Paul Fraumeni

A recent symposium brought together 15 distinguished figures in the University of Toronto’s history to discuss the primacy of its academic mission – and the far-reaching impact of the decision to implement a unicameral governance model 50 years ago.

“In this current moment, when university governance is facing greater scrutiny, it is timely that we are marking this important milestone of 50 years of U of T’s unicameral governance model,” said Janet Ecker, chair of the Governing Council, at the event.

First adopted in 1973 under the leadership of former U of T President Claude Bissell, the unicameral model brought together the elements of two separate governing bodies: the academically focused Senate and the business-focused Board of Governors.

Importantly, the governing body’s membership was composed of both internal and external stakeholders.

Governing Council Chair Janet Ecker speaks at a recent symposium (photo by Steve Frost)

Robert Prichard, U of T’s president from 1990 to 2000, told the panel that the impact of Bissell’s move “to bring everyone around the table” a half century ago is still being felt.

“Governing Council is one of the great strengths of the university,” Prichard said. “It has become a source of legitimizing strength for taking initiatives, for change, for re-shaping the university … so we could take our place among the world’s truly great universities.”

U of T was the first – and, for many years, the only – Canadian university to use a unicameral model of governance. It’s an approach that ensures business decisions support the academic mission and vice versa – and has played a key role in enabling U of T to attract top scholars and researchers, along with the necessary funding to support their work.

Robert Prichard called Governing Council “one of the great strengths of the university” (photo by Steve Frost)

The council comprises 50 volunteers (known as governors) representing what are often referred to as the five estates – faculty, students, staff, alumni and community members appointed by the Ontario government.

In addition to Prichard, the May 12 symposium involved several current and former Governing Council members, including U of T President Meric Gertler, and drew about 100 people to the Governing Council Chamber.

“The whole event was about living history,” says Secretary of the Governing Council Sheree Drummond. “It’s rare when you can reflect on important matters of the university from the past with the people who were actually there when it happened.

“This symposium was one of those times.”

David Naylor said U of T’s governance brings people together and helps the university innovate boldly (photo by Steve Frost)

U of T President Emeritus David Naylor told the panel that the unicameral model has been an essential boon to the university’s ability to compete globally.

“If you look at the great public universities of the world, we compete effectively, in what are in many cases disadvantageous circumstances, and defy gravity because of our structure, which includes phenomenal governance that pulls everyone together and allows us to innovate boldly,” he said.

In addition to the 50-member Governing Council itself, governance at U of T also includes a variety of boards, councils and committees. Louis Charpentier, Secretary of the Governing Council from 1999 to 2015, said he believed this breadth of representation creates a connection between governance and the university community.

“There are so many governance bodies and so many people involved on each of our three campuses that I think it shows people actually care about what’s happening in governance,” Charpentier said. “They really want to be involved in the university’s decision-making process. Our Governing Council and all its bodies are not some distant groups making decisions for everyone.”

From left: Sheree Drummond, Jack Dimond and Louis Charpentier (photo by Steve Frost)

Other panellists noted that involvement in governance creates important opportunities for students.

“When I sat on Governing Council, at the table were Bob Rae, Bill Davis and David Peterson,” said Geeta Yadav, a student governor in the early 2000s (and a current alumni governor) who is now a dermatologist. “To sit at the table as a 19-year-old with three former premiers of Ontario…it was an enormous learning opportunity. It’s really powerful to be part of that dialogue and a beauty of the governance system we have set up.”

Yadav adds that the university benefits by having student voices on Governing Council. That includes international students, who became eligible for membership on the council after the U of T Act was amended by the province in 2014 to remove the citizenship requirement for members of Governing Council, apart from the president and the chancellor.

Clockwise from left: Geeta Yadav, Susan Froom, Andrea Sass-Kortsak and Raymond Cummins (photo by Steve Frost)

“I remember a number of international students who wanted to run for Governing Council, but they weren’t able to,” said panelist Susan Froom, a governor from 2014 to 2023 who represents part-time undergraduate students. “So, we had to lobby the provincial government to change the act. It was a time when the students were using the system to make change for the better.”

Froom added that bringing international students into the council dovetailed with President Gertler’s priority of strengthening international partnerships.

“It was the right moment in time to do that because it fit in with the vision of how we could make a more inclusive and stronger university by having those voices of international students at the table,” Froom said.

From left: Richard B. Nunn and Judy Goldring (photo by Steve Frost)

Former Governing Council Chair Judy Goldring similarly noted the change emphasized that “more than anything else, the unicameral system promotes representation” at the university.

Another panelist, U of T Mississauga Professor Emeritus Raymond Cummins, noted that Governing Council, through its Academic Board (of which Cummins was chair from 2002 to 2006), has also been essential for protecting the university’s key principles.

“Academic Board is one of the champions of academic freedom in the university,” said Cummins, noting that acclaimed author Salman Rushdie once spoke to the board about the subject.

Toward the end of the symposium, President Gertler called the adoption of the unicameral model a “significant milestone in the life of this institution” and praised the university’s “tendency to obsess over the system, reflexively revisiting it every few years and asking, ‘Is it working better?’”

U of T President Meric Gertler participates in a panel discussion (photo by Steve Frost)

(The symposium’s panelists also included Jack Dimond, former secretary of the Governing Council; Professor Emeritus Ellen Hodnett, former teaching staff governor and former chair of the Academic Board; Associate Professor Andrea Sass-Kortsak, former teaching staff governor and former chair of the Academic Board; Richard B. Nunn, former government appointee and former chair of Governing Council; and Thomas H. Simpson, former governor (student, alumni, and government appointee) and former chair of Governing Council.)

In a bid to promote global ‘brain circulation,’ U of T expands partnerships with African universities

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 14:09:17 +0000

In a bid to promote global ‘brain circulation,’ U of T expands partnerships with African universities

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 02/08/2023 - 09:09

Cutline

Diplomats and scholars from Africa met with University of Toronto colleagues during a 2022 summit – part of a shared effort to expand and deepen mutually beneficial ties between U of T and institutions across the continent (photo by Ruilin Yuan)

Topic

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Global

Joseph Wong

U of T Scarborough

From ChuChu sanitary pads in Ghana to on-demand digital mental health care in Kenya, more than a dozen young entrepreneurs from across Africa recently took part in a virtual “pitch day” to make their cases for a wide range of health innovations.

The 16 teams (80 per cent of which have female founders) that participated in the Health Innovation Challenge event – organized by the African Impact Initiative, which counts the University of Toronto as a key partner – will later spend three months in Toronto to expand their entrepreneurship networks.

Tolu Faromika

“Our goal is to help African students to develop their countries,” says recent U of T Scarborough grad Tolu Faromika, who was born in Nigeria and helped organize the pitch day in early December. “We provide various kinds of training, mentorship and tech support that they can use long after we’re out of the picture and we customize that to each African country.

“But it doesn’t only work one way. I’ve learned so much from this experience. It’s helped me to learn how to generate practical ideas – ideas that will make a real difference back home and here in Canada.

“Being able to see the outcome of those ideas has been amazing.”

It’s just one of many examples of how U of T is deepening its longstanding, mutually beneficial relationship with countries in Africa – part of a carefully co-ordinated program that is informed by consultation with such groups as the President’s International Council on Engagement with Africa.

“The council is composed of people who understand the continent,” says council chair Wisdom Tettey, U of T vice-president and principal of U of T Scarborough. “Africa is a continent of 54 countries, so for U of T to make a meaningful contribution, we need to have a detailed understanding of its diversity, nuances and how best to effectively engage.”

