Health Canada has granted Brock University a license to conduct cannabis analysis.

The Analytical Testing license enables Brock researchers to examine samples from the cannabis industry to help companies develop their products and meet safety standards.

This testing will take place using cutting-edge equipment within the Brock-Niagara Validation, Prototyping and Manufacturing Institute (VPMI).

“The cannabis analysis license truly opens the doors for the types of support that the VPMI can provide for the industry across the Niagara region, Ontario and Canada,” says VPMI Scientific Director and Associate Professor of Chemistry Paul Zelisko.

With the license, the VPMI team can provide quality control for the cannabis industry by testing the chemical and biological components of products for effectiveness and safety, says Zelisko.

“The licence will also permit the VPMI to support stakeholders in typing cannabis strains for more targeted and personalized applications and to help those within the industry to find value added compounds in waste materials to promote a more circular economy,” he says.

Waste materials arising out of cannabis production include the leaves, stems and roots of the plants. Zelisko says cannabis products used for health or recreational purposes are typically derived only from the buds of the plant, leaving the rest of the plant as regulated waste.

“Discovering valuable compounds in this waste material can help a company mitigate costly disposal fees and/or develop new revenue streams,” he says.

The testing will also help companies evaluate the addition of particular flavours and scents to their edible, beverage and vaping products and ensure that the psychoactive components in the products don’t exceed the legislated levels, he says.

Brock Acting Vice-President, Research Michelle McGinn calls the new license “a milestone” for Brock University and the Niagara region.

“It opens a new frontier for cannabis research that has immense implications for public health and economic growth,” she says. “Consistent with VPMI’s mission, we are applying our specialized knowledge and state-of-the-art equipment to solve real-world challenges and thereby demonstrating how science and business flourish together.”

Health Canada has also renewed a research-related cannabis license granted to Brock University, which was one of the first universities in the country to receive a cannabis-related research and development license.

That license, issued in 2019, permitted Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute (CCOVI) researchers and local industry partners to identify plant virus infections in cannabis and the other developing cannabis-infused drink technology.

Niagara Region Chief Administrative Officer Ron Tripp (right) toured the Brock-Niagara Validating, Prototyping and Manufacturing Institute (VPMI) on Friday, Nov. 15 with VPMI Scientific Director Paul Zelisko. During his visit, Tripp learned more about how the institute connects industry with researcher expertise and state-of-the-art equipment, working with a wide range of Niagara companies in sectors such as cannabis, medication, and polymer and resin production. The tour also highlighted how VPMI aligns with the region’s long-term economic development strategy by supporting businesses with cost-effective testing and prototyping for early-stage manufacturing to help them expand and tackle new markets.

Senior leadership from a key national research agency toured Brock facilities last week to learn more about how the University conducts research in collaboration with industry.

Joel Martin, Chief Digital Research Officer and Chief Sciences Officer for the National Research Council of Canada (NRC), was on campus to deliver a keynote address during AI Day on Nov. 7.

Martin’s visit highlighted several new opportunities for Brock researchers to work in partnership with the NRC, the primary national agency of the Government of Canada dedicated to science and technology research and development.

During his visit, he toured the Brock-Niagara Validation, Prototyping and Manufacturing Institute(VPMI) with VPMI Scientific Director Paul Zelisko, Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Chemistry.

Martin also visited the Brock LINC with Executive Director Farzana Crocco and learned more about the impact that Brock research has in Niagara and beyond through the Research Impact Hub with Jayne Morrish.

While meeting with Interim Vice-President, Research Michelle McGinn, he learned more about how Brock leverages on-campus expertise and student talent to conduct discovery-based research, work directly with local and international companies, and address the societal challenges of today and the future.

Paul Zelisko (left), Scientific Director of the Brock-Niagara Validation, Prototyping and Manufacturing Institute (VPMI), highlights industry partnerships during a visit from the Honourable Sam Oosterhoff, Associate Minister of Energy-Intensive Industries and Member of Provincial Parliament for Niagara West. During a tour of the VPMI facilities, the two discussed opportunities available for industry to partner with Brock, and the importance of mobilizing research and innovation to drive economic growth in the region.

Making food delicious as well as nutritious is the dream of food producers and their customers alike. Brock University’s Validation Prototyping and Manufacturing Institute (VPMI) is aiming to make that dream a reality.

“It’s no longer good enough to just throw sugar into something to make it taste good,” says VPMI Business Director Ivano Labricciosa. “It’s all about changing the product’s compounds and properties so that it tastes better, lasts longer, is healthier for you and achieves all the other good things that companies are trying to do with foods.”

Labricciosa, who joined Brock at the end of January, is connecting with food and agriculture companies that are interested in partnering with VPMI.

“They’re looking for three major things we offer: our facilities and expertise for product testing and development, space for their association meetings, and how we carry out certification testing for their products,” Labricciosa says.

Particularly attractive to the sector is Brock’s expertise in biology and chemistry and its cutting-edge equipment designed to advance the food and agriculture sectors, he says.

These include the gas chromatograph-olfactometer-mass spectrometer that allows researchers to smell isolated compounds as they’re being developed.

Other machines in the VPMI’s chromatography spectrometry suite enable companies to develop the look and taste of products and to test how appealing these modified products will be to consumers.

Last month’s announcement of the Brock-led research farm also brings a host of opportunities in the field of sustainable agriculture, says Labricciosa.

Funded by a grant from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the farm supports multi-institutional research to produce certified virus-free grapevines for the grape and wine industry, develop farming methods — or precision agriculture — that use a range of technologies to grow crops more efficiently and explore how agriculture innovations can be applied in urban settings.

