By Greg Basky for SHRF
Chronic kidney disease affects about 10% of the world’s population and impacts around four million Canadians. The number of people living with end-stage kidney disease (kidney failure) has grown 29% since 2012 and 45% of new patients are under the age of 65. Hemodialysis, the procedure these patients undergo to remove toxins, salts and excess fluid from their blood, represents a major conundrum for healthcare providers and researchers. Without this treatment, virtually all people with kidney disease will die. However, when a patient’s blood is exposed to the artificial membrane in a dialysis machine, it triggers inflammation which can lead to a host of other health problems.
“Without it (dialysis) they are not going to survive more than two weeks,” says Dr. Ahmed Shoker, a nephrologist in Saskatoon and past director of the Kidney Transplantation Program at St. Paul’s Hospital. “We are stuck with the problem that we need to remove the toxins, but at the same time we are paying a hefty price to do so.”
Dr. Amira Abdelrasoul, recipient of the 2024 SHRF Impact Award, has made it her mission to improve quality of life for dialysis patients, first by developing dialysis membranes that are more compatible with the human body. Ultimately though, she wants to leverage this work to create a wearable kidney, to free patients from having to come to hospital multiple times each week for treatment.
Amira’s origin story
Dr. Abdelrasoul, an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at USask’s College of Engineering, came to Saskatchewan in September 2017. Born in Egypt, she completed her undergraduate degree in chemical engineering at Alexandria University, then went on to complete her Master's degree at Kuwait University. She moved to Canada in 2008, began her PhD in 2011, and completed her postdoc – both focused on membrane technology – at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University). In 2015, Dr. Abdelrasoul completed her PhD, earning the prestigious Governor General's Gold Medal and the Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award in recognition of her exceptional achievements.
She landed in her chosen field, chemical engineering, because she was inspired by listening to her brother, a mechanical engineer, and her father, a chemist, talk about their work. It was a tragedy in her family that caused Amira to pivot the focus of her membrane research away from treating contaminated water to treating patients with kidney failure. In April 2017, her father died suddenly when he had a severe reaction while undergoing only his third dialysis treatment, following unexpected kidney failure. “I had so many questions – why it happened, how – because I had so much experience studying membranes. I knew how they worked.” That life event cemented her decision to devote all that she had learned (about membranes) “... to helping patients, by finding solutions to the problems with dialysis, so that no one else has to lose a loved one. I think about my dad all the time. That’s why I’m thinking about kidney failure patients all the time.” Motivated by her personal loss, Dr. Abdelrasoul transformed her grief into purpose and commitment, dedicating her research to improving dialysis treatment and giving hope to millions of patients.
Impacts of Abdelrasoul’s work
A major focus of Dr. Abdelrasoul’s work is on developing a better type of dialysis membrane, one that’s more compatible with patients’ blood and so does not trigger an inflammatory response in their body. She established the Hemodialysis Membrane Science Centre at the USask, the only program of its kind in Canada. Dr. Abdelrasoul says her Establishment Grant was critical to setting up her lab and research program. “Their support helped me establish a strong team with different experiences and skills, working closely with the hospital (St. Paul’s), with nurses, with doctors,” she says. “ Without SHRF, it wouldn’t have been possible.”
She’s using the ultrabright synchrotron light at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) to study at an atomic level what is happening within the pores of these new membrane designs – for which she already holds a patent for different membrane materials. She received the Young Investigator Excellence Award in 2022 from the CLS. Dr. Shoker says a number of large companies have already reached out to Amira; they’re champing at the bit to mass produce the membranes commercially, once she and her collaborators have finished fine-tuning their designs. “They are hungry for it,” Dr. Shoker says, with a chuckle.
Dr. Abdelrasoul has developed the first mathematical model that can predict, based on specific biomarkers in a patient ’s blood, what type of inflammation that dialysis treatment is likely to cause in kidney failure patients under different conditions and using different membranes. “So now we can give health care professionals a tool that will let them know what inflammation to expect – even before they do the dialysis,” she says.
