¶ Samira Mubareka
Dr. Samira Mubareka, MD, FRCPC is a Canadian microbiologist based in Toronto, Ontario. She is a clinical scientist at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, and a professor in the University of Toronto Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology.[1] She works as the Infectious Diseases Lead at the Centre for Research Expertise in Occupational Diseases.[2]
She serves as chair of the Royal Society of Canada's Working Group on One Health,[3] and the Ontario Academic Health Sciences SARS-CoV-2 Sequencing Network (ONS2). She also served as an advisor to the COVID-19 Therapeutics Task Force.[4]
¶ History
Mubareka was born in Göttingen, Germany, and her family immigrated to a small town in northwestern New Brunswick when she was two.[5]
¶ Education
Mubareka received her undergraduate degree from the University of New Brunswick.[6] She completed her MD at Dalhousie University in 1999 and Internal Medicine training in 2002 at McGill University. She specialized in infectious diseases and medical microbiology at the University of Manitoba, graduating in 2005.
¶ Career
She went on to a research fellowship at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York City, in the laboratory of Dr. Peter Palese in the Department of Microbiology, finishing in 2009. While there, she focused on the development of a novel animal model for the transmission of influenza virus, developing an interest around the aerobiology of virus transmission, which remains a focus of her work.
¶ COVID-19
In March 2020, the University of Toronto announced that Mubareka had isolated the SARS-CoV-2 virus along with teammate Robert Kozak and McMaster University researcher Arinjay Banerjee.[7] According to the press release, the team had “culture[d] the virus from two clinical specimens in a level three containment facility.” Allegedly, “Mubareka and Kozak collected specimens of the coronavirus from the first confirmed case in Canada, an adult male who was treated and eventually discharged from Sunnybrook after returning from Wuhan, China – the epicentre of the outbreak.”[8] They collaborated with Allison McGeer from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health in order to develop testing capabilities for the virus.
On March 10, 2020, Mubareka participated in the convening of the Chief Science Advisor of Canada's COVID-19 Expert Panel.[9][10]
In April 2020, Genome Canada announced the formation of the Canadian COVID-19 Genomics Network (CanCOGen).[11] Mubareka serves on the project's Coordinating Committee, and on the Implementation Committee for CanCOGen's VirusSeq (Virus Sequencing Project).[12] Following a $1 million donation from QuestCap, Mubareka formed the Sunnybrook Translational Research Program for Emerging and Respiratory Viruses (SERV) to focus on viral genomics, transmission and the development of medical countermeasures.[13][14]
In May 2020, Mubareka was included on a poster featuring “Women of COVID” alongside Janice Fitzgerald, Theresa Tam, Heather Morrison, Bonnie Henry, Barbara Yaffe, Jennifer Russell, Shelby Yamamoto, and Deena Hinshaw.[6:1] This and a second poster in 2021 were produced by the Canadian Science and Technology Museum through its Women in Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics initiative.[15]
Mubareka served as a founding member of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table upon its creation in July 2020 until its dissolution in September 2022.[16][15:1] She is also a member of the steering committee for Ontario’s COVID-19 Genomics Rapid Response Coalition (ONCoV) under Ontario Genomics.[17][2:1]
Mubareka served as an advisor to the COVID-19 Therapeutics Task Force,[4:1] which ran from July 13, 2020 to February 25, 2021.[18]
¶ Research
Mubareka's research interests lie in infectious diseases & immunopathology.[1:1] She has worked closely with animal health colleagues at the University of Guelph and the National Centre for Animal Diseases (NCFAD).[2:2] She also received funding for arthropod vector-borne work in collaboration with the National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) and the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) through its Infectious Diseases and Climate Change Fund, and to examine coronavirus transmission among Canadian bats (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada), incorporating behavioural, biological, ecological and epidemiological considerations.