In June 2022, the university hosted a two-day summit that brought together representatives from organizations engaged in initiatives in Africa to discuss ideas for partnerships that address some of the most important issues facing Africa and Canada. Participants included scholars from U of T, Academics Without Borders, Mitacs, and the Mastercard Foundation, as well as representatives from African Development Bank Group, Association of African Universities, African Research Universities Alliance, various African universities, African diplomats from Canada and the United States, and representatives from Global Affairs Canada.

Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia and U of T share a longstanding partnership (photo by Giorgio Cosulich/Getty Images)

U of T’s connections with the world’s second-largest continent go back decades.

In 2013, U of T became one of the first universities in the world to partner with the Mastercard Foundation’s Scholar Program, which has funded students from across Africa to study at U of T. A decade before that, U of T and Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia forged a relationship to address a serious health-care crisis: the population of Ethiopia was about 72 million, but there were only eight psychiatrists in the entire country.

Dr. Dawit Wondimagegn, then a young psychiatry resident at Addis Ababa University, says U of T’s department of psychiatry answered a call that the AAU put out around the world to help create Ethiopia’s first residency training program in psychiatry. From there, U of T and Addis Ababa University formed the Toronto Addis Ababa Academic Collaboration (TAAAC).

TAAAC has since expanded well beyond psychiatry. There are now 29 U of T departments and divisions contributing from six faculties – Faculty of Dentistry, Faculty of Law, Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, Faculty of Information, Temerty Faculty of Medicine and Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work.

The collaboration sends faculty members from U of T and partner hospitals to Addis Ababa University for a month as part of teaching teams that co-develop graduate programs under the leadership and guidance of faculty. Once trained, graduates from the collaboration are hired to expand faculties at universities throughout Ethiopia.

The results of the partnership, Wondimagegn says, have been remarkable.

“Where we once had nothing, we now have thriving programs in areas like family and emergency medicine,” says Wondimagegn, who is co-director of TAAAC. “We’ve slowed the brain drain. We used to send people abroad for training and they wouldn’t return. Now, our people can receive their education and training in Ethiopia and then find work here. There is no need to leave.”

Professor Ernest Aryeetey, secretary general of the Africa Research Universities Alliance, looks on as Professor Joseph Wong, U of T’s vice-president, international, addresses attendees at a summit held at U of T in 2022 (photo by Ruilin Yuan)

As TAAAC has grown, so has the range of partnerships between U of T and African institutions, including a recently launched collaborative network with eight leading African universities called the African Higher Education Health Collaborative. The initiative has a similar goal to TAAAC – create programs to prepare young professionals for work in, and contribute to, the continent’s health sector development – and integrates a substantive partnership between U of T’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the School of Public Health at Moi University in Kenya.

U of T President Meric Gertler, left, shares a table with Wisdom Tettey, vice-president and principal of U of T Scarborough, at the 2022 summit (photo by Ruilin Yuan)

U of T’s ongoing efforts to partner with African institutions are part of a larger partnership program the university plans to pursue through its recently published International Strategic Plan 2022-2027, which encompasses 10 objectives across three broad themes: Global Learning, Global Reach and Global Impact.

“There are many benefits to these international partnerships, but it all comes down to U of T engaging with the world,” says Joseph Wong, U of T’s vice-president, international and a professor of political science in the Faculty of Arts & Science and the Roz and Ralph Halbert Professor of Innovation at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.

“The key is building relationships that are reciprocal. Each partner contributes to the partnership and each learns from the other.”

That’s certainly how Faromika sees it.

Faromika and her family immigrated to Prince Edward Island from Nigeria in 2011. She began her undergraduate studies at U of T in psychology in 2018 and is now a research assistant and Mitacs Accelerate Fellow in the lab of Brian Levine, a U of T professor of psychology and senior scientist at Baycrest’s Rotman Research Institute. She has been involved with the African Impact Initiative throughout most of her U of T journey – and says it’s contributed immeasurably to her education.

“I used to just read articles about the issues facing Nigeria, but my work through the African Impact Initiative is more tangible,” she says. “I’m interacting with people who have their feet on the ground. It’s really enabled me to learn a lot about planning and co-ordinating these activities in African countries.”

Erica Di Ruggiero

Erica Di Ruggiero has seen this same reciprocal benefit in the partnership between U of T’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health and Moi University in Kenya.

An associate professor and director of the school’s Centre for Global Health, Di Ruggiero says U of T’s partnership with Moi began through the late Paula Braitstein, a professor of epidemiology who moved to Kenya to live and work in 2007.

“Paula really got things going in terms of establishing a reciprocal relationship with Moi University where we would learn from each other’s experiences,” she says, adding that the goal is “to de-colonize what we mean by global health research and practice.”

As an example, Di Ruggiero points to the two institutions’ work on advancing knowledge about universal health care, a shared desire of both Canada and Kenya, through a framework that dispels the notion that equitable solutions come only from high-income countries.

“That discourse promotes a wrong idea – that Canada can’t learn from a country like Kenya because we are high income and they are more middle income,” she says, noting that the two sides engage in discussion and sharing of experiences and co-production of knowledge that enable them to learn from each other.

Tettey, who is from Ghana, similarly emphasizes the two-way nature of U of T’s partnerships.

“This is about being able to work together to create a world community,” he says. “It's important for people to understand that Canada has been a happy beneficiary of a lot of African talent. We have created a brain drain on the continent. These partnerships enable us to create brain circulation – Africa can learn from Canada, and we can learn from Africa.

“There’s a reason why the world’s gravity is toward Africa now,” he adds. “There is a lot of potential that is untapped. The youth in Africa are going to be huge players. If we can collaborate in a way that allows our students here to network with potential leaders in Africa, that will enrich all of us.”

Joe’s Basketball Diaries: U of T video series focuses on the bigger stories behind our favourite sports

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 22:49:15 +0000

Joe’s Basketball Diaries: U of T video series focuses on the bigger stories behind our favourite sports Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 11/16/2022 - 17:49

Cutline

From left to right: Shireen Ahmed, Simon Darnell, Joseph Wong, Miranda Ayim and Bruce Kidd (image by Lisa Lightbourn)

Paul Fraumeni

Topic

City & Culture

Joe's Basketball Diaries

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Bruce Kidd

Faculty of Arts & Science

Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

From the moment you start watching Joe’s Basketball Diaries, you realize this is not your typical sports show.

After a brief intro featuring the spoken word poetry of University of Toronto student Hannah Flores, host Professor Joseph Wong kicks off the first episode with a question to his four guests: What they were doing when the Raptors won the NBA championship on June 13, 2019?

Within seconds, the discussion is no longer simply about that moment, or even basketball per se, but about us, our city and society more broadly – all through the lens of sport.

“I don’t do my sports without politics,” says Shireen Ahmed, a CBC sports journalist. “For racialized folks and people on the margins, that’s what the experience is.”

“I think we connect more in our struggles than we ever do in our strengths,” says Miranda Ayim, a three-time Olympian and certified wellness coach.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that sports are popular, but that popularity doesn’t equal inclusion – that popularity doesn’t equal equality,” says Simon Darnell, an associate professor of sport for development and peace in U of T’s Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education (KPE).

“The overarching narrative of the history of modern sports has been that of exclusion and the struggle for inclusion,” says Bruce Kidd, an Olympic runner, professor emeritus of sport and public policy at KPE and U of T’s ombudsperson.

The provocative commentary is exactly what Wong, a big basketball fan, was looking for. He says sports provide an ideal vehicle to host frank discussions on race, inclusivity, leadership and global citizenship – discussions U of T is uniquely positioned to facilitate as a top public university where scholars are bringing forward bold, new ideas and tackling complex global problems.

