Members
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Juan Carlos Zúñiga-Pflücker, director Dr. Juan Carlos Zúñiga-Pflücker is a senior scientist at Sunnybrook Research Institute and a professor in immunology at the University of Toronto. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Developmental Immunology and was recently identified by Thompson Scientific as a highly cited researcher in the field of immunology for his landmark December 2002 paper in Immunity, which showed how to generate T lymphocytes from stem cells in a tissue culture dish. This breakthrough discovery established a simple and effective way for researchers to study T cell development, and has advanced this study in hundreds of laboratories around the world. This work serves as the foundation of his current research within ARTEC to design an artificial thymus for the effective production of progenitor T cells. Dr. Zúñiga-Pflücker received his PhD in genetics and immunology from George Washington University, Washington, DC in 1991. As a graduate student, Dr. Zúñiga-Pflücker studied with Dr. Ada Kruisbeek at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. He went on to complete his postdoctoral studies with Dr. Michael Lenardo, also at the NIH. Since the completion of his studies, he has pursued a research program that has resulted in the publication of several groundbreaking papers in many high-impact journals. |
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Kim Woodhouse, associate director Dr. Kim Woodhouse graduated in chemical engineering at McGill University in 1979 and received her PhD in chemical engineering from McMaster University in 1993. Dr. Woodhouse is an expert in the design of novel materials made from both synthetics and recombinant proteins. She is a professor in the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry and in the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering. She is also the associate director of the Advanced Regenerative Tissue Engineering Centre, a multi-institutional centre to bring basic scientists, engineers and clinicians together to develop novel constructs for soft tissue engineering. Dr. Woodhouse has considerable expertise in polyurethane development, the use of collagen and elastin based materials for tissue engineering scaffolds, and wound healing mechanisms associated with biomaterials. She was awarded a Premier's Excellence Award and received the Professional Engineers Ontario Engineering Medal in 1997, "in recognition of valuable contributions made while furthering the technical advancement of the engineering profession in Ontario and its application to the public welfare". She collaborates in an international project sponsored by the National Institutes of Health for materials development with the University of Washington and industry to develop a cardiac patch. She is currently chair of the Biomedical Engineering Grants Committee of CIHR. In addition to her academic background she has almost 10 years' experience in private sector manufacturing. Dr. Woodhouse has extensive international experience in management and educational consulting. She is familiar with the needs of the medical industry in both the United States and Canada. Most recently, she has patented technology developed through work with Materials and Manufacturing Ontario and has co-founded a biotechnology company. |
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John Semple, clinical director Dr. John Semple received his MD degree at McMaster University and his surgical training at the University of Toronto. He received a Medical Research Council of Canada research fellowship during his surgical training and completed a M.Sc. in experimental pathology. Upon completion of his surgical training he was clinical fellow in microsurgery at the Toronto General Hospital. Currently, Dr. Semple is surgeon in chief at Women's College Hospital and a professor in the department of surgery at the University of Toronto. He is also the director of research at the University of Toronto's division of plastic surgery and past president of the Canadian Society of Plastic Surgeons. Dr. Semple has a special interest the converging disciplines of surgery, bioengineering and basic science and their potential to act as a novel research platform in regenerative medicine and in solving surgical challenges. His clinical practice is in soft tissue reconstruction following cancer surgery. Current research projects include the use of acellular constructs in soft tissue reconstruction, lymphangiogenesis in wound healing and artificial lymph nodes. He also has an interest in computational systems in regenerative medicine. |
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Dan Dumont Dr. Dan Dumont received his PhD from McMaster University in 1993 and is currently a senior scientist in biological sciences research at Sunnybrook Research Institute. He was the first to identify the angiogenesis-related receptor, Tek/Tie2, and to mutate it in embryonic stem cells. Dr. Dumont holds a prestigious Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Lymphangiogenic and Angiogenic signalling. In 2003, he was awarded the William E. Rawls Award, given by the National Cancer Institute of Canada to a young investigator whose work has led to important advances in cancer control within the past decade. Dr. Dumont's research is focused on two functions of the body's vessels – lymphangiogenesis, the growth of lymphatic vessels, and angiogenesis, the growth of blood vessels from pre-existing vessels. In the healthy body, these processes are essential to our growth and development, wound healing, the monthly female reproductive cycle and in building the placenta during pregnancy. Both lymphangiogenesis and angiogenesis, however, also contribute to the development of disease, such as the growth of tumours in cancer, diabetic retinopathy (a disease of the eyes), arthritis and psoriasis. Dr. Dumont's research using both a biochemical and mouse molecular genetic approach addresses how these vessels develop in the embryo and in the adult. Dr. Dumont's lab has developed a new proagniogenic drug that is currently being tested for chronic wound care. The compound they have developed is called Vasculotide, which is an angiopoietin peptide-mimetic that when added to wounds, results in a dramatic increase in the number of vessels and a decrease in the time required for wound closure. The new drug is now being developed for regenerative medicine and various other diseases where poor vasculature may be an underlying cause of morbidity. |
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Miles Johnston Dr. Miles Johnston received his B.Sc. in physiology/pharmacology at the University of Toronto and a PhD in the division of experimental pathology (department of pathology) at the same institution in 1979. Following postdoctoral training at the A.R.C. Institute of Animal Physiology, Babraham, Cambridge, England, he returned to Canada to take up a faculty position at the University of Toronto. Currently, he is a professor in the department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology and is a senior scientist in the neuroscience research program at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. For many years, Dr. Johnston's research focused on the biomechanics of fluid propulsion through the lymphatic circulatory system. Additionally, his work has been directed at the issue of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) absorption into extracranial lymphatic vessels. More recently, his research interests have included lymphangiogenesis and the development of new methods to treat lymphedema. In this regard, he will be exploring the concept that the re-implantation of lymph nodes into the surgical incision sites may be an effective method to improve lymph flow dynamics in patients suffering from breast cancer related lymphedema. His research is funded, in part, by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. |
