninck's work:
Dr. Yves De Koninck has been named Director of Research of the Centre intégré universitaire de santé et de services sociaux (CIUSSS) de la Capitale-Nationale. For more information, read the Press release.
Congratulations to Robert Bonin, who was awarded the BrainStar of the year award at the 2015 Canadian Neuroscience Meeting in Vancouver. He was recognized as the top recipient of all the 2014 Brain Star awardees.
The Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Québec participate in the 24 heures de sciences event by hosting an open house event on May 9 2015. On this occasion, Marianne Paquette interviewed Yves De Koninck to talk about the workings of the brain. Listen to the interview, in French, here: Émission c’est bon pour la santé! | Comprendre son cerveau -Yves De Koninck avec Marianne Paquette
2014 - Robert Bonin (Brain Star of the year)
Article in Nature Neuroscience: A spinal analog of memory reconsolidation enables reversal of hyperalgesia.
Robert Bonin was named Étudiant chercheur étoile for the month of March 2015 by the Fonds de recherche du Québec - Santé for his publication : A Spinal Analogue of Memory Reconsolidation Enables Reversal of Hyperalgesia, published in : Nature Neuroscience, vol. 17, online in July 2014, p. 1043-1045
Publication : A Spinal Analogue of Memory Reconsolidation Enables Reversal of Hyperalgesia in : Nature Neuroscience
Yves De Koninck participate in a panel discussion about chronic pain on Minnesota Public Radio news
Treating chronic pain, especially if you're trying to avoid opiates, can be difficult. But new research shows promise for improvement in treatment that avoids highly addictive drugs.
The Canadian Neurophotonics Platform, a multicentre research initiative led by Yves De Koninck, held its lauch meeting December 16-17 2014 in Québec city.
This initiative, which was awarded 3,3M$ from the Canadian Brain Research Fund, aims to bring together expertise from across Canada to develop and maximize exploitation of leading-edge photonics technologies for the study, diagnostics and treatment of brain diseases.
The television show Découverte, on Radio-Canada, featured neurophotonics research.
View this story on the Radio-Canada website (in French only) Illuminer le cerveau
Recent discoveries from the De Koninck lab are cited in a article about new propects for treating pain in the 2014 end of year edition of Scientific American, devoted to world-changin ideas.
Read it here (subscription required)
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/prospects-for-treating-chronic...
Yves De Koninck has been awarded the 2014 Barbara Turnbull awards for spinal cord research. This prize is supported through a partnership between the Barbara Turnbull Foundation for Spinal Cord Research, Brain Canada, and the CIHR Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction. It is the top prize in spinal cord injury research awarded in Canada each year.
Yves De Koninck was interviewed in Le Devoir newspaper about the importance of funding provided by the Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Santé for the vitality of research in Québec.
Read the article in Le Devoir (in French): Le FRQS, un soutien essentiel pour les chercheurs
Research recently published by the De Koninck lab showed that hyperalgesia could be reversed when reactivated, in a manner similar to memory reconsolidation. This important discovery was recently featured on PBS's NovaNext website
The original research was published in Nature Neuroscience
Listen to Yves De Koninck in conversation with Kerri Smith explain the recent publication by Bonin and De Koninck in Nature Neuroscience.
Go to the Nature website and select the third segment.
A study published in the scientific journal Nature Neuroscience by Yves De Koninck and Robert Bonin reveals that it is possible to relieve pain hypersensitivity using a new method that involves rekindling pain so that it can subsequently be erased. This discovery could lead to novel means to alleviate chronic pain.
Université Laval published a press release about this important discovery
Francesco Ferrini, Post-Doctoral fellow Yves De Koninck's laboratory, was recognized as one of the top three Brain Star awardees of 2014 by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, for an article published in Nature Neuroscience (Ferrini, Trang et al.). This prize was shared with Tuan Trang, co-first author of the publication.
Marc Bergeron received the Marlene Reimer Brain Star of the year award at the 8th Annual Canadian Association for Neuroscience meeting. This award is given to the highest ranking Brain Star Award of the year. Brain Star awards are given by the Institutes of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction of the CIHR and are designed to recognize the excellence of research done in Canada by students and trainees in all fields and disciplines covered by the Institute.
Découvrir, the magazine of the Association Francophone pour le Savoir (ACFAS), published an interview about chronic pain with Quebec Pain Research Network founder Yves De Koninck. Read the interview on the ACFAS website: http://www.acfas.ca/publications/decouvrir/2014/05/douleur-chronique-sort-silence
2013 - Francesco Ferrini / Tuan Trang
Article in Nature Neuroscience: Morphine hyperalgesia gated through microglia-mediated disruption of neuronal Cl⁻ homeostasis.
Two images from the YDK lab are finalists for the ACFAS 2014 image contest: "Un portrait de la douleur", by Louis-Étienne Lorenzo, and "Dans le vif du sujet" by Feng Wang and Erik Bélanger.
View all the images in the contest here: http://ici.radio-canada.ca/concours/la_preuve_par_l_image/2014/index.asp
Université Laval and Roche recently signed a collaborative research agreement to test promising compounds for several disorders of the brain, including autism spectrum disorders (ASD).
Recent discoveries explaining the mechanism of morphine induced hyperalgesia have been named one of the top 10 discoveries of 2013 by Québec Science.
Congratulations to co-first authors Francesco Ferrini & Tuan Trang and the rest of the team!