“This series brings difficult issues to the fore and people who have intelligent, actionable things to say about them,” says Wong, U of T’s vice-president, international, a professor of political science in the Faculty of Arts & Science and the Roz and Ralph Halbert Professor of Innovation at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.

“That's really one of the aims of the show. Through this conversation, we're not coming up with a lifesaving technology, but we are talking about the value of different lives and about how lives are lived in different ways in different communities.”

Joe’s Basketball Diaries officially launches Nov. 16 as a six-episode series, airing biweekly on U of T’s YouTube channel. Each 30-minute episode [see the episode guide below] features guests from inside and outside the university who weigh in on topical subjects such as racism and mental health to women in sport and globalization.

“This series really shows how interwoven U of T is with the city, its culture, and all the communities it represents – and Joe is so right for this series,” says Lisa Lightbourn, a creative producer at U of T Communications who worked with Wong and fellow co-producer Anna Weigt-Bienzle to create the series. “He’s a highly respected scholar in areas like democracy and international development, and he relates to everyone.

“This is not an interview, but a conversation like you’d have around a table at a dinner party – a conversation you wouldn’t want to miss.”

It’s already generating a buzz, with one of the show’s early guests giving the series a shoutout on the popular podcast The Raptors Show with Will Lou.

Janelle Joseph, a guest on the “Model Minority” episode, says Joe’s Basketball Diaries makes scholars’ work and insights on sports and society available to a much broader audience.

“So many researchers and people who are really interested in exploring the sociology of sport typically share our work through books and academic articles,” says Joseph, an assistant professor of critical studies of race and Indigeneity at KPE.

“But there are so many people who are really interested in sport, and they are not reading the academic literature. So, I think the real value of this series is that it’s a direct link to topics that people are really passionate about and creating conversations that are, in an accessible way, focusing on equity, diversity and anti-racism issues.”

Wesley Cheng, an online content creator at TSN and another guest on the episode, agrees.

“At that Raptors parade in 2019, there were a million people on the streets,” Cheng says. “What type of event could do something like that in Toronto? Sport is what brings us all together, and that's probably what I care the most about with this series.

“It's just to remind people that there's a way for a sport to bring all of us together and to remind us that, regardless of race, gender, social differences, we're not that different as people.”

Joe’s Basketball Diaries episode guide:

Episode one: Does sport transcend borders and politics?

Shireen Ahmed, sports journalist; Bruce Kidd, professor emeritus, sport and public policy at KPE; Simon Darnell, associate professor, sport for development and peace at KPE; Miranda Ayim, three-time Olympian and certified wellness coach.
The inaugural episode explores the question of whether sport does transcend borders and politics. We examine the role of organizations like the IOC in supporting and advocating for peace and development, as well as the ways countries use sport and even athletes to build prestige. We also consider the role of media and political activism in sport and whether the industry can be a force for good moving forward.

Episode two: mental health

Sabrina Razack, educator and a former KPE PhD student; Jhanelle Peters, mental health clinician, Toronto Raptors; Madhav Trivedi, interim head coach men’s basketball, U of T; Miranda Ayim, three-time Olympian and certified wellness coach.
This episode dives into sports and mental health, including the unique challenges that can come with being an athlete. We touch on the pressures athletes face around public scrutiny, expectations, body image and more – and how they mirror what we, as non-athletes and students, go through in daily life. We also discuss what’s being done right and where society still needs to improve.

Episode three: model minority

Takashi Fujitani, director, Dr. David Chu Program in Asia-Pacific Studies; Clement Chu, president and founder, Chinese Canadian Youth Athletics Association; Wesley Cheng, content creator, TSN; Janelle Joseph, assistant professor, critical studies of race and Indigeneity at KPE.
In this episode we explore racism, xenophobia, and the lack of Asian and Indigenous representation in sport. We talk about the rise of anti-Asian racism since the start of the pandemic and how organizations like the Chinese Canadian Youth Athletics Association and Muslim Women’s Summer Basketball League are making a difference in the lives of athletes of all levels, students and community members.

Episode four: community

Alex Wong, NBA features writer and producer/co-host of the Raptors Show with Will Lou; Sami Hill, Team Canada Basketball; Kareem Griffin, co-founder Canletes Sports; Perry King, author and communications officer at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
The words “community” and “sport” are forever intertwined. In this episode we will bring together members of the sports community to discuss how things have changed in the way we grow and support athletes at a community, grassroot level. We will discuss the challenges around infrastructure in our city and what our collective responsibility is in both our local and international communities.

Episode five: globalization and sport. Who holds the power?

• David Shoemaker, CEO of the Canadian Olympic Committee; Fitriya Mohamed, co-founder of the Muslim Women’s Summer Basketball League; Ansh Sanyal, senior director of brand and marketing at Canadian Elite Basketball League; Vivek Jacob, Raptors staff writer and U of T alumnus.
In this episode we go deep into the power of sport and who holds it – from the organizations and athletes to the government bodies and fans. We will touch on the cultural impact of sport and the importance of leadership and visibility, while also looking at the darker side of the industry, which is the economic value of the team and its athletes, and the challenges that often presents.

Episode six: women in sport

Tamara Tatham, Varsity Blues women’s head basketball coach; Amreen Kadwa, founder of Hijabi Ballers; Hannah Flores, U of T second year undergraduate student and spoken word poet; Nicole Kaniki, U of T’s director of equity, diversity and inclusion in research and innovation; Savanna Hamilton, Raptors reporter, Sportsnet.
For our final episode of the series, we will discuss the challenges that come with being a woman in sport, whether that’s an athlete on the court, a journalist in the field or a coach on the sidelines. The scrutiny women face goes beyond the wage gap. Female identifying athletes face undue pressure when it comes to their bodies, how they handle themselves on and off the court and the expectations we see put on racialized and LGBTQ+ women based on societal standards.

How U of T’s 'secret sauce' governance model set it up for five decades of success

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 20:26:54 +0000

How U of T’s 'secret sauce' governance model set it up for five decades of success

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 11/14/2022 - 15:26

Cutline

Clockwise from top left: Richard Nunn, Mary Anne Chambers, Annamarie Castrilli, Judy Goldring, Brian Lawson, Tom Simpson, Claire Kennedy, Anna Kennedy, Rose Patten, Janet Ecker, Wendy Cecil, Alice Dong and Jane Pepino (photo by Lisa Sakulensky)

Topic

Along with its partner hospitals, the University of Toronto is world renowned for its many well-publicized innovations and achievements, from insulin, stem cells and deep learning to revelations about Stalinist Russia and medieval poets.

Yet, the most important innovation in its 195-year-old history may well be one the public rarely sees: an unusual – and unusually effective – system of governance.

The university adopted a unicameral model 50 years ago in a bid to ensure business decisions supported its academic mission and vice versa. The mutually reinforcing system, known as Governing Council, has gone on to play a key role in enabling U of T to attract top scholars and researchers, as well as the necessary funding to support their work – all of which has contributed to the university’s consistently high international ranking and enviable credit rating.

U of T was the first – and, for many years, the only – Canadian university to use this model.

“I think it is fair to say that our unicameral system of governance deserves a good deal of credit for the University of Toronto’s extraordinary success,” U of T President Meric Gertler said at a recent event celebrating Governing Council’s 50^th year in operation.

U of T President Meric Gertler (photo by Polina Teif)

The final oversight body in U of T’s governance system – supported by a number of boards, councils and committees – Governing Council has the last word on literally thousands of critical decisions at the university. It comprises 50 volunteers (known as governors) representing what are often referred to as the five estates – faculty, students, staff, alumni and community members appointed by the Ontario government.

It wasn’t always this way.

