CBIA Core Image Contest Winners | Faculty of Medicine

The CBIA Core hosted a Microscopy Image Contest earlier this year. The contest was open to all uOttawa students, staff and professors. All images alongside their descriptions were judged by a panel of uOttawa professors and staff based on visual impact, the image description and technical challenge/originality of the image.

First place was awarded to Christopher John Bergin for his image “ecrypting the Intestinal Code”.

First place winner of the CBIA Core imaging contest, Christopher John Bergin.

deCRYPTing the Intestinal Code: Investigating the effects of novel repurposed compounds that selectively target the colorectal cancer stem cell epigenetic signature. Here, I am using immunohistochemistry to study the morphology and integrity of the mouse intestine (sectioned) following administration of these compounds in a murine syngenic model where I study the impact of these compounds on tumor formation frequency. This is one method of visual assessment to confirm these compounds don't impact normal tissue and are selective to cancer stem cells. Nuclei stained with DAPI (Blue), Smooth muscle alpha-actin (green) and E-cadherin (red). Image was taken from an entire intestine tiled using the Zeiss AxioImager M2. Image processing done in Fiji.

Second place was awarded to Bensun Cambell Fong for his image “Seashore at Sunset”.

Second place winner of the CBIA Core imaging contest, Bensun Cambell Fong.

Photo taken in CBIA core entitled Seashore at Sunset

Seashore at Sunset: A mouse, 50279 was born on July 16th, 2020, to father 9951 and mothers 460/461. He sacrificed his life 28 days after tamoxifen gavage, 14 days after injection of LV-EF1a-IRES-mCherry. The latter was performed in 1345 by Dr. Anthony Carter using stereotaxic apparatus. Seen here via the LSM800 (Z=6) is the 4% PFA-, subsequently 20% sucrose-filled coronal plane of his hippocampal formation, following 1:9 serial sectioning (#6 of 12) as well as IHC for YFP (green), mCherry (red) and Ki67 (magenta).

Third place was awarded to Stephanie Farhat for her image “When bones collide”.

Third place winner of the CBIA Core imaging contest, Stephanie Farhat.

Photo taken in CBIA Core entitled When bones collide

When bones collide: Image of a joint section (600um thickness) from a 6months old Sox9;Ai14 female mouse, 1month post tamoxifen injection. Blue represents DAPI, green CD31 (vasculature), grey collagen I (ECM secreted by bone cells) and red Sox9 (protein of interest). Trying to localise and characterize Sox9+ skeletal stem in thick bone tissues in adult mice. Microscope used: Leica SP8

The top three images were awarded with certificates and prizes, including a foldscope microscope to encourage and promote Open Science. The top 10 best images were also selected to be displayed as the computer wallpaper on all CBIA Core workstations for the next year.

Thank you to all who submitted image and to our judges. Special thank you to GradStudies for supplying some of the prizes for the winners.

We hope to see more amazing images in next year’s competition.