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Milica Radisic Dr. Milica Radisic graduated in chemical engineering from McMaster University and received a PhD in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of technology. She was a postdoctoral associate at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Science and Technology. Currently, she is an assistant professor at the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering and the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry at the University of Toronto. She received a number of awards and fellowships including Poitras Pre-Doctoral Fellowship and Presidential Graduate Fellowship (MIT). Dr. Radisic's research is in the field of cardiac tissue engineering. She uses isolated heart cells in combination with biomaterial scaffolds and bioreactors to cultivate functional heart tissue in vitro. The bioreactors are designed to provide some of the major factors found in the native myocardium. The factors include convective-diffusive oxygen transport, application of synthetic oxygen carrier to increase oxygen carrying capacity of the culture medium and electrical stimulation of tissue contraction. She also studies the effect of electrical stimulation on the assembly of functional heart tissue based on multiple cell populations (cardiomyocytes, fibroblasts and endothelial cells). |
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Michael Sefton, former member The central theme of Dr. Sefton's research was that biomaterials and biomaterial-based devices (e.g., cell microcapsules, tissue engineering scaffolds) are agonists of biological responses. These responses include thrombosis ("clotting"), inflammation, immune responses, matrix remodelling, angiogenesis, wound healing (i.e., all aspects of a host response to an implanted material or device). Depending on the problem, the lab synthesises new polymers, formulates existing polymers into novel forms, assesses surface chemistry and structure, studies cell-material interactions in cell culture or conducts in vivo experiments in animals (mice, rats and occasionally dogs and pigs). Most of the responses of interest are only evident in vivo and so the in vivo studies are typically key in many projects at the masters and PhD levels. In the context of ARTEC, Dr. Sefton is particularly interested in understanding the healing of acellular and cell containing skin substitutes with a view to enhancing healing and function by control of remodelling, incorporating vascularizing agents or other means. |
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Molly Shoichet Dr. Molly Shoichet received her SB from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in chemistry and her PhD from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in polymer science and engineering. She worked at CytoTherapeutics Inc. on encapsulated cell therapy before being recruited to the University of Toronto in 1995. She has published over 220 papers, patents and abstracts and has been invited to speak at over 130 institutions worldwide. Dr. Shoichet holds the Canada Research Chair in Tissue Engineering and is a professor of chemical engineering and applied chemistry, chemistry and biomaterials, and biomedical engineering at the University of Toronto. She is the recipient of such prestigious distinctions as NSERC's Steacie Fellowship, CIHR's Young Explorer's Award (to the top 20 scientists under 40 in Canada), CSChE's Syncrude Innovation Award, Canada's Top 40 under 40 and the University of Toronto's McLean Award. Dr. Shoichet is an expert in the study of polymers for regeneration – that is materials that promote healing in the body. Her research has commercial appeal and her laboratory has numerous patents published and pending on drug delivery and scaffold design. Dr. Shoichet also founded Matregen Corp., a spinoff on drug delivery and based on a polymer process platform technology invented in her laboratory and previously co-founded BoneTec Corp, also a spinoff from her laboratory. |
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Cari Whyne Dr. Cari Whyne graduated in mechanical engineering at Queen's University and received her PhD in bioengineering from University of California, Berkeley and University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Whyne is an expert in the area of orthopaedic biomechanics. She is an assistant professor in the department of surgery, the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering and the Institute of Medical Sciences at the University of Toronto. She is also the director of the Holland musculoskeletal research program at Sunnybrook Research Institute and a co-chair of orthopaedic research at the University of Toronto. Dr. Whyne is the director of the orthopaedic biomechanics laboratory at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, which is focused on clinically translational bioengineering research. She works primarily in the area of spinal biomechanics, skeletal metastases and lower extremity trauma, combining the use of computational modeling, experimental testing, imaging and clinical studies. Her research integrates biomechanical analyses with clinical, epidemiological and basic science investigations of musculoskeletal injury and disease, with a final goal of translating the findings to their ultimate use in the clinic. Her research also incorporates the design and implementation of novel surgical techniques and technology in orthopaedics and orthopaedic trauma. |
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Albert Yee Dr. Albert Yee graduated from the University of Toronto Medical School. He completed his orthopaedic surgical residency at the University of Toronto where he received the RI Harris Postgraduate Award. During his surgical residency, he enrolled in the surgeon-scientist program with the Institute of Medical Science and received his Masters of Science with the University of Toronto. He completed his clinical spinal surgical fellowship at Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, OH) and spent an additional postdoctoral fellowship year in spinal research supported by a University of Toronto Samuel McLaughlin Foundation Scholarship in Medicine. Dr. Yee returned to the University of Toronto as an assistant professor in surgery and an associate scientist in physical sciences at Sunnybrook Research Institute. He is an associate member of the Institute of Medical Science and holds a cross-appointment with the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Yee's spinal research expertise relates to preclinical models of surgery and he has experience in the evaluation of novel therapies for the minimally invasive surgical treatment of vertebral metastasis in addition to developing a program to evaluate intervertebral disc cell biology and strategies directed towards discal soft tissue repair/regeneration to treat degenerative disc disease. |