Until 1972, U of T’s governance was based on a bicameral model made up of two groups. One was the Board of Governors, composed mostly of people from outside U of T who were charged with oversight of the strategic direction of the university and matters such as revenue, control of property and business and operational decisions. The other group was the Senate, which included mostly academic leaders, including deans and departmental chairs, and was responsible for the university’s academic mission, strategy, educational policy and programming.

In the early 1960s, Claude Bissell, then U of T’s president, saw a problem with this approach, calling it “double innocence.” As U of T Law University Professor Martin Friedland noted in his book, The University of Toronto: A History, “academic decisions were being made by the senate without their financial implications being known, and financial decisions were being made by the board without their academic effects known.”

Governing Council Chair Janet Ecker (photo by Polina Teif)

After almost a decade of discussion and debate (which included involvement from student leaders, including Bob Rae (a future premier of Ontario and a future governor), the model was adopted when the U of T Act was approved in 1972 by Ontario Premier William Davis. Today, current Governing Council Chair (and former Government of Ontario minister) Janet Ecker says it is an achievement to celebrate.

“We have made it to 50 years, and not only do we have rules and traditions, but we have a very strong culture of collegial governance – and we continue to build on that tradition,” she said at an anniversary event held Oct. 27.

Bringing the former two governing bodies into one “created a focal point for governance decisions,” says Jack Dimond, who was secretary of Governing Council from 1981 to 1999.

He adds that the model also places an emphasis on accountability.

“The unicameral model established a high level of transparency,” he said.

Current Secretary Sheree Drummond agrees. “The unicameral model has done what it was designed to do: bring the perspectives from all five estates into one body. With this model, anything that happens at the University of Toronto that makes its way through governance is always seen through the lens of the academic mission.

“We really do think that it is the secret sauce on being able to get our governance right.”

Drummond and her team are currently in the early planning stages of a symposium on U of T governance to be held in the spring of 2023.

U of T Chancellor Rose Patten speaks at a recent event celebrating 50 years of Governing Council (photo by Lisa Sakulensky)

Chancellor Rose Patten, an executive in the financial sector for many years, noted at the Oct. 27 event that the unicameral model continues to work well at a time when corporate and organizational accountability is receiving more scrutiny than ever before.

“In our world today, many crucial institutions are suffering a crisis of trust,” she said. “Truth and transparency are being questioned. In contrast, through our profound commitment to principles, values and inclusive excellence, the University of Toronto offers a source of credibility, confidence and hope.

“This is more relevant than ever in this time of social polarization, economic turbulence and geopolitical upheaval.”

Patten – who served on Governing Council as a lieutenant governor in council member, and was vice-chair, and then chair – praised the work commitment of governors.

“The past 50 years of governance at U of T demonstrate the impact of wise and steady leadership. It makes a difference. You make a difference, for the better.”

See a list of Governing Council’s chairs and vice-chairs throughout history

What now? Acclaimed novelist Randy Boyagoda explores a post-lockdown world in new U of T podcast

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 27 Jul 2022 13:28:45 +0000

What now? Acclaimed novelist Randy Boyagoda explores a post-lockdown world in new U of T podcast

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 07/27/2022 - 09:28

Cutline

As host of the What Now? podcast, Randy Boyagoda, a professor of English, explores how society might rebuild as it moves beyond the pandemic (photo courtesy of Randy Boyagoda)

Topic

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Cities

Citizen Lab

English

Faculty of Arts & Science

History

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

St. Michael's College

U of T Mississauga

U of T Scarborough

Toward the beginning of the first episode of the What Now? podcast, host Randy Boyagoda asks Maydianne Andrade, “What feels normal to you right now?”

She doesn’t hesitate in her response.

“Almost nothing,” says Andrade, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto Scarborough who hosted her own podcast series through the bitter first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I do feel like things have been shaken to their core.”

It’s a perfect thematic setup to What Now? – a podcast created by U of T Communications (UTC) – since the series considers how global society might rebuild after the pandemic unraveled so much of how we used to live.

“When I was approached to do this, what came to mind was how hard it had been over the intense part of the pandemic to talk about anything other than the pandemic,” says Boyagoda, a noted novelist and essayist, and a professor of English in U of T’s Faculty of Arts & Science who also teaches at St. Michael’s College.

“I think many people hit a point of total exhaustion with pandemic conversation. And so, what would it mean to have a conversation about life once the pandemic ends? Not that we’re pretending that everything’s over, but what have we learned? What have we gained? What have we lost? Those are the kinds of conversations we have in this podcast.”

The first season of the series comprises seven episodes. In each one, Boyagoda – who has also served as principal of St Michael’s College and vice-dean, undergraduate in the Faculty of Arts & Science – sits down with experts to discuss subjects ranging from equity and class division to statistics and cyberespionage.

Clémentine Van Effenterre, an assistant professor of economics in the Faculty of Arts & Science, spoke to Boyagoda about how COVID-19 made existing inequities that much worse.

“We know that the distribution of household work was far from equal,” Van Effenterre says. “Before the pandemic, women did two more hours of household activities daily than men. During the pandemic, women were twice as likely as men to reduce their (professional) working hours to take care of children.”

Guests also discuss how COVID-19 has led to a rethink of how children should be educated.

“Schools as we know them … are an invention of the 19^th century and unfortunately they haven’t changed that much,” says Ruben Gaztambide-Fernandez, a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. “We want schools as we imagined them in the 19^th century to address 20^th- and 21^st-century problems that they weren’t meant to address.”

Clémentine Van Effenterre, an assistant professor of economics, says women were twice as likely as men to reduce their professional working hours during the pandemic (photo by Lisa Lightbourn)

Boyagoda, who will serve as acting vice-provost, faculty and academic life in the upcoming academic year, often introduces episodes with commentary as he walks to the interview locations on U of T’s St. George campus – an audio cue to remind listeners of the show’s post-lockdown focus.

“The approach to the podcast in having it be on location rather than in studio was intentional,” says Lisa Lightbourn, creative producer at UTC who worked with Boyagoda to develop and produce the podcast. “I wanted to give people the sense that we are back together, and these are the sounds and experiences of the campus as it comes back to life – in a brand new way.”

Lightbourn adds that Boyagoda is an ideal host – a person of many passions and achievements.

“He’s well known as a personable and entertaining professor. So, I thought he’d be perfect for this new series.”

The author of four novels, Boyagoda’s fiction has been nominated for numerous awards. Original Prin, his breakout hit, was called “an unputdownable book” by none other than Salman Rushdie. His latest novel, Dante’s Indiana, is about an English professor who consults on a Dante-themed amusement park in middle America.

He also regularly contributes essays, reviews, and opinions to publications such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and the Guardian in addition to appearing frequently on CBC Radio and podcasting for the Toronto Public Library.

Yet, despite his public profile, Boyagoda says he sees his role behind the microphone for What Now? as curious student, not expert commentator.

“I’m the listener and learner here,” he says. “What was interesting for me was just getting to chat with people who are from different disciplines and who come with these questions in different ways than I would. If, as a writer, I am fundamentally a curious person, then something like this series gives me a chance to cultivate and develop that curiosity and to become more enlightened.

“What I love about podcasts and live radio is when you move from the predictable questions into a genuine conversation that feels alive because you have two people responding to each other.

“And that moment happened with every, single person I spoke with.”

Randy Boyagoda walks down the street with OISE Professor Rubén Gaztambide-Fernandez (photo by Lisa Lightbourn)

Boyagoda’s podcast follows in the footsteps of two other successful U of T podcasts created by Lightbourn. Andrade’s The New Normal examined how the pandemic was changing daily life and exacerbating inequity, touching on subjects ranging from connecting with family and friends to the scourge of anti-Black and anti-Asian racism. Another podcast – What’s Next? – tapped public health leader Vivek Goel, at the time U of T’s vice president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives (he’s now president of the University of Waterloo), to explain health and scientific aspects of what was initially dubbed the “novel coronavirus.”

Both series found a ready audience – “What’s Next?” nabbed more than two million views and three million impressions – and won Transformative Awards from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE).

What does Boyagoda hope listeners take away from What Now?

“My goal is for them to say, ‘Just when I thought there was nothing new to learn about pandemic-era living, here are people are exploring it in a way that expands my understanding and challenges some of my preconceptions – leaving me better informed and curious for more.”

The series debuts on Aug. 3, with new episodes streamed weekly. What Now? is available on Apple, Spotify and other popular podcast services.

Here’s the What Now? episode guide:

Episode 1: “The Real New Normal”: Andrade talks about her experience of hosting her podcast and offers her thoughts on what the “new, new normal” should be. And she brings listeners up to speed on her other specialty: the sex lives of spiders.

Episode 2: “The Evolution of Education” Rubén Gaztambide-Fernandez, professor of curriculum and pedagogy and editor-in-chief of the journal Curriculum Inquiry at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, discusses how schools have changed for better – and worse.

Episode 3: “What is the Cost?” Clémentine Van Effenterre, assistant professor of economics and host of the podcast InequaliTalks, talks about austerity measures and protests, privilege and class divisions and the new shape of work.

Episode 4 – “Machines and Slow Disasters”: Edward Jones-Imhotep, an associate professor and historian specializing in the social and cultural life of machines, who is director of U of T’s Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, explores a wide range of related topics, including Black androids, slow disasters and social order.

Episode 5 – “Smarter Cities”: Beth Coleman, an associate professor of Data and Cities at the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology and the Faculty of Information where she directs the City as Platform Lab, discusses what a smarter, more human-centred city might look like.

Episode 6: “What Are the Chances?” Jeffrey Rosenthal, professor of statistics and bestselling author of Struck by Lightning: The Curious World of Probabilities and Knock on Wood: Luck, Chance, and the Meaning of Everything, discusses luck, the pandemic and what it means to be born on Friday the 13^th.

Episode 7 – “Citizen Reset”: Ron Deibert, political science professor, director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, and authority on cyber espionage, commercial spyware, internet censorship and human rights, talks about privacy and propaganda.

Getting to net-zero emissions – what role does the health-care sector play?

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 04 Nov 2021 15:39:35 +0000

Getting to net-zero emissions – what role does the health-care sector play?

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 11/04/2021 - 11:39

Cutline

Fiona Miller, director of U of T's Centre for Sustainable Health Systems, says the global health-care sector, if it were a nation, would be the world's fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Paul Fraumeni

Topic

Our Community

Insulin 100

Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Research & Innovation

Sustainability

As the world grapples with the negative health effects posed by climate change, Fiona Miller says the health-care sector must not only treat the resulting medical conditions — but take steps to ensure it's not contributing to them.

“In Canada and in most other countries, the health-care sector accounts for about five per cent of greenhouse gas emissions,” says Miller, professor of health policy at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME) in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.

“Globally, if health care were a nation, it would be the fifth largest emitter.”

Miller is director of IHPME’s Centre for Sustainable Health Systems and chair in Health Management Strategies.

When she speaks of health care and its impact on environmental degradation, Miller is referring to everything involved in caring for the health of society. That includes massive hospitals that require heating and cooling – and may be generating power from coal – to the overuse of single-use medical items such as hypodermic needles and syringes, as well as the packaging that becomes garbage. It includes individuals driving to see a doctor for an in-person physical that may not be medically necessary – and the use of certain kinds of inhalers and anesthetic gases that are not environmentally-friendly.

“The health-care sector is buying an enormous quantity of products,” Miller says. “They own lots of capital and infrastructure. They are very much part of urban environments. And with everything that goes with that, they have negative environmental impacts.”

The paradox, she says, is the health-care sector is inadvertently helping to create new health problems – linked to pollution and climate change – in its effort to treat others.

“We often don’t recognize that these very significant social institutions are part and parcel of climate change.”

But Miller, who recently received a Connaught Global Challenge Award for her work, notes that there are signs the sector is changing its ways.

“Organizations around the world are waking up to their responsibility to manage sustainability,” she says. “Health care is no different in terms of needing to get its house in order and mitigate the environmental harms it is responsible for. In fact, there is a greater obligation in health care because its mission is health.”

Miller points to the precedent-setting work of the National Health Service in England, which has committed to a net-zero health system for the full scope of its direct and indirect emissions by 2045. She also notes Choosing Wisely Canada (which sprung from a U.S. initiative that launched in 2012) that is encouraging health professionals and patients to take a hard look at identifying unnecessary medical tests, treatments and procedures.

And the push for sustainable health care got a big boost earlier this year when Environment and Climate Change Canada awarded $6 million to launch CASCADES (Creating a Sustainable Canadian Health System in a Climate Crisis).

The project is being led by Miller, who is partnering with Sean Christie and Gillian Ritcey of Dalhousie University, Andrea MacNeill of the University of British Columbia, and Linda Varangu of the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care.

The mandate of CASCADES, says Miller, is to “build and leverage capacity on the front lines, among management and leadership levels, through continuing professional development, knowledge mobilization and networking, supporting the testing, spreading and scaling of innovations in sustainable care, using improvement methods.”

She adds that CASCADES will focus on encouraging health systems in Canada to work in a co-ordinated way to achieving net-zero emissions. While there have been “pockets of extraordinary excellence and effort,” it has often been too piecemeal, she says.

Andrea MacNeill believes CASCADES is the right initiative to manage these limitations.

“We possess sustainability and health-care expertise, with deep connections with both sectors,” she says. “We understand how to engage diverse members of the health-care community on their own terms and pursue national co-ordination while respecting local priorities, provincial and territorial jurisdiction and differences across professions, practices and context.”

And Miller is pleased to report that there is “actually tremendous energy in the health-care sector around this. I think the appetite is really there. The timing of launching CASCADES is very good, given the urgency. People want to know how to bring this into their professional lives and how to be on the right side of history on this issue.”

A century after the discovery of insulin, U of T and its hospital and industry partners have built a culture of discovery, innovation and collaboration that has transformed health care and continues to have a ripple effect worldwide. This article is part of a series featuring researchers working on medical and health innovations for the future.

U of T researchers' lab-grown muscles used to study Duchenne muscular dystrophy, develop treatments

lanthierj — Mon, 25 Oct 2021 19:39:11 +0000

U of T researchers' lab-grown muscles used to study Duchenne muscular dystrophy, develop treatments

lanthierj Mon, 10/25/2021 - 15:39

Cutline

U of T researchers Penney Gilbert and Bryan Stewart obtained cells from people living with Duchenne muscular dystrophy to grow miniature muscles that are being used to develop new treatments for the genetic disorder (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Paul Fraumeni

Topic

Our Community

Institute of Biomedical Engineering

Insulin 100

Donnelly Centre for Cellular & Biomolecular Research

Biology

Research & Innovation

University of Toronto Mississauga

Inside a Petri dish in a lab at the University of Toronto is a muscle – made from scratch using human stem cells – that has Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD).

To study the biological properties of DMD, a degenerative muscle disorder that mainly affects males, U of T researchers obtained cell lines from people living with the condition and used them to create miniature muscles in a dish. Now, they’re helping other researchers and industry partners develop and test new treatments that may help the boys and young men who are afflicted with DMD.

The research team is led by Bryan Stewart, professor of biology at U of T Mississauga, and Penney Gilbert, associate professor in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and at U of T’s Donnelly Centre for Cellular & Biomolecular Research. Stewart specializes in the physiology of neurons and muscles. Gilbert, a cell biologist, specializes in restoring skeletal muscle (the muscles attached to bone) by using stem cells. They decided to collaborate after meeting at a research leadership workshop organized by University Professor Molly Shoichet about six years ago.

“We learned we were both studying skeletal muscle,” says Gilbert. “Bryan’s lab was using fruit flies to understand the muscle-nerve connection, which enables the brain to tell, for example, our arm to move.

“My lab was creating human tissue to make models of the muscle-nerve connection. Together, we realized our unique tools and methods could enable us to look at DMD in a different way from, literally, any group in the world.”

DMD is caused by a gene mutation that prevents the body from producing dystrophin, the protein that enables muscles to function. It is a rare condition – occurring in one out of 3,500 to 5,000 male children worldwide – but it is devastating. Starting around age five, DMD progressively damages and weakens the muscles, including the heart. Most children with DMD will have to use a wheelchair. And most will die before they reach 30.

Gilbert says the biomedical innovation of creating muscle “means that for the first time ever it is actually possible to study DMD and the nerve-muscle connection outside of the body.

“This gives us the opportunity to revisit observations that had been made decades ago that seemed to suggest that the muscle-nerve connection in DMD might be impaired,” she says. “Now, we will see if this can be observed in our model. And if we do see it, could we try to use that as a starting point to find molecules that might improve the muscle-nerve connection?”

The team is working to make its 3D muscle models more representative of what is actually found in humans. They are especially paying attention to the variation in muscle structure and function that can exist in people who have DMD. Gilbert and Stewart note the expertise brought to the work by post-doctoral researchers Christine Nguyen and Majid Ebrahimi.

Stewart emphasizes that while the team is not directly creating drugs or therapies, their work will be an important foundational system for other researchers to use in developing pharmaceutical treatments or for testing the gene therapy experiments that will soon move to clinical trials.

Michael Rudnicki, a noted Canadian stem cell expert, agrees.

“The DMD pre-clinical assays being developed by Gilbert and Stewart are a critical facet of the translational pipeline, making it possible to test current and future therapeutics in the context of human cells,” says Rudnicki, senior scientist and director of the regenerative medicine program and Sprott Centre for Stem Cell Research at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute.

“There is a wealth of great work being done on DMD around the world,” says Stewart. “Penney and I knew when we met at that workshop that there could be a lot of power in merging our two groups.

“I think we are at a point where we can help to launch a new surge in testing and discovery that will begin to benefit the people and families living with DMD.”

Cloaking technology: Helping therapeutic cells evade your immune system

lanthierj — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 10:57:51 +0000

Cloaking technology: Helping therapeutic cells evade your immune system

lanthierj Fri, 10/08/2021 - 06:57

Cutline

Andras Nagy (Photo provided by Sinai Health Foundation)

Paul Fraumeni

Topic

Breaking Research

Institute of Biomedical Engineering

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

Insulin 100

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Toronto General Hospital

Diabetes

Medicine by Design

Mount Sinai Hospital

Research & Innovation

Stem Cells

University Health Network

Stem cell pioneer Andras Nagy has a way of describing the work of your immune system: “It’s surveillance inside our body.”

That surveillance does us good when harmful bacteria or viruses enter our body. The immune system releases fighter cells to kill the invaders.

But regenerative medicine therapies often involve transplanting tissues or cells into a person. When new heart or pancreatic cells are transplanted, for example, the immune system will see these good things as enemies and reject them. Drug treatment can be used to suppress this immune response, but it can leave the person open to serious infection.

Nagy, a professor in the department of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Toronto's Temerty Faculty of Medicine and a senior investigator at Sinai Health System’s Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, and his research team have been experimenting with a process called “cloaking,” which he believes could be used to hide therapeutic cells from the immune surveillance system and allow them to do their good work.

Though this research will one day be applicable to all cell therapies, Nagy’s team is currently testing the cloaking technology with insulin-secreting pancreatic cells that are made from stem cells and could be a powerful cell therapy for type 1 diabetes.

Stem cells are cells that can be reprogrammed and turned into an unlimited source of any type of human cell needed for treatment. Nagy notes that the first years of stem cell research were at the basic science level, as scientists worked to understand the nature of stem cells. He says about 10 years ago, there was a notable shift to what he calls “translational” research. His work is part of this wave of applied science; in fact, in 2015 he co-founded a biotech company, panCELLa Inc., to make his cell technologies widely available.

“Regenerative medicine is at a point now where we can translate our research into therapies that can help all humankind,” he says.

The Canada Research Chair in Stem Cells and Regeneration, Nagy says that researchers have long known that transplanted cells and tissues can be attacked by the immune system.

“We wondered if there was a way to hide or ‘cloak’ these good cells, so the immune response wouldn’t destroy them,” says Nagy. “But before we could move into that we had to deal with a significant hurdle – the safety of the implanted cells.”

Nagy points out that when these new cells are created, there is a chance they could mutate and become cancerous. The more cells needed for a therapy, the more cell divisions that take place, meaning a higher chance of mutation and cancer.

In earlier research, partially funded by a previous Medicine by Design team projects award, Nagy published a paper in Nature that described a “fail safe” cell technology that he and his team devised that can increase the safety of a cell graft and has a formula to quantify the risk of mutation so that people can make an informed decision on whether such a risk is acceptable to them.

The fail-safe system is a switch that eliminates potentially dangerous cells during cell therapy. The switch is introduced into stem cells, which are then turned into the therapeutic cells. The switch is turned on by a drug that can be added to the cell graft or applied directly into the body after transplant.

Nagy says the killer switch is fail safe because it is composed of two genes, one required for division and one that can trigger cell suicide, stitched together. If a mutated gene begins dividing, the drug is there to activate the kill switch and kill the cell. And if the cell loses the switch, it also loses the ability to multiply.

With the important first step of creating the fail safe switch done, Nagy turned to the cloaking, work that is supported by his team’s current Medicine by Design team projects award.

Nagy’s team is one of 12 sharing nearly $21 million in funding from Medicine by Design over three years. Funded by a $114-million grant from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund, Medicine by Design is an institutional strategic research initiative that is working at the convergence of engineering, medicine and science to catalyze transformative discoveries in regenerative medicine and accelerate them toward clinical impact.

“Medicine by Design has been really important in supporting scientists in bringing the possibilities of regenerative medicine to patients. I’m grateful to Medicine by Design for funding the high-risk and high impact projects that many other funding agencies often say are just too ambitious.”

The cloaking technology involves turning off certain genetic switches in the cells created from stem cells to avoid detection by the immune system. This work was supported by findings from a devastating cancer found in Tasmanian devils, the marsupial native to the Australian state of Tasmania.

Between 1996 and 2015, 95 per cent of the Tasmanian devil population was wiped out as a result of contagious facial cancer cells transmitted when the devils bit each other. Nagy’s research found that the cancer had a way of cloaking itself from the devils’ immune system, which backed up his theory that cells could be hidden from the immune system.

Nagy identified eight genes that are central to immunity. He reasoned that just as the Tasmanian devils’ facial cancer could avoid detection by turning off the right genetic switches, his stem cell-derived cells could similarly become cloaked. Scientists in Nagy lab have been testing the cloaking in mice with encouraging results.

Sara Vasconcelos

Working with Nagy are Maria Cristina Nostro, senior scientist at the University Health Network’s (UHN) McEwen Stem Cell Institute and associate professor, department of physiology at U of T; and Sara Vasconcelos, scientist at the UHN’s Toronto General Hospital Research Institute and associate professor at U of T’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering.

