Discovery to Impact: The Medicine by Design Project Showcase in pictures

Michael Garton, assistant professor at U of T’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering, leads a Grand Questions team that includes researchers from UHN, U of T and The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids). His Grand Questions project aims to build an active community that integrates synthetic biology and regenerative medicine, called the Centre for the Design of Novel Human Tissues. The project’s goals are to develop tissues that are resistant to dying when used for therapies, and one day to create tissues that are enhanced — for example, able to release a drug when a disease flares up.

Sevan Hopyan, an orthopaedic surgeon & senior scientist in the Program in Development and Stem Cell Biology at SickKids, leads a Grand Questions project that combines developmental biologists, physicists and engineers to define biophysical mechanisms of tissue formation. This understanding will accelerate the ability to make human tissues for regenerative medicine. Hopyan collaborates with U of T researchers on this project.

Alison McGuigan, professor at U of T’s Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry and Institute of Biomedical Engineering, leads a project that’s focused on logging how cells communicate with each other in order to learn how to program cell function. This knowledge could help scientists control immune cells to increase the power of cell therapies. McGuigan collaborates with researchers from U of T and Sinai Health on this project. She is also a member of Medicine by Design’s Executive Leadership Team.

Keith Pardee, associate professor at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy at U of T, leads a Grand Questions project focused on on-demand cell therapies for affordable patient access in Canada. The goal of this project is to increase the accessibility of CART-T, a powerful but expensive immune cell therapy. He aims to make affordable bedside cell therapy that can be used anywhere, even in remote communities. For this project, Pardee collaborates with researchers at U of T and Ontario Institute for Cancer Research.

Myron Cybulsky is a senior scientist and staff pathologist at the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute (TGHRI), University Health Network (UHN). His lab is part of the team that’s focused on designing better blood vessels, led by Clinton Robbins, senior scientist at TGHRI. Cybulsky talked about how disease progression is impacted by intercellular communication between two cell types in the arterial wall. The project has implications in different types of diseases including abdominal aortic aneurysm and brings labs from across UHN and U of T together.

Gordon Keller, senior scientist & director at UHN’s McEwen Stem Cell Institute, leads a team that’s harnessing the liver’s power to regenerate. The project is focused on making several types of cells found in the liver to be used to develop cell therapies that can regenerate a damaged liver. The team’s animal studies have shown promise for treating diseases such as hemophilia A and cystic fibrosis-related liver disease. Labs from UHN, SickKids and U of T collaborated on this work. Keller is also a Medicine by Design strategic advisor.

Phyllis Billia is a senior scientist & the medical director of the Mechanical Circulatory Support Program at UHN’s Toronto General Hospital Research Institute. Billia is part of a team, led by John Dick at UHN’s Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, focused on disabling age-related riggers of heart disease. The team is developing age-related genetic biomarkers that can better predict disease prognosis and clinical care in patients susceptible to cardiogenic shock and those poised to receive a heart transplant. This project includes collaborators from Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, UHN and U of T.

Marcelo Cypel is the surgical director of the Ajmera Transplant Centre, and senior scientist at the TGHRI, UHN. His lab is part of a team focused on making more donor lungs available for transplant. The team’s goal is to continue to refine their ex vivo lung perfusion (EVLP) system to create ‘designer lungs’ that restore lung health and survive the transplant patient’s immune system attack to last a lifetime. This project is a collaboration between labs at UHN and U of T and is led by UHN’s Shaf Keshavjee, a thoracic surgeon and senior scientist at TGHRI.

Michael Laflamme, senior scientist at McEwen Stem Cell Institute and a staff pathologist at UHN, leads this team of labs at UHN, U of T, SickKids and Sunnybrook Research Institute. Laflamme is also a member of Medicine by Design’s Executive Leadership Team. The team has developed cardiomyocytes (heart cells) in the lab and are now focused on solving the challenges of transplanting the cells as a stem cell-derived, injectable cardiac therapy, which include cell survival and the risk of arrythmias. The team has secured a major New Frontiers in Research — Transformation stream grant, building upon this work with local and international collaborators.

Michael Sefton is the scientific director of Medicine by Design and a University Professor at U of T’s Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry and Institute of Biomedical Engineering. Sefton’s research is focused on engineering solutions for cell therapy delivery. He uses novel biomaterials to get the therapy into the patient in a way that is efficient and protected from immune attack. His current research in this area is focused on pancreatic cell therapy for type 1 diabetes.

Jeff Harding is a research associate in Andras Nagy’s Lab at Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Sinai Health. He presented on behalf of the Nagy lab, which leads a team labs at Sinai Health and UHN in a project focused on cloaking cells to evade the immune system. Nagy is also a Medicine by Design Strategic Advisor. Harding presented on how the cloaking strategy — which protects cells from immune rejection — can overcome a major bottleneck in cell therapy. Harding also spoke about the lab’s FailSafe(TM) technology that keeps faulty cells from replicating uncontrollably.

Juan Carlos Zúñiga-Pflücker is a senior scientist at Sunnybrook Research Institute and leads a project to enable long-lasting cell therapies for type 1 diabetes and other immune-mediated diseases. Zúñiga-Pflücker collaborates with labs at UHN, collectively working on transplanting stem cell-derived functional cells as a cell therapy. The project also focuses on controlling immune cells in addition to the therapy to increase the chances of the transplant’s survival. Zúñiga-Pflücker is a member of Medicine by Design’s Executive Leadership Team.

Penney Gilbert, an associate professor at U of T’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering, is part of a team led by Freda Miller (formerly a senior scientist at SickKids), focused on activating brain and muscle tissue to self-repair. This project brings together several stem cell biology, computational biology and engineering labs . The team uses computational biology to help discover stem cell targets. Researchers have also developed predictive in vitro tissue assays for testing drug candidates on the targets to see if they encourage stem cells to apply their healing abilities in the case of brain and skeletal muscular disease.

Cindi Morshead, professor and chair of the Division of Anatomy, Department of Surgery at U of T, leads a team of labs at U of T and Sunnybrook Research Institute in this project who are developing a gene therapy that can reprogram toxic cells in the brain into beneficial cells for treating neurodegeneration including from stroke. The team has seen functional improvements in animal models after using their therapy. This project is part of the foundational work that has led to a New Frontiers in Research —Transformation grant led by the Schuurmans lab at Sunnybrook Research Institute.

Molly Shoichet, University Professor at U of T’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry, leads a collaboration between labs at U of T, UHN and SickKids. Shoichet and her team’s goal is to develop better outcomes in treating blindness. The project looks at developing a method to treat vision diseases like glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration using a gel that’s compatible with the vitreous fluid in the eye to deliver therapeutic material into the eye. The team’s in vitro work has demonstrated that this method has strong promise for retinal disease therapy.

Elmar Jaeckel, who joined UHN as the medical director of the Toronto Liver Transplant Program in recent years, is a member of Medicine by Design’s Executive Leadership Team. He gave a talk titled, “Towards tissue-specific immune tolerance for enhanced regeneration.”

Jesse Gillis, an associate professor at the Department of Physiology, at U of T gave a talk titled, “Comparative single-cell transcriptomic analysis of primate brains.” Professor Gillis joined the university in 2021 with support from Medicine by Design’s New Investigator Program.

Matthew Buechler, an assistant professor at U of T’s Department of Immunology, gave a talk on fibroblasts and macrophages in health and disease. Professor Buechler joined the U of T faculty in 2021 with support from Medicine by Design’s New Investigator program.