Through her research, Abdelrasoul observed that Indigenous patients can have higher levels of a blood protein called fibrinogen which can trigger even more complications during hemodialysis. She’s now at work on customized membranes that can take into account varied protein levels. And by establishing a relationship with the Star Blanket Cree Nation, she has gained insights into some of the unique challenges community members face in accessing dialysis treatment, including having to leave their families and community to travel to Saskatoon, inadequate transportation options, the financial burden of repeated long-distance travel, and negative experiences with the health care system in the past.
Based on the major advances she made with the Establishment Grant she received from SHRF in 2019, Abdelrasoul has gone on to secure major funding from national agencies, including two New Frontiers in Research Fund grants. An innovative project, funded by a New Frontiers in Research Fund Grant, enables her team to work directly with human kidney cells and study how the kidney functions from a filtration mechanism perspective – something that has not been done before. Through this work, Dr. Abdelrasoul has designed and engineered a groundbreaking “human kidney-on-a-chip,” a tiny device containing living human kidney cells that replicate the natural structure and filtration mechanisms of a human kidney. This cutting-edge research represents a significant step forward in her journey toward developing a wearable kidney.
Her work has been recognized nationally and internationally. The Chemical Engineering Research and Design Journal recently ranked her among the top 18 outstanding women researchers globally. Here at home, she was named a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC) and was awarded the prestigious 2025 EIC Fellowship Award, a top honor in the field.
Supporting other women to pursue engineering careers
Abdelrasoul has grown used to the everyday challenges of being a woman working in engineering, a field long dominated by men. She’s quick to credit her former department head, Dr. Mehdi Nemati for supporting her as an Assistant Professor by backing her idea to establish a Women in Engineering chapter within the department – to support female students and increase the number of young women choosing to work in the area. She has been chairing the woman engineering chapter since 2018 and she’s pleased to be helping build this community. “I do my best to inspire other female students and encourage them by sharing my own experiences,” says Abdelrasoul. “There’s so much for them to balance, between their personal life, having kids, and finding success in their career. I strive to inspire as a role model.”
Dr.Abdelrasoul’s PhD supervisor, Dr. Huu Doan, who continues to mentor and collaborate with Amira, says “Amira is not only a brilliant scientist but also a dedicated mentor and leader. She is an inspirational figure in her field, fostering the next generation of researchers.”
Abdelrasoul’s work promises to change lives, reduce health care system costs
In Saskatchewan, roughly 700 patients undergo a total 70,000 - 100,000 dialysis treatments every year. The total annual cost to care for a patient on dialysis ranges from $56,000 to $107,000, depending on the type of treatment. “The government is spending a lot of money to treat patients with end-stage kidney disease,” says Dr. Shoker. “If we can design a better membrane that’s more biocompatible, we can save more lives.” Dr. Doan speaks to the broader implications for Amira’s work: “Beyond patient care, her innovations have the potential to reduce healthcare costs and improve the efficiency of dialysis treatments, contributing to a more sustainable healthcare system."
Agum Mapiour has seen first-hand the toll that people with kidney disease face. A registered nurse, Mapiour is research coordinator for one of Abdelrasoul’s projects that is surveying patients about the physical and psychological symptoms they experience as a result of the disease. The list of problems is lengthy, from muscle cramps and low blood pressure, to poor quality sleep and itchy skin. Mapiour has talked to people who used to love playing golf, but quit the game because one swing of the club now leaves them short of breath. For most patients, she says, life is reduced to planning their life around thrice-weekly, four-hour treatments.
She says Amira’s goal of developing a wearable kidney would be a godsend for kidney failure patients. “If we can achieve that, it would be great. It would improve the quality of life for a lot of the patients I’ve talked to,” says Mapiour. “Not having to be in hospital and just being out and about living life and not having to constantly worry about dialysis, they said that would be great.”
To read more about Dr. Abdelrasoul’s research, visit her website at https://abdelrasouldialysis.ca