The Nostro lab’s focus is to generate insulin-secreting pancreatic cells from stem cells. These cells could one day have the potential to treat patients with type 1 diabetes. Nostro works closely with Vasconcelos, whose lab focuses on helping to keep the transplanted cells alive once they enter the body. Cells need oxygen and other nutrients, which are delivered through the blood vessels.

Together, the team is testing ways to integrate Nagy’s technologies into Nostro’s functional pancreatic cells. Vasconcelos’s aim is for these therapies to survive in the body.

“When you just transplant the cells, they don’t have blood vessels, so they’ll die, independent of whether the immune system kills them or not. If they die, we’ll never know if it was the immune system or lack of oxygen,” Vasconcelos says. The Vasconcelos lab team repurposes small vessels, which exist in fat. They then use the vessels as units to increase blood flow and allow the cells to engraft and survive after they have been transplanted.

Nagy says the combination of the fail safe and cloaking technologies will make for a powerful therapy. “On the one hand, we can now introduce good cells into recipient’s body that can be hidden from the immune response and do the work they were intended to do. And that means doctors won’t have to use immunosuppression drugs. Finally, if one of the newly created cells is cancerous to the patient, our safe-cell technology can kill it or at least give us information on risk that we can communicate to the patient.”

When stem cell-derived therapies are created for individual patients, Nagy says, it is expensive, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars per patient. Nagy envisions turning his cells that combine fail safe and immune cloaking technologies into “off-the-shelf” products that can be used by anyone and are inexpensive.

Nagy has been building a notable research career in regenerative medicine since he came to Canada from Hungary in 1989, initially joining the lab of renowned researcher and University Professor Janet Rossant at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute (now the Lunenfeld-Tannenbaum Research Institute) at Mount Sinai Hospital.

With a focus on skin cells, U of T's Michael Sefton seeks 'huge step forward' in diabetes treatment

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 16:29:55 +0000

With a focus on skin cells, U of T's Michael Sefton seeks 'huge step forward' in diabetes treatment

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 08/25/2021 - 12:29

Cutline

Michael Sefton, a U of T tissue engineer and executive director of Medicine by Design, is investigating whether dendritic skin cells can aid in the successful transplantation of insulin-producing islet cells in diabetes patients (photo by Neil Ta)

Paul Fraumeni

Topic

Our Community

Institute of Biomedical Engineering

Insulin 100

Princess Margaret Cancer Centre

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Donnelly Centre for Cellular & Biomolecular Research

Chemical Engineering

Diabetes

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Medicine by Design

Research & Innovation

University Health Network

Can dendritic cells found in the skin be an important piece of the puzzle of enabling stem cell transplants for diabetes?

Michael Sefton, a renowned University of Toronto tissue engineer, is confident enough about the possibility that – with support from the type 1 diabetes non-profit JDRF – he is about to launch a major new chapter in his research.

The work will build on a finding from a research team at the University of Alberta in 2000 that proved islet cells (also called islets of Langerhans), which produce insulin and are found in the pancreas, could be transplanted from a donor into the livers of people living with type 1 diabetes. The patients who were treated saw their diabetes disappear for long periods of time and no longer needed to inject insulin. The procedure came to be known as the Edmonton Protocol.

“It was a huge finding from that group,” says Sefton, who is executive director of Medicine by Design and University Professor in the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry and the Institute of Biomedical Engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. “But the problem was the liver. It was a hostile environment to those new cells and mounted an immune response that killed many of them and the patients’ diabetes returned eventually.”

Nevertheless, it got Sefton thinking: What if there was a better place to implant the cells?

He thought of the skin. Research had proven that the skin – or just under it – is an area less likely to be hostile to transplanted cells such as pancreatic cells. Not only that, but implanting cells under the skin is less invasive than doing so in the liver. The cells could be retrieved more easily, which might make the therapy safer for the patient

But the method raised another problem. The skin has too few blood vessels to enable the implanted cells to survive and enable the body to manage blood sugar. Could scientists find a way to create blood vessels?

In 2016, JDRF awarded Sefton more than $1 million to explore the possibility. To create the blood vessels, the Sefton team used a material that contained methacrylic acid (MAA).

“Once we insert a polymer gel with MAA under the skin, the MAA interacts with the living system in the body (mice are currently being used) and it creates the blood vessels,” Sefton says. “We’re just beginning to understand how MAA works. And this enables the implanted pancreatic cells to deliver insulin throughout the body to do its work in controlling blood sugar and, thus, stopping the diabetic condition.”

Another major hurdle was obtaining enough pancreatic cells for transplant. Sefton, whose lab is located at the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research, says about a million pancreatic islets (each islet contains about a thousand cells) were needed for each patient treated through the Edmonton Protocol model. Acquiring the islets often required two donors.

But now, Sefton says, scientists such as Maria Cristina Nostro – a senior scientist at McEwen Stem Cell Institute, University Health Network, who is also a Medicine by Design-funded researcher and an associate professor of physiology at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine – can create insulin-producing cells from stem cells, which provides an unlimited supply.

With these big problems solved, the team still has another one to deal with – the immune response that the body mounts when the new pancreatic cells are transplanted.

The body’s natural response is to reject, say, a new heart or kidney. It’s the body going after what it perceives to be an invader, in the same way the immune system attacks harmful bacteria or viruses that have entered the body.

While, as Sefton says, the skin tends to respond differently than the liver, there will still be a response enacted that will try to reject the transplanted pancreatic islets once implanted.

This is where Sefton believes the dendritic cells can play an important role.

Discovered by German pathologist Paul Langerhans (the same scientist who also discovered the pancreatic islets named for him) in 1869, dendritic cells are powerful immune cells found in the skin.

“They will, of course, mount an immune response once we implant the pancreatic islets,” Sefton says. “But we believe that the MAA has properties that will work on the skin’s dendritic cells to be tolerant of the pancreatic cells. We don’t want to suppress the immune system because that is dangerous for the patient.

“We want to fool it into accepting the new pancreatic cells as if they are part of the patient’s body. And if we can do that, we’ll have taken a huge step forward.”

Sefton and his team will use the new JDRF grant over the next two years to continue to explore this hunch.

Adventurous health science research isn’t new to Sefton, who has built a record for innovation in biomedical research that has earned him global respect.

He was named a University Professor in 2003, the highest honour U of T bestows on its faculty. In 2017, he was honoured with the Order of Canada for his leadership in biomedical engineering. Before joining Medicine by Design, he was director of U of T’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering and boasts many scientific achievements as a scientist, including being among the first to combine living cells with polymers and effectively launching the field now called tissue engineering.

Today, as the executive director of the Medicine by Design strategic research initiative, Sefton speaks with both pride and excitement about the work of scientists tackling difficult health challenges using regenerative medicine, a branch of health research and treatment that has exploded globally since stem cells were discovered by U of T scientists James Till and Ernest McCulloch at Toronto’s Princess Margaret Hospital – now Princess Margaret Cancer Centre – in 1961.

“The hallmark of our approach is the convergence of scientists from a multitude of disciplines across the University of Toronto and our nine partner research hospitals,” he says. “We’ve got biologists, biochemistry experts, physicists, engineers and specialists in all aspects of medicine working together and sharing ideas. Our goal is to think way beyond the obvious and to act boldly in finding ways to improve treatment and maybe even cure major diseases.”

Medicine by Design was founded in 2015 with a $114 million from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund. The projects in Medicine by Design’s portfolio focus on using stem cells as living therapies, harnessing the body’s capacity for repair, disabling the triggers of disease and creating technologies to advance regenerative medicine.

