Breakthrough Research Opening the Door to New Treatments for Fibrosis

Dalhousie researchers, Drs. Jean Marshall and Michael Bezuhly, along with their research team, are uncovering an exciting and unexpected biological pathway that may lead to entirely new treatments for fibrosis and abnormal scarring, conditions that affect millions of people worldwide.   

When the body is injured, healing is essential. But sometimes healing goes too far.

Instead of returning tissue to normal, the body produces too much scar tissue. The result is fibrosis—stiff, damaged tissue that can interfere with normal function. Fibrosis contributes to diseases affecting the skin, lungs, heart, kidneys and liver, and it is estimated to play a role in nearly half of deaths in the industrialized world.

Finding ways to stop or reverse fibrosis can be seen as one of the most important challenges in medicine today. 

Dr. Jean Marshall, professor, Department of Microbiology & Immunology and an internationally recognized expert in immune biology, and Dr. Michael Bezuhly, assistant professor in the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and the Department of Microbiology & Immunology, plastic surgeon, and researcher specializing in wound healing, have been studying a type of immune cell called a mast cell.

Mast cells are best known for their role in allergies. But the Dalhousie team discovered something unexpected. Their research suggests mast cells may also act as “switches” that help the body stop excessive scarring and restore tissue after injury.

When tissue becomes stiff during the healing process, these cells appear to sense the mechanical stress and release specialized molecules that signal the body to begin repairing and remodeling the scar.

A family of molecules, called prostanoids, appears to play a key role in helping fibrotic tissue return toward a more normal state.

Laboratory studies have shown that increasing this molecule dramatically improved the body’s ability to reverse fibrosis and reduce scar formation. If these findings continue to hold true, they could lead to entirely new treatments for conditions such as severe burn scars, hypertrophic or keloid scars, systemic sclerosis (scleroderma), pulmonary fibrosis, and other fibrotic diseases

The research may even allow physicians to repurpose existing drugs that target these pathways, accelerating the path from discovery to new therapies. Understanding these mechanisms could open the door to entirely new approaches for treating fibrotic diseases and improving wound healing.

Discoveries that lead to breakthroughs don’t happen overnight

In medical research, discovery rarely happens in a straight line.

Breakthrough ideas take years to develop, refine, and test. Along the way, even outstanding research proposals can struggle to receive funding in highly competitive national competitions.

For many researchers, that can mean stalled progress, interrupted experiments, and lost momentum.

To address this challenge, the River Philip Sustaining Excellence Awards were created in 2024 by the River Philip Foundation, a Nova Scotian family foundation.

The Sustaining Excellence Awards provide short-term funding to researchers whose proposals ranked in the top tier of national competitions but were not funded, allowing them to continue their work, strengthen their research, and prepare for the next round of national funding.

The goal is simple but powerful: sustain progress so that promising discoveries are not delayed.

By maintaining research teams, supporting experiments, and refining grant applications, these bridge awards often position investigators for success in the next funding cycle. 

And increasingly, that is exactly what is happening.

Sustaining momentum

Drs. Marshall and Bezuhly’s research proposal had already been recognized as highly competitive by national reviewers but had yet to receive major funding. That is where a 2024 Sustaining Excellence Award made a difference for their research, allowing her team to continue advancing their research while refining their national grant proposal.

The result was remarkable. they recently secured more than $1.1 million in Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) funding, Canada’s premier federal health research funding agency.  This funding will enable the team to expand their work and accelerate discoveries in fibrosis and wound healing. 

CIHR project grants are among the most competitive research awards in the country, typically funding only a small percentage of proposals submitted each year. 

This story is a powerful illustration of what the Sustaining Excellence program was designed to achieve.

The power of strategic philanthropy

Since its launch, Sustaining Excellence has demonstrated how targeted philanthropic support can unlock much larger research investments.

By providing relatively modest bridge funding at a critical moment, the program has helped Dalhousie researchers secure millions of dollars in national research funding.

According to program tracking, every dollar invested through Sustaining Excellence has leveraged more than nine dollars in subsequent research grants. 

That multiplier effect allows donors to amplify their impact, accelerating discoveries that improve health and patient care.

A foundation for future discovery

For the River Philip Foundation, supporting the Sustaining Excellence program represents a deliberate investment in research momentum, and the results have been deeply encouraging.

When the awards were first established, they represented a somewhat innovative approach to research funding: short‑term bridge support designed to keep highly ranked, unfunded projects moving forward. Since then, the outcomes have exceeded expectations.

“We are thrilled with the results of these awards,” says Deborah Shaffner, a trustee of the Foundation. “Based on their success, we’ve decided to fund them again. The results have exceeded our expectations.”

“To see our investment result in researchers obtaining subsequent funding of more than nine times the original support is exactly the kind of long‑term impact we wanted,” Shaffner noted, “while supporting potentially medical‑transformational research.”

Beyond accelerating discovery, the Foundation also sees Sustaining Excellence as a way to strengthen the research ecosystem closer to home.

“We hope this kind of innovative funding helps keep researchers in Atlantic Canada,” Shaffner added, “and provides incentive for researchers to do even more research.”

Dalhousie’s Faculty of Medicine is home to scientists tackling some of the region’s most pressing health challenges, including chronic disease, aging, cancer, and immune disorders. Programs like Sustaining Excellence ensure that promising ideas continue moving forward and for researchers like Drs. Marshall and Bezuhly, that timely support can make the difference between a promising idea and a transformative discovery.

Sustaining the Future of Medical Research

Medical breakthroughs are the result of persistence, collaboration, and the determination to keep moving forward even when obstacles appear.

Through the Sustaining Excellence program, the River Philip Foundation is helping ensure that promising discoveries continue advancing toward solutions that could improve lives across Canada and beyond.

Sometimes, sustaining excellence is exactly what makes the next breakthrough possible.