Research done in the YDK lab are recognized as one of the top ten scientific breakthroughs of 2013, according to Le Soleil newspaper:
Identifying the part of the cell that causes a disease. Understanding where, exactly, the mechanism breaks. Finding a drug to repair it. In biomedical research, this is probably what approaches the definition of a »hat trick» And it is what the team of Yves De Koninck, neuroscientist at Université Laval, have just done in the fight against chronic pain.
2013: Le double jeu de la morphine
For explaining why morphine can paradoxically cause pain, and showing that the mechanisms underlying pain hypersensitivity are distinct from those causing morphine tolerance.
Congratulations to Yves De Koninck, who was named the new Scientific Director of the Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Québec. Learn more about this nomination here:
http://www.beauportexpress.com/Communaut%C3%A9/2013-10-29/article-345236...
Yves De Koninck personality of the week La Presse Radio-Canada for the week of October 21 2013, in recognition of his recent discoveries that could lead to the development of new pain relief drugs, and for receiving the Jacques Rousseau prize for multidisciplinarity.
The identification of compounds that can restore normal chloride levels in cells shows promise to treat several neurological and psychiatric disorders, including epilepsy, motor spasticity, stress, anxiety, schizophrenia, morphine-induced hyperalgesia and chronic pain. New results published by the De Koninck laboratory in Nature Medicine shows one such compounds was able to alleviate hypersensitivity in a rat chronic pain model.
ACFAS has awarded Yves De Koninck the Jacques-Rousseau prize, for multidisciplinarity. This prize was created to highlight the work of a researchers whose accomplishments have gone beyond his area of expertise and has built bridges between disciplines. This award recognizes the efforts made by Dr De Koninck over the last 10 years to link neurosciences and optics-photonics.
The Canada Foundation for Innovation produced a video about the Neurophotonics Centre featuring an interview with Yves De Koninck, in which he explains how neurophotonics techniques are used to understand chronic pain, and could also be used eventually to treat this condition. In French.
Listen to Yves De Koninck in the radio series "Think about it", all about the brain, on CBC radio.
Yves de Koninck was named researcher of the month of July by Canadians for Health Research. Here is an excerpt from his profile on the CHR website:
A Pioneer in Understanding Pain
De la douleur temporaire à la douleur chronique: que se passe-t-il? Quels sont les mécanismes en cause? Un trouble du système nerveux pourrait-il expliquer certaines souffrances? Le point sur les récentes et incroyables avancées de la recherche dans ce domaine.
Read A multimodal micro-optrode - a blog post in openoptogenetics about the multimodal micro-optrodes developed by Yoann Lechasseur, Suzie Dufour and the rest of the YDK lab team and collaborators:
http://openoptogeneticsblog.org/?p=550
The post discusses two papers
January 2013 – Age Plus Prize Winner: Cyril Bories
Université Laval
Differential Balance of Prefrontal Synaptic Activity in Successful versus Unsuccessful Cognitive Aging
Recent discoveries published in Nature Neuroscience "identifies a molecular pathway by which morphine can increase pain, and suggests potential new ways to make morphine effective for more patients" says Yves De Koninck, senior author of the paper.
The research not only identifies a target pathway to suppress morphine-induced pain but teases apart the pain hypersensitivity caused by morphine from tolerance to morphine, two phenomena previously considered to be caused by the same mechanisms.
Le bioneurologue Yves De Koninck fait partie de l'équipe de chercheurs du Centre d'optique, photonique et laser de l'Université Laval grâce à laquelle on peut dorénavant observer en direct les échanges entre les cellules du cerveau.
Il pose sur le monde actuel, son regard de scientifique passionné pour l'infiniment petit. Qu'y a-t-il dans le cerveau d'Yves De Koninck?
Les professeurs Daniel Côté et Yves De Koninck explique la recherche en biophotonique à l'émission Le Code Chastenay, à Télé-Québec
Voir le reportage sur le site du Code Chastenay à Télé-Québec
Yves De Koninck is the personality of the week Le Soleil for the week of Februray 12, 2012, for the development of a microprobe. This discovery was also named one of the ten discoveries of the year by Québec Science. Read an interview by Jean-François Cliche with Yves De Koninck here (in French):
http://www.lapresse.ca/le-soleil/actualites/le-laureat/201202/11/01-4495...
Research leading to the development of a micro-optrode allowing optical and electrical recording from a single neuron in vivo was recognized as one of the top 10 discoveries of the year by Québec Science. Congratulations to Yoann Lechasseur and the whole team!
http://www.quebecscience.qc.ca/les-10-decouvertes-2011/1-Lumiere-sur-les...
2011: Lumière sur les neurones
For the development of a micro-optrode allowing optical and electrical recording from a single neuron in vivo.
In two articles published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS), Yves De Koninck, Jean-Martin Beaulieu, Paul Wiseman and their teams describe a new technique, spatial intensity distribution analysis, to study protein-protein interactions in intact tissue by optical microscopy.
Congratulations to Sophie Laffray on winning this award
Congratulations to Jeffrey Coull, Ph. D. receives the 2006 prize for best PhD thesis Association of Quebec graduate deans, in association with the Fonds de recherche en santé du Québec (FRSQ)
2004 - Jeff Coull (Brain Star of the year)
2003: Découverte d'un mécanisme expliquant la douleur chronique
http://www.scom.ulaval.ca/Au.fil.des.evenements/2004/01.22/science.html
For the discovery that the pain hypersensitivity of people suffering from neuropathic pain could be due to a reversal of the mechanisms that suppress pain signals in the spinal cord.
Original research article:
