Medicine

'Breaking down barriers': U of T opens Blue Door to external partnership opportunities

siddiq22 — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 15:44:48 +0000

'Breaking down barriers': U of T opens Blue Door to external partnership opportunities

siddiq22 Tue, 01/17/2023 - 10:44

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Executives from LG join U of T's Christopher Yip, left, to announce an expansion of their partnership at the Collision tech conference in Toronto in 2019 (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Tabassum Siddiqui

Topic

Global Lens

Blue Door

Artificial Intelligence

Collaboration

Entrepreneurship

Global

Health

Industry

International partnerships

Medicine

partnerships

Research & Innovation

Startups

Technology

Partnering with University of Toronto has emerged as a key strategy for many companies, non-profits and government to achieve their most important goals – from furthering research and developing new products and services, to figuring out solutions to specific problems.

Alex Mihailidis (left) and Illan Kramer (photos supplied)

And many of U of T’s 600-plus partners access world-class talent and expertise via the university's new Blue Door portal.

A point of entry for organizations who want to work with the university, Blue Door is an online portal that helps potential – and existing – partners identify opportunities across the three campuses and connects them with the right people and departments.

“We often hear from prospective partners: ‘How do I partner with U of T? How do I find the right person to work with there?’ So, we wanted to ensure there weren’t barriers to us growing great new partnerships,” says Alex Mihailidis, associate vice-president of international partnerships and a professor in the department of occupational science and occupational therapy in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine.

Mihailidis, along with Illan Kramer, director of international research partnerships, developed the Blue Door initiative over the past two years – with significant input from U of T divisions – and officially launched it last February.

They recently spoke to U of T News about how the initiative helps streamline the partnership process and ensure both existing and emerging partnerships can evolve and grow.

What is the Blue Door?

Mihailidis: Simply put, it is a portal into the university. Within four clicks, a new partner or existing partner can be connected to the right person at U of T who will help them make further connections within the university to achieve their business goals. At a higher level, it’s a new philosophy in the way that we do corporate partnerships here at the university – a more collaborative approach across all the different divisions, campuses disciplines and departments.

U of T President Meric Gertler (front left) and Shigeru Sasaki, CEO of Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd., sign a memorandum of understanding in 2017 (photo by Lisa Lightbourn)

Why was it important for Blue Door to include an online portal for partners?

Mihailidis: One of the things you always hear from partners is that “the university is so big – it’s so complex.” We’re kind of like a federated model – multiple divisions with multiple goals – but we are one university at the end of the day, even across three campuses.

We started talking early on about, “Well, what if we can provide a concierge-style model?’ Through these four clicks online, you’re connected with someone, and that one person becomes your contact at the university. In that way, we’re ensuring that U of T is not seen as this big place that’s complicated to navigate, but straightforward and easy to work with.

Why do so many organizations want to partner with U of T?

Kramer: When you look at U of T’s size and our quality, we’re pretty much peerless globally. And one of the consequences of being such a big, world-class institution is that you have disparate communities of expertise that can talk to one another in interesting and creative ways. It’s why sometimes you'll see an automotive company come to us and you think, “Oh, they're going to want to talk to a mechanical engineer or an electrical engineer.” But it turns out that the people whose work resonates with their needs might be child psychologists or kinesiology experts. The big research and development challenges that these companies are looking to us to help solve are interdisciplinary. And at U of T, we have that kind of interdisciplinarity baked into our size and quality.

Mihailidis: These companies realize that partnering with University of Toronto just adds strength from a variety of levels – whether it’s research, accessing our talent or other areas to help their objectives. All that provides them with a competitive advantage at the end of the day.

In partnership with Moderna, Assistant Professor Omar F. Khan (back row, second from left) and his lab team focus on diseases that are currently incurable and untreatable (photo by Safa Jinje)

What are some examples of successful U of T partnerships?

Kramer: One longstanding partnership is with [Japanese electronics company] Fujitsu. They established a Toronto R&D hub in the Myhal Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship where grad students and Fujitsu researchers work elbow-to-elbow on new inventions and innovations. Since then, we’ve been expanding that collaboration to multidisciplinary applications by applying their microelectronics expertise to other fields like traffic engineering, financial modelling, surgical scheduling and beyond – touching on expertise that exists across the entire university.

Another impactful partnership is with [South Korean conglomerate] LG Electronics. One of the coolest things about this partnership is that it doesn't start and stop at collaborative research – it also includes elements of professional development. We’ve developed what we call an “inverted internship,” where LG scientists embed themselves with U of T research teams for four months to upskill their own AI abilities.

More recently, we launched a really exciting partnership with [American pharmaceutical and biotechnology company] Moderna, a company that a lot of people became familiar with in the last couple of years. Moderna recognized a huge level of expertise, especially in mRNA and regenerative medicine research, at U of T and wanted to do something comprehensive that would help them expand beyond the COVID-19 vaccine to a host of other potential applications. They’ve since launched a project with Omar Khan, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering, and have had several early successes already. So that’s a partnership where we really see the opportunity to be on the leading edge of something that has the potential to impact millions – maybe even billions – of people around the world.

