Canada Research Chairs are funded by the government of Canada. Tier 1 chairs are awarded to outstanding researchers acknowledged by their peers as world leaders in their fields.

The Canada Research Chair in Women's Health and Immunobiology is a partnership between the Women's College Research Institute, the University Health Network (UHN) and the department of immunology at the University of Toronto. This chair conducts and inspires research focused on sex differences in the immune system.

Dr. Eleanor Fish holds this chair, which was first announced in the spring of 2007. She leads the Arthritis and Autoimmunity Research Centre (AARC) at the University Health Network, Canada's largest and most comprehensive research centre dedicated to autoimmune diseases. She is head of the division of cell and molecular biology at the Toronto General Research Institute and professor in the department of immunology at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Fish is internationally recognized for her research on interferons and infectious diseases. In any disease, specific target cells develop characteristics that determine severity and outcome. Knowledge of these characteristics - disease biomarkers - provides targets for therapeutic intervention. Dr. Fish's research is focused on identifying these biomarkers, whether the disease is viral (influenza, SARS) or autoimmune (rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis). Dr. Fish's strategy is to identify and correct any host defect, to eliminate disease, focusing on the host immune response, not the disease. Given the prevalence of autoimmune diseases in women and the fact that women are more resistant to certain bacterial and viral infections than men, sex-related biomarkers may influence the immune environments in males and females that underlie differences in susceptibility to infections and autoimmune diseases. Dr. Fish's strategy of focusing on the host response to disease, rather than focusing on the disease, will lead to the development of novel therapeutics with widespread clinical application, adapted or customized according to sex. She also hopes to build a collaborative, multi-disciplinary team to engage in this translational research.

"One of the things I have committed to as the Canada Research Chair is to recruit a faculty member to UHN who will focus on sex differences in the immune response." Like herself, she hopes the new recruit will have an appreciation for the broad scope of women's health research.

"I'm part of a basic science department [immunology] at the university, says Fish, "but I am hospital-based, so I've always had an interest in translational research -work that can apply what we learn about the underlying mechanisms to the treatment of disease. Building an integrated community that shares knowledge across disciplines is the essential function of this chair."