Meet the Researcher: Dr. Ed Pryzdial

Fly fishing is perhaps one of the most unusual sports. It involves wading into a river and rhythmically waving a rod to cast an imitation insect, hand-fabricated from feathers and tinsel attached to a line, in hopes of fooling a finicky trout. It’s a peculiar mix of artistry, biology and physics. It’s also what brought Dr. Ed Pryzdial, in a round-about way, to his research at Canadian Blood Services.

As a graduate student at the University of Toronto, Dr. Pryzdial’s focus had been on biochemistry, it was only when he was lured to the University of Vermont Center of Thrombosis for his postdoctoral training by the prospect of learning how to fly fish that he discovered his passion for understanding the mechanics of how plasma protein products can affect blood clotting.

After his first year in Vermont, Dr. Pryzdial happened to come across a colleague he had worked with as a graduate student, who after discovering he was now focused on blood clotting offered him a job at what was then the Canadian Red Cross.

“It was a really good opportunity to start on the ground floor of building a new department dedicated to plasma protein products, focusing on numerous aspects of research relevant to transfusion,” Dr. Pryzdial, now a senior scientist at Canadian Blood Services says. “My lab was in Ottawa for a decade and then I was given the opportunity to move to Vancouver, where the Centre for Blood Research was developing.”

Plasma is used as a raw material to produce a category of drugs called plasma protein and related products. Large volumes of plasma are manipulated and manufactured into small amounts of finished product. These drugs are needed to treat conditions such as immune and bleeding disorders, and trauma and burn injuries.

“The biochemistry of some of the more important plasma protein products became interesting to me,” Dr. Pryzdial explains. “During my postdoctoral work I looked at designing new functions for them and understanding their goals. That led me into ways that we can bust clots and understanding how viruses exploit those plasma proteins to their evil ways.”

The goal for Dr. Pryzdial’s team is to develop new therapeutic drugs to help patients with heart disease and stroke. With heart disease plaque builds up in the arteries which increases the risk of blood clots. The clots can block the flow of blood to the heart, causing a heart attack, or to the brain, causing a stroke.

“Heart disease and stroke are the biggest killers on the planet and with the current clot-busters up to five or six per cent of patients risk bleeding. That can have a detrimental effect toward a secondary stroke,” Dr. Pryzdial says. “We're now working on a new area of therapeutics designed to bust clots in a way that is much safer than the current clot-busting drugs that exist.”

Dr. Pryzdial and his team are also investigating how viruses interact with the body’s blood clotting system. Many common viruses can trigger blood clots, which also causes inflammation and activates the immune system.

“This is interesting to us, and possibly to lots of people, because it could lead to a therapeutic that will help us broadly control any virus, not just one virus at a time,” Dr. Pryzdial says. We're hoping that in a future pandemic, we could use this instead of waiting for a vaccine to be developed.”

While the clotting system is fascinating, it’s also very complex making research a challenge. That’s where Dr. Pryzdial sees the value of Canadian Blood Services as indispensable.

“Canadian Blood Services is in a unique situation in Canada where we have both operations and research going on simultaneously and in discussion with one another all the time,” Dr. Pryzdial says. “It's a terrific model that we're operating under.”

Dr. Pryzdial’s work bridges the gap between creativity and action by turning complicated research questions into new ways to help patients in need. It’s sort of like fly fishing, just without the fish.

Learn more about Canadian Blood Services cutting-edge research here.