U of T President Meric Gertler (left) and I.P. Park, the president and CTO of LG Electronics, sign a five-year collaborative AI research agreement in 2018 (photo by Geoffrey Vendeville)

What is the value of these partnerships to U of T?

Mihailidis: They obviously bring funding to the university to support the work that is happening here. But it also brings our faculty, researchers and students together with cutting-edge, world-leading companies to help them accelerate the development of their research and move their findings into the real world, where they can have maximum impact.

Of course, there are always questions around protection of intellectual property and appropriate handling of confidentiality. These considerations are handled in an up-front and transparent way through contractual agreements, each of which takes into account our partner’s motivations as well as the motivations and expectations of the professors who may get involved in the partnership. That way, professors and their research teams can still benefit from groundbreaking innovations, while our partners can improve upon their own products and services. Ultimately, these partnerships give us access to other experts around the world and help grow the reputation of the University of Toronto and our community.

Kramer: There's no shortage of ambition among U of T's research community. Our researchers are world-class – they do work that is excellent and excellence doesn’t come for free. If we want to do big things, we need to have world-class facilities; we have to attract the best professors, postdocs and graduate students – in general, we need to be able to outfit our labs with the right equipment and expertise in order to do that research.

Bringing industry on board helps ensure U of T remains a cutting-edge institution. I’ve seen professors’ labs transform with a key industry partner where they went from, “Hey, this is kind of neat work that our academic peers are paying attention to,” to “Oh my God, I'm literally impacting millions of people now.” That’s incredibly exciting.

As era of commercial spaceflight dawns, U of T alumna seeks to deliver health care among the stars

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 11 Feb 2020 15:29:23 +0000

As era of commercial spaceflight dawns, U of T alumna seeks to deliver health care among the stars

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 02/11/2020 - 10:29

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Katie Harris, an alumna of U of T's Faculty of Arts & Science, is working towards becoming a flight surgeon who cares for astronauts (all photos courtesy of Katie Harris)

Sean McNeely

Topic

Our Community

Alumni

Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics

Faculty of Arts & Science

Medicine

Space

Trinity College

When it comes to choosing a career path, students are often told to “reach for the stars.” Katie Harris is taking this advice literally.

Harris has her sights set on becoming a flight surgeon, a doctor who provides medical care for astronauts before, during and after their missions.

What led Harris to become interested in such a specialized field? She’s fascinated with how the human body performs in hostile conditions.

“I just love human performance in space,” says the University of Toronto alumna.

“We’re not really designed for space,” Harris says. “It flips medicine on its head because typical medicine is an unhealthy population in a normal environment. Space medicine is an extremely healthy population in an extremely abnormal environment. I think that's really interesting.”

A member of Trinity College, Harris graduated from the Faculty of Arts & Science in 2018 with an honours bachelor of science, majoring in astronomy and astrophysics, and physics, with a minor in anthropology. Immediately after graduating, she attended the International Space University in Strasbourg, France, where she completed a master of science in space studies. Her courses included space humanities, space management and business, space policy and law, and space engineering. Essentially, the school enables graduates to become well-rounded space professionals.

With the ever-evolving field of space travel, including commercial space flight programs on the horizon, there’s a good chance Harris may one day administer health care in zero gravity.

“We need people in space with diverse training in addition to advanced military training,” says Harris, who has since returned to Canada to attend medical school at Memorial University in Newfoundland. “There’s now a need for people with diverse, interdisciplinary backgrounds.”

While enjoying her third university, she looks back at U of T fondly and says her time as an undergraduate set her up for success.

“I had the perfect undergrad experience,” she says. “I had a community within my degree, a community where I lived and then all this opportunity because U of T was so big.”

At Trinity College, Harris (left) says she loved being in the company of students who were studying a diverse field of subjects. “In the meal halls, they would talk about theory in politics or ideas in philosophy,” she says. “It was such a nice break from my studies and it encouraged me to do a social science minor.”

In her second year, she connected with Professor Suresh Sivanandam at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics – another highlight.

“Professor Sivanandam took a chance on me,” says Harris, recalling when she approached him to become involved in his research projects despite having very little lab or research experience.

“He helped me become a really good researcher,” she says. “He taught me a lot of research skills, how to work in a lab, how to give a strong presentation, how to write good abstracts. He gave me all these opportunities and taught me things that I still apply day-to-day.”

“[Harris] had a lot of great initiative and resourcefulness,” says Sivanandam. “If there’s one phrase that I would use to describe her, it’s ‘can-do.’ She also has this side to her where she really wants to give back to the community and make positive social change, so looking at her path to space medicine – this makes sense.”

Another of Harris’s mentors is no stranger to space travel. Harris says she has benefitted from advice given by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who has been both supportive and candid about the incredible demands of space travel and exploration.