She has received funding from PHAC for orthobunyavirus research related to climate change and infectious diseases.[19]
¶ COVID-19
The viral sequence allegedly isolated by Mubareka and colleagues is now the principle source of SARS-CoV-2 samples to most academic Containment Level 3 (CL3) laboratories across the country.[2:3]
Mubareka participated in two World Health Organization-commissioned reviews to inform use of high-flow nasal cannula (HFNC) in patients with COVID-19. The work was funded by the WHO and organized through the MAGIC Evidence Ecosystem Foundation.[20]
She additionally contributed to a study on spike protein antigens in saliva, funded by the Ontario Together Fund, as well as Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), Questcap, and the Krembil Foundation through the Sinai Health Foundation.[21]
She participated in pre-clinical research on Providence Therapeutics's mRNA COVID-19 vaccine candidate.[22]
She co-authored a study on Twitter activity related to vaccine hesitancy and support for COVID-19 vaccines from January 2020 to January 2021, with “positive being the dominant polarity and having higher engagements. The amount of discussion on vaccine rejection and hesitancy was more than interest in vaccines during the course of the study, but the pattern was different in various countries.”[23]
¶ Work with Ralph Baric
In October 2007, Mubareka co-authored a study on influenza's transmission relative to humidity and temperature. The paper was edited by Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.[24]
In January 2009, Mubareka co-authored a study exploring two amino acids that improve transmission of influenza from animals to humans. This was also edited by Ralph Baric.[25]
¶ Funding
Mubarek's sources of research funding include:
- Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)[26]
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
- Consortium de recherche biopharmaceutique
- MAGIC Evidence Ecosystem Foundation
- National Microbiology Laboratory (NML)
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC)
- Providence Therapeutics
- Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC)
- Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre
- University of Guelph
- W. M. Keck Foundation
- World Health Organization (WHO)
¶ External links
Samira Mubareka. University of Toronto. Retrieved September 10, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20220910175055/https://lmp.utoronto.ca/faculty/samira-mubareka ↩︎ ↩︎
Dr. Samira Mubareka. Centre for Research Expertise in Occupational Diseases. Retrieved September 10, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20220910194545/https://creod.on.ca/aboutcreod/dr-samira-mubareka/ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
One Health. The Royal Society of Canada. Retrieved September 10, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20220107001421/https://rsc-src.ca/en/themes/one-health ↩︎
Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada. (2022, March 10). COVID-19 Therapeutics Task Force. Government of Canada. http://archive.today/2023.04.27-230206/https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/canadian-life-science-industries/en/covid-19-therapeutics-task-force ↩︎ ↩︎
Hiebert, R. (2021, August 3). Humans of LMP: Samira Mubareka. University of Toronto. http://archive.today/2022.09.11-053322/https://lmp.utoronto.ca/news/humans-lmp-samira-mubareka ↩︎
Women of COVID. Women in Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics. Retrieved September 10, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20220910221841/https://womeninstem.ingeniumcanada.org/portfolio-item/women-of-covid/#tab-id-9 ↩︎ ↩︎
Vendeville, G. (2020, March 13). U of T and McMaster researchers at Sunnybrook Hospital isolate virus behind COVID-19. University of Toronto. https://web.archive.org/web/20220419170812/https://lmp.utoronto.ca/news/u-t-and-mcmaster-researchers-sunnybrook-hospital-isolate-virus-behind-covid-19 ↩︎
Vendeville, G. (2022, February 19). U of T and Sunnybrook virologists work on tools to combat coronavirus outbreak. University of Toronto News. http://archive.today/2022.09.10-195204/https://www.utoronto.ca/news/u-t-and-sunnybrook-virologists-work-tools-combat-coronavirus-outbreak ↩︎
COVID-19 Expert Panel. Government of Canada. Retrieved June 20, 2020, from https://web.archive.org/web/20200620110333/https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/063.nsf/eng/h_98013.html ↩︎
Evidence - INDU (43-2) - No. 20. (2021, February 25). House of Commons of Canada. https://web.archive.org/web/20220910201916/https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/43-2/INDU/meeting-20/evidence ↩︎