“Because the lab equipment we have installed is the most advanced of its kind, we are best suited with some of our equipment to help support research projects at Brock’s farm,” says Labricciosa.

This includes VPMI infrastructure such as the mass spectrometry suite, which supports “green chemistry,” and the state-of-the-art Zeiss suite of microscopes and scanner, he says.

Another agriculture project has allowed Assistant Professor of Chemistry Vaughn Mangal and Professor of Biology Liette Vasseur to collaborate with VPMI on research they are conducting to validate the effectiveness of EcoWool Canada’s wool pellets in enhancing soil quality.

“Access to this equipment has allowed us to bridge soil chemistry, carbon cycling and plant physiology towards developing more sustainable greenhouse practices,” says Mangal, who used the total carbon analyzer machine to see how much carbon and nutrients are retained and lost in soils containing the EcoWool pellets.

Mangal is one of several Brock University researchers working with Labricciosa.

“We are now reaching out and across various Faculties to other Brock researchers to expand the volume of work in addition to getting the word out to many more industries both local and abroad,” says Labricciosa, who adds that VPMI is also working with other universities.

Labricciosa joins Brock from Oshawa Power, where he was President and CEO. He holds a Master of Engineering degree from the University of Toronto and a Master of Business Administration from Queen’s University. His professional history in engineering, business development and strategic planning includes international experience in alternative and renewable energy.

Postdoctoral fellows and graduate students explored the state-of-the-art technology and equipment available at the Brock-Niagara Validation, Prototyping and Manufacturing Institute (VPMI) on Tuesday, Nov. 28. During the tour, Associate Professor of Chemistry and VPMI Director Paul Zelisko shared the ways VPMI helps to address the needs of researchers and industry partners needs through its labs and 200-person collaborative meeting space. Graduate students, postdocs and others interested in benefiting from the institute’s technical expertise and equipment can contact the VPMI team.

The Brock-Niagara Validation, Prototyping and Manufacturing Institute (VPMI) connects Brock University’s advanced scientific and applied research expertise, state-of-the-art equipment assets, and testing and training capabilities with industry in the bioproducts, bioscience, bioagriculture and chemical manufacturing sectors. VPMI is made possible by a $6-million investment announced in 2019 by the Government of Canada, through the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario). Examples of these successful VPMI-industry partnerships are highlighted in this series. For more information, contact vpmi@brocku.ca

Poling Bork had a nightmare experience no parent should ever have to go through.

While in a neighbour’s pool, her young daughter inadvertently ended up in the deep end. Not knowing how to swim, the girl struggled and found herself in deep distress.

But she didn’t make a sound.

“Somebody saw her and pulled her out of the water,” Bork recalls. “The worst part for her was that she wasn’t able to say, ‘thank you’ to the person who rescued her.”

Bork’s daughter, and her other two children, have a condition called selective mutism (SM), which Anxiety Canada defines as being “a childhood anxiety disorder that is diagnosed when a child consistently does not speak in some situations, but speaks comfortably in other situations.”

Fast forward to more than a decade later and Bork (BSc ’02, Med ’08, PhD ’16) has partnered with Associate Professor of Psychology Dawn Good to create a one-of-a-kind virtual reality (VR) treatment for those living with SM, with support from the Brock-Niagara Validation, Prototyping and Manufacturing Institute (VPMI).

The VR software program places the individual with SM in simulated scenarios and social contexts they would encounter in everyday life, such as interacting with classmates and the teacher in a classroom, visiting a doctor’s office or ordering food from a restaurant.

Characters, who are either created virtually or portrayed by actual people through videos, are pre-programmed to ask the user questions or provide responses to questions. The user practices answering the character and making conversation as a way of slowly desensitizing them to the anxiety that prevents them from being verbal in real life.

Those who use the program can work through the challenges based on their comfort level by muting the sound, pausing the scene or using other features as they work through their anxieties at their own pace.

“This way, anyone with SM may practice speaking at any time, always in a safe, non-demanding context,” says Bork, a Senior Laboratory Instructor in Brock’s Department of Computer Science. “They can use the simulated environment to start training the older children, teenagers and adults to overcome the freezing-up that comes with the selected mutism condition. This is the first self-serve virtual reality program to treat this condition.”

This program is a key focus supported by The Selective Mutism Foundation. Bork founded the organization, which supports people with SM by sharing resources, recommending options, fostering research and creating supportive networks worldwide.

The non-profit charitable organization sprung out of Bork’s years of research, experiences with various medications and behavioural therapies, and PhD studies. Good, a neuroscientist and registered psychologist with expertise in neurodivergence, was one of Bork’s PhD examiners and co-organizer of Canada’s first-ever Selective Mutism Conference.

Good says children living with SM are capable of speaking to family members and other people they trust in private, but intense anxiety involuntarily blocks them from doing so in particular situations, such as when interacting with unfamiliar people or being out in public.

Conventional behavioural therapy treatment takes a desensitization approach, which involves getting individuals with SM out of their comfort zone by slowly, progressively exposing them to more challenging environments, says Good.

“We can get them over the challenge of being unable to seek help from a therapist and work through their fear of speech by practicing in the simulated social contexts over and over, until their action becomes automatic,” she says.

Bork says preliminary findings from the VR trials revealed the VR app was well received by participants, believing it would be a great tool to help them overcome SM.

“It is our hope that we may conduct a clinical trial to validate its efficacy in the near future,” she says.