“One of the best pieces of advice he ever gave me was, ‘Make sure you're doing something that you love, because space can be a bit of a long shot.’ You have to love every step.”

Harris’s next step will be finishing medical school in 2023 and serving the people in her home province of Newfoundland as a doctor – all while keeping an eye on the cosmos.

When the day comes to care for astronauts, she hopes she can apply what she learns in orbit to benefit those back home.

“You can gain a lot of insight through space medicine for medicine on the ground,” she says, adding that space-medicine models can be applied to telemedicine to better serve Canada’s rural populations.

While the future of space travel and space medicine is difficult to predict, Harris is confident she’ll get there. Recently connecting with Canada’s lone flight surgeon, Raffi Kuyumjian, who works with the Canadian Space Agency has definitely helped.

“But this is a pathway that I’m still figuring out day-by-day,” says Harris, predicting that she will likely have to put in a decade of being a doctor here on Earth before she can focus on keeping astronauts healthy in space.

“That was something I also learned in undergrad: Don’t plan for right now because right now is not going to stay this way for long. Use your broadest imagination and plan for that.”

U of T's Medicine by Design invests $1.2 million to advance regenerative medicine research and translation

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 14 May 2019 21:05:07 +0000

U of T's Medicine by Design invests $1.2 million to advance regenerative medicine research and translation

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 05/14/2019 - 17:05

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Leo Chou, an assistant professor at U of T’s Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering and a Medicine by Design investigator, is leading one of four projects selected for the 2019 New Ideas Awards (Photo by Bill Dai)

Ann Perry

Topic

Our Community

Pediatrics

Donnelly Centre for Cellular & Biomolecular Research

Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute

Chemical Engineering

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Fields Institute

Hospital for Sick Children

Immunology

Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering

Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology

Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

Regenerative Medicine

Research & Innovation

Sunnybrook Hospital

surgery

U of T Scarborough

University Health Network

UTIAS

What can a swarm of drones tell us about how our bodies make blood? Can folding strands of DNA into origami-like structures help researchers engineer more targeted treatments for lupus and multiple sclerosis? What new insights can mathematical and computational modelling offer into how tissues and organs form?

These are just a few of the questions that nine research teams across the University of Toronto and its affiliated hospitals are investigating thanks to $1.2 million in 2019 New Ideas and Seed Fund awards from Medicine by Design. The awards support basic and translational research aimed at advancing new concepts that are expected to be of critical importance to regenerative medicine in the coming decades, using tools such as synthetic biology and mathematical modelling.

“With these awards, we are pushing the frontiers of regenerative medicine by encouraging creativity, risk-taking and excellence at the convergence of science, engineering and medicine,” said University Professor Michael Sefton, who is executive director of Medicine by Design and a faculty member at the Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering (IBBME) and the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry.

“These projects exemplify the best of Medicine by Design by bringing people together across disciplines and institutions to tackle novel questions and test new approaches.”

Medicine by Design selected the nine funded projects from among 22 short-listed proposals, which were evaluated and ranked through an external peer review process. Sixty research teams at U of T and its affiliated hospitals submitted expressions of intent last fall in response to an open call.

Medicine by Design is a regenerative medicine research initiative at U of T with a mandate to accelerate transformational discoveries and translate them into new therapies for common diseases. It is made possible thanks in part to a $114-million grant from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund – the single-largest research award in U of T’s history.

New Ideas Awards

Leo Chou leads one of four projects selected for 2019 New Ideas Awards, which provide $100,000 per year for two years. Chou, an assistant professor at IBBME and a new Medicine by Design investigator, is collaborating with Bebhinn Treanor, an associate professor in the department of biological sciences at the U of T Scarborough, to study how DNA nanotechnology could be used to ramp up or dampen immune responses, offering new ways to treat disease.

The project elegantly fuses their diverse expertise. Chou uses a process known as DNA origami to pinch and “staple” a long strand of DNA at precise points to create a variety of nanoscale shapes that can arrange biomolecules into precise two- and three-dimensional patterns. Treanor, an immunologist, studies how antigens – fragments of viruses or bacteria with unique markers – trigger immune cells in our bodies called B cells to produce specific antibodies to bind to and inactivate the associated virus or bacteria. Both are intrigued by the fact that, in nature, antigens arranged in periodic spacing provoke a much more potent immune response than individual antigens.

Together, they plan to use Chou’s DNA nanostructures as building blocks to study how the layout, structure, and nature of an array of antigens can affect the dynamics and strength of B cell activation.

The immediate goal is to figure out the basic design principles. “Like all good, fundamental studies, it might open up a lot of doors,” said Chou, who earned his PhD at IBBME in 2014 and returned to U of T in January as a faculty member after a post-doctoral fellowship at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

“It might lead us to interesting biology that we just don’t understand, or haven’t discovered, yet.”