Within that slate of exploration, Medicine by Design research teams are making progress on treating a multitude of diseases such as restoring vision lost to age-related macular degeneration, using stem cells to treat diseased livers in patients who have no hope of a liver transplant, stopping dangerous and hard-to-diagnose abdominal aortic aneurysms before they do their damage and creating methods to help the brain repair itself after stroke.

“We place a huge emphasis on new ideas and research that is risky,” says Sefton. “That’s the way you have to think when you want to really change things. I want people to hear about our work and think that what we are trying to achieve is impossible. l believe firmly that when it comes to disease, we don’t have to just accept what nature gives us with, say, cancer or stroke or diabetes. We can do better than nature.”

He also emphasizes that advances in technology are essential components of enabling breakthroughs. He points to the importance of tools like CRISPR, a powerful gene editing technology that won the Nobel Prize for Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna in 2020 for creating opportunities that were unthinkable even 30 years ago.

“That’s why I say that 30 years from now, regenerative medicine will be at the centre of how we treat disease,” says Sefton. “It will be standard practice and it will be giving us a level of health we would have never thought possible.

“We may well be able to even eliminate many diseases.”

U of T researchers grow mini-organs to study brain development and disease

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 19 May 2021 14:14:39 +0000

U of T researchers grow mini-organs to study brain development and disease

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 05/19/2021 - 10:14

Cutline

Jeff Wrana, a professor in U of T's Temerty Faculty of Medicine, uses "organoids," or mini-organs grown using stem cells, to better understand diseases including cancer (photo courtesy of Sinai Health Foundation)

Paul Fraumeni

Topic

Our Community

Insulin 100

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Donnelly Centre for Cellular & Biomolecular Research

Biochemistry

Faculty of Arts & Science

Research & Innovation

“Organoids.”

It’s a word that has a science-fiction sound to it, but, in fact, organoids are at the core of what scientist Jeff Wrana calls “revolutionizing biology.”

That’s because organoids offer the promise of new treatments for a host of diseases and conditions, from inflammatory bowel disease to autism spectrum disorder.

“An organoid is a little organ that we can create using human and mouse embryonic stem cells,” says Wrana, a professor in the department of molecular genetics in the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine and a senior investigator at Mount Sinai Hospital’s Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute. “They provide an opportunity to make tiny models of the intestines, liver and kidneys. Our team’s focus now is making cerebral organoids, which are models of parts of the brain.”

The organoids are not “mini-brains,” however, because they are only tiny pieces of tissue that don’t have anywhere near the complexity of even a mouse brain. These are not brains that can think or have consciousness. But these models are offering powerful ways to study disease.

Doing this sophisticated work requires a top-flight team with a wide range of expertise: Like Wrana, Laurence Pelletier is also a senior investigator at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute and a U of T professor of molecular genetics; Liliana Attisano is a professor in U of T’s department of biochemistry and Canada Research Chair in Signalling Networks in Cancer; Ben Blencowe is a U of T molecular genetics professor and the Banbury Chair in Medical Research; and Sidhartha Goyal is a professor in U of T’s department of physics in the Faculty of Arts & Science. Attisano and Blencowe are also scientists at U of T’s Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research.

The team is one of 11 sharing nearly $21 million in funding from Medicine by Design over three years. Funded by a $114-million grant from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund, Medicine by Design is a strategic research initiative that is working at the convergence of engineering, medicine and science to catalyze transformative discoveries in regenerative medicine and accelerate them toward clinical impact.

Wrana and his colleagues have already done important work using organoids to study how cancer starts and how the intestines can regenerate after injury.

Now focusing on the brain, the team will use organoids to examine how the tissue in the brain develops. A key part of this process is a complex phenomenon called splicing that starts with the genes. It’s an essential part of development. It is responsible for ensuring that segments of genes, referred to as exons, are precisely joined to make RNA transcripts that can direct the production of proteins, the key building blocks of all cells. Importantly, the process of alternative splicing, whereby exons are joined in different combinations to generate multiple protein products from a single gene, is critical for the development of complex organs such as the brain.

Blencowe and his collaborators showed previously that there is a link between autism and abnormal alternative splicing of very short exons, called microexons, which are found primarily in the brain. These microexons are either spliced in or left out of the final gene transcript before it directs protein synthesis. Microexons can have a dramatic effect on a protein’s ability to bind its partners, which is required during brain development. This was an important finding, but researchers didn’t understand the role of individual microexons until recently.

In January 2020, Blencowe and his team published a paper in the journal Molecular Cell that characterized the function of a single microexon that is frequently skipped in transcripts in the brains of people with autism.

The researchers showed that mice engineered to lack the microexon displayed behaviours related to those seen in autism, such as avoidance of social interactions. The mice also performed poorly in a learning and memory test.

Now Blencowe, working with Wrana’s Medicine by Design-funded research team, will be able to investigate this process further using the human brain model provided through the organoids the team is creating.

“We will be able to model how neural tissues develop with the organoid,” says Wrana. “And, remember, since we are using human stem cells, we will be creating human models of disease and conditions like autism. Using mice is certainly helpful, but a mouse model can’t recapitulate all the aspects of a human disease. We think that using human models will bring us unique insight because there are human-specific aspects to many of these signaling networks.”

Blencowe says this investigation could ultimately lead to important new therapeutic approaches for people with autism. One possibility is increasing the activity of a regulator of microexon splicing using small molecules. An organoid model under development by Wrana’s group will provide a valuable initial test of the efficacy of this approach.

But to do a more complete range of brain research, Wrana’s team ran up against a big problem: they couldn’t get the organoids to grow blood vessels.

“If we’re going to do our work to the full extent, we need these models to include other types of cells typically found in the brain. And blood vessels are essential.”

Fortunately, they discovered a way to get something very much like blood vessels into the models by using microfluidic devices.

“It’s like a little pump where we can implant organoids in these devices. The device pumps nutrient solutions around the organoid. The solution isn’t true blood, but it mimics blood. And that will stimulate the formulation of blood vessels in the device. Those blood vessels will actually support organoid growth.”

Wrana says the development of this device is a major step forward because it will enable the team to examine conditions like stroke. The project will also develop tools to help the development of safer and more efficient drugs and improved strategies to treat stroke.

“You can take the microfluidic device and put in little beads. The beads will get taken up into the blood vessels. As they move towards the organoid brain model, the blood vessels get smaller and smaller. And at some point, these beads will actually clog the blood vessel. So we think this can be a model for stroke. We can induce a stroke-like event and look for the earliest changes that occur in a human system when a stroke happens and that will help in the development of drugs to prevent and treat stroke.”

The vascularized brain model will also enable the researchers to examine the inner workings of the blood-brain barrier that protects the brain from pathogens and toxins.

“This is a big question in drug development,” says Wrana. “You want some drugs to penetrate this barrier to treat diseases that affect the brain, such as multiple sclerosis. But there are other drugs that you don’t want to get into the neural tissue because they could damage the brain. So, this organoid model could potentially allow us to measure if drugs can penetrate the human blood-brain barrier, because the human blood-brain barrier isn’t exactly the same as those in animals like mice.”

Wrana says this kind of adventurous research wouldn’t be possible without the support of Medicine by Design.

“Our work would never be funded through traditional grant funding mechanisms, which tend to be more conservative. Medicine by Design allows you to think about possibilities and then actually try to do the pie-in-the-sky experiment. For example, developing our microfluidic device is not something you could propose to do in a standard grant platform, which would have required preliminary data. We probably wouldn’t get the funding until we had actually produced the device. But Medicine by Design has supported us in these more speculative ideas. That’s really been transformative for our research program. “

With files from Jovana Drinjakovic