Pushpinder Kanda

University of Ottawa · Department of Ophthalmology

Almost half of patients recovering from open chest surgery experience atrial fibrillation (AF) that results principally from inflammation in the pericardial space surrounding the heart. Given that post-operative AF is associated with increased mortality, effective measures to prevent AF after open-chest surgery are highly desirable. In this study,...

Background: Cryoglobulinemia, the presence of serum cryoglobulins which are immunoglobulins or complement components that precipitate at temperatures below 37 °C, commonly present with cutaneous manifestations initially, but are more rarely associated with ocular manifestations. To our knowledge, we report the first case of a patient presenting wi...

Primary meningococcal conjunctivitis from Neisseria meningitidis is a rare cause for acute, purulent conjunctivitis most commonly presenting in children. Here we present a case of primary meningococcal conjunctivitis in an adult patient with mild signs/symptoms mimicking non-gonococcal bacterial conjunctivitis. The patient was immediately treated w...

Hydroxychloroquine use needs to be carefully monitored for retinal toxicity which can lead to significant visual impairment. This review summarizes the current screening guidelines and imaging modalities recommended by the American Academy of Ophthalmology and highlights future research trends for improving test sensitivity. It also discusses the u...

Purpose Multifocal electroretinogram (mfERG) shows great utility as a screening tool to detect early hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) retinopathy, but its widespread use is limited by the lack of accessibility and long test duration. In this study, we evaluated a novel concentric 5-ring mfERG stimulus to provide a simplified and rapid protocol for screenin...

The pathogenesis of central serous chorioretinopathy (CSCR), a pachychoroid disease, is poorly understood. While choroid hyperpermeability and retinal pigment epithelium dysfunction are cornerstones for developing CSCR, the mechanisms at the retinal, vascular, retinal pigment epithelium, and cellular level continue to be an enigma. A few preclinica...

We have shown that calcium-activated potassium (KCa)-channels regulate fundamental progenitor-cell functions, including proliferation, but their contribution to cell-therapy effectiveness is unknown. Here, we test the participation of KCa-channels in human heart explant-derived cell (EDC) physiology and therapeutic potential. TRAM34-sensitive KCa3....

Rapid progress is being made in developing bioengineered corneas to restore vision in patients with corneal opacity or irregularities that result in blindness. Human donor corneas have served well in the past for corneal transplant surgery and surgical innovation, especially lamellar endothelial replacement which has helped to improve outcomes. How...

While encapsulation of cells within protective nanoporous gel cocoons increases cell retention and pro-survival integrin signaling, the influence of cocoon size and intra-capsular cell-cell interactions on therapeutic repair are unknown. Here, we employ a microfluidic platform to dissect the impact of cocoon size and intracapsular cell number on th...

Background: Serum-free xenogen-free defined media and continuous controlled physiological cell culture conditions have been developed for stem cell therapeutics, but the effect of these conditions on the relative potency of the cell product is unknown. As such, we conducted a head-to-head comparison of cell culture conditions on human heart explan...

Skin fibroblasts can be turned into immortal producers of therapeutic extracellular vesicles.

Decades of work have shown that diabetes increases the risk of heart disease and worsens clinical outcomes after myocardial infarction. Because diabetes is an absolute contraindication to heart transplant, cell therapy is increasingly being explored as a means of improving heart function for these patients with very few other options. Given that hy...

Previous work has shown that cocooning heart explant-derived cells (EDCs) within protective nanoporous gel capsules before intra-myocardial injection increases the retention of transplanted cells and the paracrine production of nanoparticles to improve post infarct cardiac function. In this study, we investigated the influence of cocoon size and in...

Biological therapies that increase or suppress the expression of transcripts underlying atrial fibrillation (AF) progression are increasingly being explored to create novel treatment paradigms beyond simply suppressing or destroying tissue. To date, there has been no systematic overview of the preclinical evidence exploring manipulation of fundamen...

Although cocooning explant-derived cardiac stem cells in protective nanogels prior to intramyocardial injection boosts long-term cell retention, the number of EDCs that finally engraft is trivial and unlikely to account for salutary effects on myocardial function and scar size. As such, we investigated the effect of varying the nanogel content with...

Although patient-sourced cardiac explant-derived stem cells (EDCs) provide an exogenous source of new cardiomyocytes post-myocardial infarction, poor long-term engraftment indicates that the benefits seen in clinical trials are likely paracrine-mediated. Of the numerous cytokines produced by EDCs, interleukin-6 (IL-6) is the most abundant; however,...

Introduction: Over the past decade, it has become clear that long-term engraftment of any ex vivo expanded cell product transplanted into injured myocardium is modest and all therapeutic regeneration is mediated by stimulation of endogenous repair rather than differentiation of transplanted cells into working myocardium. Given that increasing the r...

Microbial pathogens pose serious threats to public health and safety, and results in millions of illnesses and deaths as well as huge economic losses annually. Laborious and expensive pathogen tests often represent a significant hindrance to implementing effective front-line preventative care, particularly in resource-limited regions. Thus, there i...

Microbial pathogens pose serious threats to public health and safety, and results in millions of illnesses and deaths as well as huge economic losses annually. Laborious and expensive pathogen tests often represent a significant hindrance to implementing effective front-line preventative care, particularly in resource-limited regions. Thus, there i...

Color change is common in nature and often signifies a seasonal transition, such as from summer to autumn. In their Communication on page 12799 ff., S. Huan, Y. Li, and co-workers report a new colorimetric detection method that takes advantage of an old technology. The design makes use of a DNAzyme, urease, and magnetic beads to translate the prese...

Farbwechsel weisen in der Natur haufig auf jahreszeitliche Veranderungen hin, so etwa beim Ubergang vom Sommer zum Herbst. In der Zuschrift auf S. 13013 ff. berichten S. Huan, Y. Li et al. uber eine neue kolorimetrische Nachweismethode, die auf einer alten Technik beruht. Ein DNAzym, Urease und magnetische Kugelchen wurden genutzt, um die Gegenwart...

The development of the in vitro selection technique has allowed the isolation of functional nucleic acids, including catalytic DNA molecules (DNAzymes), from random-sequence pools. The first-ever catalytic DNA obtained by this technique in 1994 is a DNAzyme that cleaves RNA. Since then, many other RNase-like DNAzymes have been reported from multipl...

Outbreaks linked to food-borne and hospital-acquired pathogens account for millions of deaths and hospitalizations as well as colossal economic losses each and every year. Prevention of such outbreaks and minimization of the impact of an ongoing epidemic place an ever-increasing demand for analytical methods that can accurately identify culprit pat...

Golden island: Periodically assembled gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) on a long single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) with a repetitive sequence, produced by rolling circle amplification (RCA), form island-like, globular structures under salted conditions (see figure; green = short DNA probe, orange=AuNP, black=long ssDNA from RCA). The AuNPs in such islands reta...