Ultimately, Chou and Treanor hope to create synthetically designed particles that can act as precision vaccines to heighten or dampen immune responses. This approach could lead to more targeted therapies for autoimmune diseases, such as lupus, arthritis and multiple sclerosis, in which the normal immune process goes haywire and mounts an attack on a person’s own cells. Chou also thinks their technology platform could be applied to better control the activation of other cell types, which could help enable cell-based therapies by making the cell-manufacturing process more efficient.

Other 2019 New Ideas projects include:

Dr. Robert Hamilton, a cardiologist and senior associate scientist at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and a professor in the department of paediatrics at U of T, is leading a project that aims to create precision immunotherapies for arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy. This heritable, autoimmune condition causes the myocardium, or heart muscle wall, to break down over time and can lead to sudden death. Sachdev Sidhu, a professor at U of T’s Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research, is the co-investigator, and SickKids clinicians Dr. Donna Wall and Dr. Joerg Krueger are also part of the project team.
Dr. Sevan Hopyan, an orthopaedic surgeon and senior scientist at SickKids and an associate professor in the departments of molecular genetics and surgery at U of T, is making a computational tool to gain new insights into the physical processes that influence how embryonic tissues are organized and shaped. Known as morphogenesis, this process at the earliest stages of life remains poorly understood but could hold important clues for researchers developing regenerative medicine therapies. The co-investigator on this project is Yu Sun, a professor in the department of mechanical and industrial engineering at U of T, while Huaxiong Huang, the deputy director of the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences, is collaborating.
Krishna Mahadevan, a professor in the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry, is leading a team that aims to create new therapies for inflammatory bowel disease such as Crohn’s disease by engineering gut bacteria that can sense inflammation, and then secrete molecules that dampen it and promote regeneration of the intestinal lining. Combining synthetic biology and stem cell biology, the project also draws on the expertise of co-investigators Keith Pardee, an assistant professor in the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy and a Medicine by Design investigator, and Tae-Hee Kim, a scientist at SickKids and an assistant professor in U of T’s department of molecular genetics.

Seed Fund Awards

To increase the number of cutting-edge ideas it invests in, Medicine by Design created a new award this year called the Seed Fund Award, which provides $75,000 for one year to each of five projects.

Angela Schoellig (left) leads one of these projects, which is forging innovative ties between biomedical engineering and robotics. An assistant professor at U of T’s Institute for Aerospace Studies, she works at the interface of robotics, controls and machine learning, with research interests in self-driving vehicles and autonomous aerial vehicles, or drones.

Schoellig is using her award funding to study complex collective behaviour in living and non-living systems. Known as emergence, the phenomenon refers to the dynamic evolution of a system to develop complexity that cannot be easily predicted from the properties of its individual parts. In nature, a common example of emergence is murmuration, which occurs when hundreds of birds congregate and fly in organized, swooping patterns.

Schoellig and co-investigator Peter Zandstra, a University Professor at IBBME, are combining their respective expertise in robotic drones and blood-forming systems to gain new insights into emergence that could lead to advances in both fields. They hope that identifying common elements in these diverse systems will help them understand how a collection of individual entities in a disordered state develops complex, co-ordinated activities, ultimately advancing the capacity to predict and even control desirable emergent behaviour. Such findings could have many applications, including improving the reconstitution of healthy blood systems in patients who have undergone stem cell transplants. The research could also enhance the ability of robots to perform collaborative tasks in dynamic environments, such as airspace defence, search and rescue, and package delivery. Zandstra is also director of the School of Biomedical Engineering and the Michael Smith Laboratories at the University of British Columbia.

The other four successful Seed Fund Award projects range from brain organoids to new strategies to treat hearing loss.

Dr. Peter Carlen, a neurologist and senior scientist at the Krembil Research Institute at University Health Network (UHN) and a professor in U of T’s departments of medicine and physiology, as well as IBBME, is leading a project aimed at creating personalized treatments for the one-third of epilepsy patients whose disease does not respond to drugs. He plans to do this by generating cerebral organoids – brain-like mini-organs grown in a dish – from induced pluripotent stem cells derived from patients with drug-resistant epilepsy. His team will then use these organoids to study why the patients have not responded to medication, and to determine optimal pharmacotherapy options. Co-investigators on the project are Cathy Barr, a senior scientist at Krembil and SickKids and a professor in U of T’s department of psychiatry, and Roman Genov, a professor in U of T’s department of electrical and computer engineering.
Sarah Crome, a scientist at UHN, an assistant professor at U of T’s department of immunology and a Medicine by Design investigator, heads a project investigating whether immune cells known as innate lymphoid cells that reside in tissues can be harnessed to promote regeneration, prevent rejection and ultimately improve the success of cell-based immune therapies.
Alain Dabdoub, a senior scientist at Sunnybrook Research Institute and an associate professor in the departments of otolaryngology and laboratory medicine and pathobiology at U of T, leads a project aimed at regenerating the auditory neurons that transmit sound from the inner ear to the brain as a strategy to reverse hearing loss. Building on work he has already performed in mice in vitro, Dabdoub will investigate how to convert glial cells in a mouse model of neuropathy as well as human glial cells in vitro into auditory neurons.
Miguel Ramalho-Santos, a senior investigator at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Sinai Health System, a professor at U of T’s department of molecular genetics and a Medicine by Design investigator, is using his Seed Fund Award to study whether the way genes are packed inside the nucleus of human pluripotent stem cells affects their ability to generate cerebral organoids, a tool that holds potential to model neurological diseases and test medications outside the body.

