Family doctors providing primary care to patients with mental illness in a tertiary care facility.

Problem Addressed: Individuals with severe mental illness have an increased burden of physical comorbidities. Physical concerns of patients admitted to hospital for mental health reasons might be addressed by multiple specialists, leading to fragmented care and high costs to the system, when many of these concerns could be addressed by primary care.

Objective Of Program: The Family Doctor Outreach Clinic (FDOC) aims to provide rapid consultations for common concerns, to provide consultations for complex chronic disease and addictions, and to identify gaps in community care that contribute to patients' potential readmission to hospital.

SCNH2 is a novel apelinergic family member acting as a potent mitogenic and chemotactic factor for both endothelial and epithelial cells.

The gut hormone apelin is a major therapeutic focus for several diseases involving inflammation and aberrant cell growth. We investigated whether apelin-36 contained alternative bioactive peptides associated with normal physiology or disease. Amino acid sequence analysis of apelin-36 identified an amidation motif consistent with the formation of a secondary bioactive peptide (SCNH2).

Embryonic protein nodal promotes breast cancer vascularization.

Tumor vascularization is requisite for breast cancer progression, and high microvascular density in tumors is a poor prognostic indicator. Patients bearing breast cancers expressing human embryonic stem cell (hESC)-associated genes similarly exhibit high mortality rates, and the expression of embryonic proteins is associated with tumor progression. Here, we show that Nodal, a hESC-associated protein, promotes breast cancer vascularization.