By Andrew Carroll, Gazette Editor

An associate professor at Queen’s whose research is focused on women’s health is this year’s recipient of the Mihran and Mary Basmajian Award for Excellence in Health Research.

Chandrakant Tayade’s most recent work has primarily focused on endometriosis, a painful gynecological disorder. He is also researching how fetuses are lost during gestation.

Dr. Chandrakant Tayade

Dr. Tayade receives a $5,000 grant but more important is the recognition from his peers at the university’s Faculty of Health Sciences who select the winner each year. The Basmajian Award is handed out to the full-time faculty member “judged to have made the most meritorious contribution to health research during the previous year or several years."

“I am actually humbled and quite thrilled that we got recognition from the Faculty of Health Sciences. It’s a good feeling, it’s absolutely rewarding,” says Dr. Tayade, who recently marked five years at Queen’s. “This award is very special as you are working at Queen’s and it’s the Queen’s peers that thought you were doing something meaningful that deserves to be rewarded. I think that’s a really great feeling.”

As Dr. Tayade points out, there remains no solid treatment for endometriosis and that even with surgery to remove the lesions more than 50 per cent of women will see a recurrence of the disease.

“There is an absolute need to develop new therapeutic strategies and what we are doing is targeting the blood vessels, that the endometriotic lesions need in order to develop,” Dr. Tayade says. “If you target that then probably lesions won’t survive and if they don’t survive you won’t hopefully get the disease. That is the long-term futuristic approach we have.”

The award was established by Dr. John Basmajian, former head of the Department of Anatomy at Queen’s, in memory of his parents.