With these new awards, Medicine by Design funds more than 130 investigators across U of T and its affiliated hospitals.

U of T alumna champions century-old therapy to treat superbug and save husband's life

noreen.rasbach — Tue, 12 Feb 2019 18:04:35 +0000

U of T alumna champions century-old therapy to treat superbug and save husband's life noreen.rasbach Tue, 02/12/2019 - 13:04

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Tom Patterson and U of T alumna Steffanie Strathdee: "How could a bacterium we considered wimpy be something that is taking my husband down, and we have no antibiotic left to kill it?”

Françoise Makanda

Topic

Global Lens

Alumni

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Global

Immunology

Medicine

University of Toronto alumna Steffanie Strathdee’s new book, The Perfect Predator: A Scientist’s Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug: A Memoir, recounts her husband’s fight against an antibiotic-resistant superbug.

After a trip to Egypt in November 2015, Strathdee’s husband Tom Patterson fell ill. The couple initially thought it was food poisoning, but Egyptian doctors diagnosed him with pancreatitis. When his symptoms worsened, he was flown to Frankfurt, where doctors discovered that he had an abdominal abscess from a gallstone obstruction that was infected with Acinetobacter baumannii, an antibiotic-resistant superbug that tops the World Health Organization’s list of the deadliest superbugs.

This bacterium, as Strathdee describes it, is good at stealing antibiotic-resistant genes and can live under extreme conditions. A few weeks later, he was sent from Frankfurt to a hospital at University of California San Diego, near where the couple currently resides. Her husband’s condition rapidly deteriorated as the superbug colonized his body. He went into septic shock and remained in a coma for two months.

“First, I was embarrassed because I’m an infectious disease epidemiologist. My husband was dying from a superbug infection, and it caught me off guard because this was bacteria that I used to plate on Petri dishes when I studied microbiology at U of T,” said Strathdee.

“I went from embarrassed to angry. How could a bacterium we considered wimpy be something that is taking my husband down, and we have no antibiotic left to kill it?"

Strathdee earned all of her degrees at U of T, including her PhD in epidemiology from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health in 1994, which was then known as the School of Community Health. She is currently an associate dean of global health sciences at the UC San Diego School of Medicine.

As her husband fought for his life, Strathdee did research on the internet and stumbled upon phage therapy, a treatment she had learned about during her undergraduate studies at U of T. Phage therapy stems from bacteriophages, which are viruses harvested from soil, dirty water and human waste that specifically prey on bacteria.

“When students are sitting in their classroom, eyes glazing over because it’s a boring lecture, just remember that a little piece of information can come back later and help you save somebody’s life. That’s what happened in our case,” said Strathdee.

Read about Steffanie Strathdee as one of Time magazine's 50 people transforming health care

French Canadian scientist Félix D’Herelle discovered bacteriophages in 1917 and first used phage therapy to successfully treat humans in 1919. Phage therapy lost its popularity in the 1940s following the introduction of penicillin, but was taken up by the Soviet Union. Western experts shunned away from it – until now.

Strathdee emailed phage researchers all over the country, and discovered two teams at The Center for Phage Technology at Texas A&M University and the U.S. Navy Medical Research Center that agreed to help. Both teams identified several phages that were active against Patterson’s bacterial isolate, and purified them in time for the medical team at UC San Diego to administer them to Patterson.

Since phage therapy remains experimental in North America and Western Europe, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted permission for it to be used to treat Patterson on a compassionate basis. It was a huge gamble, but it paid off. Three days after beginning intravenous phage therapy, Patterson woke up from a deep coma and began to recover.

“My training in epidemiology helped me a lot. It helped me dissect the problem I was facing and then conduct research to seek potential avenues to treat Tom. But it took a global village to achieve our miracle,” said Strathdee.

“I dream of one day taking phage therapy to lower- and middle-income countries that bear the biggest burden of superbug infections and don’t have access to the resources that I did.”

Phage therapy is now considered as a potential treatment for the superbug crisis in North America, following the publicity the case received. In light of their success, Strathdee and colleagues have opened the first phage therapy centre in North America at UC San Diego, called the Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics. They have successfully treated several other patients suffering from superbug infections in the U.S. and abroad, and will launch two clinical trials of phage therapy in 2019.

Patterson and Strathdee shared their experience in their book, which she hopes will help others understand the growing threat of superbugs and the potential cure on the horizon.

Patterson and Strathdee will be sharing their story at Dalla Lana on March 26 at noon in the seventh floor lounge in the Health Sciences Building.

