A Medicine by Design team is working on reprogramming brain cells — a strategy that has demonstrated brain repair in animal models of stroke. "Think of it as a bespoke strategy for brain repair,” says Maryam Faiz, one of the team's researchers. Read more.
Stem cells can repair tissues and organs damaged by acute injury, genetic disease or the aging process. Freda Miller leads a team that is tackling the question of how to activate stem cells to repair the brain on demand. Read more.
A Medicine by Design team lead by Jeff Wrana aims to use organoids to gain unique insights into the human-specific aspects of signaling networks associated with conditions such as autism. Read more.
A project led by Cindi Morshead is investigating electrical stimulation's promise for neural repair through promoting neuroplasticity and facilitating neural regeneration. Read more.
An interdisciplinary team of scientists led by Molly Shoichet is working on a ground-breaking research project to restore vision using retinal stem cells. Read more.
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.
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.
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.
Sarah Crome, a scientist at UHN, is working on an innovation that could have an impact on type 1 diabetes as well as the success of organ transplants. Her team is testing a new immune-cell therapy approach using a subset of immune cells with anti-inflammatory properties. Read more.
Michael Sefton, scientific director of Medicine by Design and University Professor at U of T, is developing a method to transfer insulin-producing cells to a patient under the skin. Read more.
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.
Michael Garton, an assistant professor at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto (U of T), is focused on designing tissues that are better than nature. To accomplish this goal, Garton is leading a team funded by Medicine by Design’s Grand Questions Program. Read more.
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.
Stephanie Protze, a scientist at the McEwen Stem Cell Institute at UHN, is focused on developing a biological pacemaker from stem cells, which could one day be transplanted into a patient to be a long-lasting, potentially permanent, therapy for those with too slow heart rhythm. Read more.
A team led by Michael Laflamme, a clinician-scientist at the McEwen Stem Cell Institute at UHN, is developing a novel injectable cell therapy to repair hearts damaged by heart attack or disease. Made from stem cells, the therapy targets scar tissue, back into muscle. Eventually, this therapy could replace the need for a heart transplant. Read more.
