News

Medicine by Design invests $1 million in Convergent Working Group projects to integrate new strands of inquiry and expand its community across sectors

Seven new projects will focus on equity, commercialization policy, new regenerative medicine applications and more

By |2024-02-29T14:00:38-05:00June 5th, 2023|Categories: Awards, Convergent Working Groups, News|Tags: , , |

Developing functional pancreatic cells

Cristina Nostro, senior scientist at McEwen Stem Cell Institute, UHN, is a pioneer in developing insulin-producing cells as a cell therapy. She collaborates with UHN’s Sara Nunes Vasconcelos, a senior scientist who’s a vasculature, or blood vessel, expert. Together, they are developing a cell therapy for type 1 diabetes. Read more.

By |2024-03-01T13:12:07-05:00May 30th, 2023|Categories: 5 ways diabetes, Mini|

Cloaking insulin-producing cells to evade the immune system

A team led by Andras Nagy, senior investigator at Sinai Health System, has been developing a method called cloaking to enable treatments for type 1 diabetes. The cloaking technology turns off certain genetic switches in the cells to avoid detection and rejection by the immune system. Read more.

By |2023-06-07T16:42:27-04:00May 30th, 2023|Categories: 5 ways diabetes, Mini|

Engineering the immune system to accept insulin-producing cells

A team led by Sunnybrook Research Institute’s Juan Carlos Zúñiga-Pflücker, is working on immune-engineering techniques to enable a treatment for type 1 diabetes. The team’s strategy is to finely tune the immune system to maintain a healthy system while not rejecting a therapeutic transplant. Read more.

By |2023-06-13T07:57:24-04:00May 30th, 2023|Categories: 5 ways diabetes, Mini|

Teams focused on cell therapy and diagnostics win first and second place at the Building a Biotech Venture Pitch Competition

Myoxa Therapeutics and Specifix Dx win the Building a Biotech Venture Pitch Competition

Six teams to compete for $25k or $10k in funding at the Building a Biotech Venture Pitch Competition on May 2

Teams are working on a range of innovations including discovering new drug compounds, engineering cell therapies, preventing neurodegeneration and revolutionizing eye treatments

By |2024-03-15T12:23:00-04:00May 1st, 2023|Categories: Building a Biotech Venture, News|

A blood test to screen for heart disease

Phyllis Billia is part of a Medicine by Design team working on a screening tool that can predict the risk of cardiac disease and other inflammatory diseases of aging using only a blood test. Billia is a heart failure specialist, and the director of research at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre, University Health Network (UHN). Read more.

By |2023-05-02T09:18:40-04:00April 21st, 2023|Categories: 5 ways, Mini|Tags: |

Understanding plaque build-up in the arteries

Plaque build-up in the arteries can be dangerous, often leading to a blocked artery and heart or arterial disease. Researcher Clinton Robbins, who leads a Medicine by Design team project, is focusing on how immune cells, primarily two types called monocytes and macrophages, contribute to this problem. Read more.

By |2023-05-02T12:06:15-04:00April 21st, 2023|Categories: 5 ways, Mini|Tags: |
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