U of T researchers discover genetic network linked to autism

lanthierj — Mon, 05 Nov 2018 17:12:09 +0000

U of T researchers discover genetic network linked to autism

lanthierj Mon, 11/05/2018 - 12:12

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Donnelly Centre researchers Thomas Gonatopoulos-Pournatzis (left) and Professor Benjamin Blencowe used the powerful gene editing tool CRISPR to help identify the genes (photo courtesy of the Donnelly Centre)

Topic

Research & Innovation

Researchers at the University of Toronto have uncovered a network of more than 200 genes linked to autism – a discovery that could lead to new therapies for the common neurological disorder.

The findings are part of a collaborative research program focusing on autism led by Benjamin Blencowe, a professor in U of T’s Donnelly Centre for Cellular & Biomolecular Research and the department of molecular genetics.

“Our study has revealed a mechanism underlying the splicing of very short coding segments found in genes with genetic links to autism,” said Blencowe, who also holds the Banbury Chair of Medical Research at U of T.

“This new knowledge is providing insight into possible ways of targeting this mechanism for therapeutic applications.”

The network of genes uncovered by postdoctoral researcher Thomas Gonatopoulos-Pournatzis, lead author of the study published in the journal Molecular Cell, is involved in controlling alternative splicing. That’s a process that diversifies protein molecules – cells’ building blocks – in the brain and other parts of the body.

Blencowe’s laboratory previously showed that disruption of this process is closely linked to altered brain wiring and behaviour found in autism.

Best known for its effects on social behaviour, autism is thought to be caused by mishaps in brain wiring laid down during embryo development. Hundreds of genes have been linked to autism, making its genetic basis difficult to untangle. Alternative splicing of small gene fragments, or microexons, has emerged as a rare, unifying concept in the molecular basis of autism after Blencowe’s team previously discovered that microexons are disrupted in a large proportion of autistic patients.

Learn how microexons contribute to autism

As tiny protein-coding gene segments, microexons affect the ability of proteins to interact with each other during the formation of neural circuits. Microexons are especially critical in the brain, where they are included into the RNA template for protein synthesis during the splicing process. Splicing enables the utilization of different combinations of protein-coding segments, or exons, as a way of boosting the functional repertoires of protein variants in cells.

And while scientists have a good grasp of how exons, which are about 150 DNA letters long, are spliced, it remained unclear how the much-smaller microexons – a mere 3-27 DNA letters long – are used in nerve cells.

“The small size of microexons’ presents a challenge for the splicing machinery and it has been a puzzle for many years how these tiny exons are recognized and spliced,” Blencowe said.

To answer this question, Gonatopoulos-Pournatzis developed a method for identifying genes that are involved in microexon splicing. Using the powerful gene editing tool CRISPR, and working with Mingkun Wu and Ulrich Braunschweig in the Blencowe lab as well as with the Jason Moffat lab in the Donnelly Centre, Gonatopoulos-Pournatzis removed from cultured brain cells each of the 20,000 genes in the genome to find out which ones are required for microexon splicing.

He identified 233 genes whose diverse roles suggest that microexons are regulated by a wide network of cellular components.

“A really important advantage of this screen is that we’ve been able to capture genes that affect microexon splicing both directly and indirectly and learn how various molecular pathways impinge on this process,” Blencowe said.

Gonatopoulos-Pournatzis was also able to find other factors that work closely with a protein called nSR100/SRRM4m a master regulator of microexon splicing, discovered earlier by the Blencowe lab. Working with Anne-Claude Gingras’s team at Sinai Health System’s Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, they identified proteins called Srsf11 and Rnps1 as forming a molecular complex with nSR100.

Knowing the precise molecular mechanisms of microexon splicing will help guide efforts to develop potential therapeutics for autism and other disorders.

For example, because the splicing of microexons is disrupted in autism, researchers could look for drugs capable of restoring their levels to those seen in unaffected individuals.

“We now better understand the mechanism of how the microexons are recognized and spliced specifically in the brain,” said Gonatopoulos-Pournatzis, who recently won the Donnelly Centre’s newly established Research Excellence Award.

“When you know the mechanism, you can potentially target it using rational approaches to develop therapies for neurodevelopmental disorders.”

The study was supported by research grants from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, Medicine by Design as part of the Canada First Research Excellence Fund and the Simmons Foundation.

Painting of historic insulin lab by U of T’s Frederick Banting up for auction

Romi Levine — Thu, 04 Oct 2018 16:36:39 +0000

Painting of historic insulin lab by U of T’s Frederick Banting up for auction

Romi Levine Thu, 10/04/2018 - 12:36

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The Lab (1925) by Frederick Banting will be auctioned off in November (image courtesy of Heffel Fine Art Auction House)

Topic

History was made at a University of Toronto lab in 1921 when physician Frederick Banting and researcher Charles Best discovered insulin – transforming the lives of people living with diabetes and earning the scientists the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Next month, one lucky bidder will be able to take home a piece of that historic moment.

