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Each year, the prestigious Canada Gairdner Awards honour the world’s most innovative and accomplished researchers whose groundbreaking contributions to the treatment of disease and the alleviation of human suffering advance global health.  

The work of Dr. Meghan Azad, one of this year’s winners of the Gairdner Momentum Awards, exemplifies this mission.  

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Azad, a professor of pediatrics and child health at the University of Manitoba, is recognized for her innovative research on breastfeeding and the microbiome of breast milk. Her findings have been pivotal to informing best practices and approaches to maternal and infant health.  

“It started for me because I was studying the microbiome,” Azad says. “I started doing that in the context of babies, looking at their microbiomes and asking the question, ‘what shapes their microbiome?’ because you see a lot of differences between babies.”  

The Gairdner Momentum Awards were launched in 2023 to recognize two mid-career scientists in Canada for their exceptional research contributions that have made lasting impacts in the field of health. Nominees are typically 10 to 15 years past their first independent research project and have been active in Canada in the last six years.  

As her research evolved, Azad found that one of the determining factors of infant health is breast milk. Her team has found that it is so much more than just food for babies.  

“Breast milk is so variable from mom to mom, day to day, and country to country,” she says. “There are just so many aspects of breast milk that are fascinating. The fact that it contains cells, bacteria, enzymes and growth factors. These are all such important parts of breast milk.  

Azad will present her research during Gairdner Science Week, Oct. 21-25, highlighting the significance of breast milk, sharing key facts and showcasing findings from her team’s decade of research.  

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For nearly 70 years, the Gairdner Foundation has been focused on facilitating collaboration among researchers in the field of human health from Canada and around the world and recognizing research excellence. Since the foundation’s start in 1957, 418 awards have been given to laureates from over 40 countries, with 98 of these recipients later earning Nobel Prizes.  

In total, there are eight Canada Gairdner Awards recipients, all of whom participate in the foundation’s national student outreach program, Laureate Lectures and symposiums during Gairdner Science Week. Inspired by the 2024 Canada Gairdner award laureates, these events are free, open to the public and available via live stream.

Beyond awards recognition, the foundation connects recipients with students and researchers across the country, as well as laureates from around the world.  

Here are the winners of this year’s awards:  

Canada Gairdner International Award

• Drs. Shankar Balasubramanian, David Klenerman, and Pascal Mayer awarded for the fundamental and applied research that led to a revolutionary and affordable method to sequence DNA on a massive scale, which has dramatically accelerated discoveries in the life sciences and medicine. 
• Drs. Michel Sadelain and Zelig Eshhar awarded for seminal contributions to the conception, development and application of CD19-CAR T cell therapy for cancer. 

John Dirks Canada Gairdner Global Health Award

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• Dr. Gagandeep Kang awarded for extensive cohort-based epidemiological, environmental and clinical trial research on enteric diseases in children and their effects on life course, with significant impact on vaccine development and health policy in India and internationally. 

Canada Gairdner Momentum Award

• Dr. Christian Landry awarded for the development of novel approaches that combine synthetic biology, experimental evolution, and systems biology to address fundamental questions about gene function relevant to health and human disease. 
• Dr. Meghan Azad awarded for research on understanding how human breast milk contributes to shaping the infant microbiome and lifelong health. 

To sign up to participate in Gairdner Science Week and hear from Dr. Azad and the other laureates, visit gairdner.org.  

This story was created by Content Works, Postmedia’s commercial content division, on behalf of the Gairdner Foundation. 

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