Canadian COVID-19 Genomics Network. Genome Prairie. Retrieved September 10, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20220910202510/https://www.genomeprairie.ca/project/current/canadian-covid-19-genomics-network-cancogen/ ↩︎
Governance. Canadian COVID Genomics Network - VirusSeq. Retrieved September 10, 2022, from http://archive.today/2022.09.10-202316/https://virusseq.ca/about/governance/ ↩︎
Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. (2020, April 1). QuestCap Inc. makes timely $1-million investment in Sunnybrook to establish research group dedicated to fighting COVID-19. Cision. https://web.archive.org/web/20220620155443/https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/questcap-inc-makes-timely-1-million-investment-in-sunnybrook-to-establish-research-group-dedicated-to-fighting-covid-19-857797510.html ↩︎
Congratulations Dr. Samira Mubareka. (2020, May 20). Sunnybrook Hospital. https://web.archive.org/web/20200616022303/https://sunnybrook.ca/media/item.asp?page=38&i=2116 ↩︎
Samira Mubareka. Women in Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics. Retrieved September 10, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20220910203059/https://womeninstem.ingeniumcanada.org/portfolio-item/samira-mubareka/#toggle-id-2 ↩︎ ↩︎
About Us. Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table. Retrieved November 1, 2020, from http://archive.today/2020.11.01-070929/https://covid19-sciencetable.ca/about/ ↩︎
Home. ONCoV. Retrieved September 10, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20220910203044/https://www.oncov.ca/ ↩︎
Release Package - Health Canada A-2021-000345. (2024). Internet Archive. Health Canada. https://archive.org/details/release-package-health-canada-a-2021-000345 ↩︎
Mubareka, S. (2020). Declaration of Interest. Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table. https://web.archive.org/web/20220901225837/https://covid19-sciencetable.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Declaration-of-Interest_Science-Table_Samira-Mubareka.pdf ↩︎
Agarwal, A., Basmaji, J., Muttalib, F., Granton, D., Chaudhuri, D., Chetan, D., Hu, M., Fernando, S. M., Honarmand, K., Bakaa, L., Brar, S., Rochwerg, B., Adhikari, N. K., Lamontagne, F., Murthy, S., Hui, D. S. C., Gomersall, C., Mubareka, S., Diaz, J. V., & Burns, K. E. A. (2020). High-flow nasal cannula for acute hypoxemic respiratory failure in patients with COVID-19: systematic reviews of effectiveness and its risks of aerosolization, dispersion, and infection transmission. Canadian Journal of Anaesthesia = Journal Canadien D’anesthesie, 67, 1217–1248. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12630-020-01740-2 ↩︎
Isho, B., Abe, K. T., Zuo, M., Jamal, A. J., Rathod, B., Wang, J. H., Li, Z., Chao, G., Rojas, O. L., Bang, Y. M., Pu, A., Christie-Holmes, N., Gervais, C., Ceccarelli, D., Samavarchi-Tehrani, P., Guvenc, F., Budylowski, P., Li, A., Paterson, A., & Yue, F. Y. (2020). Persistence of serum and saliva antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 spike antigens in COVID-19 patients. Science Immunology, 5(52). https://doi.org/10.1126/sciimmunol.abe5511 ↩︎
Liu, J., Budylowski, P., Samson, R., Griffin, B. D., Babuadze, G., Rathod, B., Colwill, K., Abioye, J. A., Schwartz, J. A., Law, R., Yip, L., Ahn, S. K., Chau, S., Naghibosadat, M., Arita, Y., Hu, Q., Yue, F. Y., Banerjee, A., Hardy, W. R., & Mossman, K. (2022). Preclinical evaluation of a SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine PTX-COVID19-B. Science Advances, 8(3). https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abj9815 ↩︎
Yousefinaghani, S., Dara, R., Mubareka, S., Papadopoulos, A., & Sharif, S. (2021). An analysis of COVID-19 vaccine sentiments and opinions on Twitter. International Journal of Infectious Diseases, 108, 256-262,. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijid.2021.05.059 ↩︎
Lowen, A. C., Mubareka, S., Steel, J., & Palese, P. (2007). Influenza virus transmission Is dependent on relative humidity and temperature. PLoS Pathogens, 3(10), e151. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.0030151 ↩︎
Steel, J., Lowen, A. C., Mubareka, S., & Palese, P. (2009). Transmission of influenza virus in a mammalian host is increased by PB2 amino acids 627K or 627E/701N. PLoS Pathogens, 5(1), e1000252. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1000252 ↩︎
Udugama, B., Kadhiresan, P., Kozlowski, H. N., Malekjahani, A., Osborne, M., Li, V. Y. C., Chen, H., Mubareka, S., Gubbay, J. B., & Chan, W. C. W. (2020). Diagnosing COVID-19: the disease and tools for detection. ACS Nano, 14(4). https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.0c02624 ↩︎