The Lab, a 1925 painting by Banting depicting the lab where insulin was discovered, will be up for auction by Heffel Fine Art Auction House on Nov. 21.

“When you hold this painting, you really feel like you’re holding a piece of history,” Heffel president, David Heffel, told the Canadian Press.

“Foremost, it’s a great painting by one of Canada’s great painters, but also, that great painter was a Nobel Prize-winning medical scientist.”

The auction house will be donating its commission from the sale to U of T’s Banting & Best Diabetes Centre.

Read the Toronto Star article

Canada is facing a tsunami of liver disease and cancer: U of T expert

noreen.rasbach — Fri, 15 Jun 2018 14:29:21 +0000

Canada is facing a tsunami of liver disease and cancer: U of T expert noreen.rasbach Fri, 06/15/2018 - 10:29

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Hepatitis B, hepatitis C and obesity all play a part in the rising incidence of liver cancer – in Canada and globally (photo by Shutterstock)

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The Conversation with U of T's Dr. Morris Sherman

Deaths from liver cancer in Canada have doubled over the past 25 years. And to make matters worse, there’s an epidemic of liver cancer on the horizon if action isn’t taken soon.

While less people are dying from most major cancers – such as breast cancer and lung cancer – liver cancer (hepatocellular carcinoma or HCC) is bucking the trend and heading in the wrong direction.

In 1993, liver cancer rates in Canadian men were five cases per 100,000 population. By 2017 this had risen to 9.9 cases.

For women, rates are much lower, but the trend is the same. In 1993, 1.6 Canadian women per 100,000 were diagnosed with liver cancer; by 2017 this had almost doubled. In hard numbers this means that last year 1,900 men in Canada were diagnosed with liver cancer and 580 women. A total of 950 men died from liver cancer and 270 women.

This is not unique to Canada. A similar pattern is seen in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and most other developed countries.

At this week’s Global Hepatitis Summit in Toronto (June 14-17), I will be among a group of liver cancer experts exploring these trends.

The role of hepatitis and obesity

What are the reasons for this increase, and why are they being discussed at the Global Hepatitis Summit? It is because both hepatitis B and hepatitis C are serious liver infections that cause inflammation.

When left untreated, both infections can progress to liver scarring, cirrhosis, liver cancer and, ultimately, an early death.

3D image of cirrhosis of the liver (photo by Shutterstock)

Today, there are an estimated 230,000 Canadians with hepatitis B and 250,000 with hepatitis C. Almost half of each group do not know they are infected, which hugely increases their risk of progression to serious liver disease and cancer.

An enormous effort will be needed from provincial and territorial governments – with federal government support – to find, diagnose and treat these missing patients and to link them to care.

Also contributing to Canada’s liver cancer problem is the obesity epidemic: About two thirds of Canadian men and half of women are thought to be overweight or obese.

Some one in five Canadians have some degree of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which causes inflammation and can progress to cirrhosis and liver cancer.

A lack of liver cancer specialists

Canada’s limited number of liver specialists (less than 100 nationwide) and a few oncologists dealt with around 5,000 cases of liver cancer during 2017.

However, the hepatitis B and C epidemics, combined with Canada’s continuously increasing obesity problem, threaten to drown liver cancer specialists with new cases in the coming decades – with numbers reaching tens of thousands annually over the next 20 years.

We are completely unprepared to deal with such an epidemic of liver cancer. Not only would we be submerged in the sheer number of cases, the financial considerations for provinces and territories and the federal government would be phenomenal.

And many of these liver cancers strike people in their 50s, when they are still of working age. So families are not only in danger of losing a loved one, but possibly the main breadwinner in their family unit.

As obesity in Canada shows no signs of retreating, new treatments for fatty liver disease could play a part in helping to reduce future incidences of liver cancer (photo by Shutterstock)

Not only is Canada’s system of liver specialists being gradually overwhelmed, but there is also a shortage of new liver specialists interested in HCC being trained.

Graduating liver specialists (hepatologists) tend not to specialize in liver cancer. Nor is it a popular speciality in oncology. However, this area is a growing field and there are plenty of opportunities for young physicians to do both practice and research.

Provinces and territories must also take a fresh look at remuneration for liver specialists, who are generally not as well paid as those in other specialities such as gastroenterology.

It may be necessary to develop some special programs to address this issue and boost recruitment in order to deal with the tsunami of liver disease and cancer that Canada is facing.

How to reverse the trend

However, the news is not all bad. Even though Canada’s incidence and mortality rates for liver cancer have doubled over the last 25 years, the actual numbers are much better for Canada than other developed nations. With six new cases per 100,000 population per year, Canada’s liver cancer incidence is lower than Australia (7.4) the U.S. (9.2) and the U.K. (9.6).

A similar pattern is seen with mortality: Canada’s death rate for liver cancer (three per 100,000 population) is less than half that of the U.S. and Australia (both 6.6) and the U.K. (8.7).

