Spotlight: The Truant Lab

Principal Investigator: Dr. Ray Truant

Location: McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Year Founded: 1999

What disease areas do you research?

SCA1
SCA7
Huntington’s Disease
Parkinson’s Disease

What models and techniques do you use?

Human cell biology
High content screening
Biophotonics
Microscopy

Research Focus

What is your research about?

We are looking into the role of oxidative DNA damage as a trigger to diseases like ataxia and neurodegeneration. We examine the roles of the disease proteins (ataxin-1, ataxin-7, etc,) and genes which modify or change disease that are involved with DNA damage repair.

Why do you do this research?

We are looking at what triggers the very first steps of disease. If we can understand this, we can design a treatment to stop it from happening in the first place.

Group picture of the Truant Laboratory celebrating International Ataxia Awareness Day 2019.

Fun Lab Fact

All our fridges in the laboratory are named after Game of Thrones characters! (We have several proud nerds in the lab)

For More Information, check out the Truant Lab Website!

We have an open lab notebook blog where our post-doctoral fellow Dr. Tam Maiuri post updates on her experiments in real-time! We plan to launch an ataxia open notebook in Winter 2021.

Written by Ray Truant, Edited by Celeste Suart