Stephen Vanner
- Clinician Scientist, KGHRI
- Director, Gastrointestinal Diseases Research Unit (GIDRU), Kingston Health Sciences Centre
- Professor, Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, and Director, Translational Institute of Medicine, Queen’s University
- Pain signalling in the gut
- Irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease
Dr. Vanner received a undergraduate degree in Life Sciences and a concurrent MD and MSc degree from Queen’s University. After completing his Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology training at Queen’s and he carried out post doctoral research training in enteric neurophysiology at the Vollum Institute in Portland, Oregon. Since returning to Queen’s University in 1991 he has been an attending staff in Gastroenterology at the Kingston General and Hotel Dieu Hospitals and cares for patients with gastrointestinal disorders in both the inpatient and outpatient departments. He performs a full range of endoscopic procedures.
He has subspecialty expertise in gastrointestinal motility disorders involving the lower GI tract including the small intestine, colon and anorectum, and is director of the anorectal motility laboratory. He has an established translational research program that examines mechanisms underlying pain signaling and motility in the gastrointestinal tract. He has published extensively, with more than 6,000 research citations.
MD, MSc, Queen’s University
Stephen Vanner is Director of the Gastrointestinal Disease Research Unit (GIDRU) at Queen’s University. He also leads the Canadian Neurogastroenterology Network (CNN), a consortium of IBS researchers throughout Canada. His translational research program examines the pain mechanisms in irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease, with a goal of identifying new targets for the development of novel therapies to treat pain. He also investigates the regulation of blood flow in the enteric nervous system. Another particular area of interest has been the investigation and development of colonic cleansing regiments for colonoscopy, with one U.S. patent issued and several pending. In 2016 he was named a co-investigator in a $12.5 million, CIHR funded, large-scale national research project looking at gastrointestinal disease, where his work includes studying the effects of a diet low in some types of carbohydrates on Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