Read U of T expert on why all Canadian infants need a hepatitis B vaccination

I believe this is due to our excellent record in finding cases of liver cancer very early, when they can still be successfully operated and treated. The U.S. obviously lacks universal health coverage and the U.K. has a high level of alcoholic liver disease contributing to the epidemic there.

To reverse the increasing trend in liver cancer in Canada and elsewhere, a combination of things will need to occur. First, more patients with hepatitis B and hepatitis C must be diagnosed and treated or cured. Second, new therapies within the next decade should also greatly improve care and prognosis for hepatitis B.

Finally, because obesity in Canada shows no signs of retreating, we will be dependent on new treatments in the pipeline for fatty liver disease. It is unclear at this point how many cases of cirrhosis and liver cancer this will prevent.

Morris Sherman is an affiliate scientist at Toronto General Hospital Research Institute (TGHRI) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Toronto.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

First Canadian-born Black doctor studied at U of T

geoff.vendeville — Fri, 09 Feb 2018 20:00:25 +0000

First Canadian-born Black doctor studied at U of T

geoff.vendeville Fri, 02/09/2018 - 15:00

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Anderson Abbott, the first Canadian-born Black MD, is pictured in 1863 (left) in his army uniform, and later on in his life (right) in his academic robes (photos courtesy of Toronto Public Library)

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Dr. Anderson Abbott among group who stood vigil over dying President Abraham Lincoln

More than 150 years ago, the man who would become the first Canadian-born Black doctor came through the University of Toronto.

Dr. Anderson Abbott's life, from his upbringing as the son of immigrants from Alabama to his illustrious medical career, is the focus of a feature in the Toronto Star.

According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, he enrolled at University College to study chemistry in 1857. Soon thereafter, he began his studies at the Toronto School of Medicine, then an affiliate of U of T.

He studied and worked under Dr. Alexander Thomas Augusta, an American-born “free person of colour” who graduated from Trinity College in 1856.

In 1861, the same year the U.S. Civil War broke out, he obtained his licence to practise medicine. Although he was Canadian, he volunteered to help the Union Army defeat the Confederate states, which allowed slavery.

Abbott distinguished himself as a contract surgeon and later surgeon-in-chief at the Freedman's Hospital (for Blacks), according to the Star. “He received many commendations and he and Dr. Augusta came to be known by Washington's movers and shakers, including U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.”

After Lincoln was shot by an assassin on April 14, 1865, Abbott was among the group of doctors, friends and family who stood watch over the dying president. After Lincoln's death, his widow, Mary Todd Lincoln, sent Abbott the houndstooth shawl that Lincoln had worn to his inauguration.

Abbott returned to Toronto in 1866. He married a few years later and moved with his wife to Chatham, Ont., where they raised a family. He became the first Black coroner of Kent County and advocated for integrated schools.

Rising racial prejudice led the Abbotts to move to Dundas, Ont., where Abbott had a thriving medical practice and became the assitant editor of a newspaper, according to the Star. Writing under an alias, he criticized racist views.

In 1913, he died at age 76.

U of T honours his memory with a scholarship for Black undergraduate students in any program. The Dr. Anderson Abbott Award is for Black undergraduates in any field of study who demonstrate high academic achievement, financial need and service to the Black community.

Lyme disease: U of T expert says don't let fear of tick bites keep you inside

ullahnor — Mon, 17 Jul 2017 19:55:21 +0000

Lyme disease: U of T expert says don't let fear of tick bites keep you inside

ullahnor Mon, 07/17/2017 - 15:55

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After a day outside, take a shower and check your pet and yourself for ticks, says Tara Moriarty (photo by Bertrand Guay/AFP/Getty Images)

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The importance of regular tick checks and showering after a day outdoors

This summer is shaping up to be a very big tick season because the weather has been cool and wet, says Tara Moriarty, an associate professor in U of T's Faculty of Dentistry who is also cross-appointed to the Faculty of Medicine’s department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology.

Those are the ideal conditions for the black-legged tick that carries the bacteria causing Lyme disease, Moriarty explains in the current edition of Doctors' Notes, a weekly column in the Toronto Star, written by members of U of T's Faculty of Medicine.

If this sounds worrisome, she's got good and bad news.

“First, a reality check. Estimates from early Lyme disease vaccine trials suggest that about 90 per cent of people infected with the bacteria don’t develop major symptoms of the disease such as arthritis. Many don’t know they’re infected. Ten per cent are diagnosed with Lyme disease and receive antibiotics, and of those, another 10 per cent have a version of Lyme that doesn’t respond well to treatment. This means about one per cent of people infected with Lyme bacteria suffer the terrible, often crippling, long-lasting symptoms that make this disease so feared – but 99 per cent don’t.

Lyme disease isn’t common yet in many parts of Ontario, including the Toronto region, because traditionally our climate doesn’t allow ticks to survive the winter in large numbers, Moriarty writes. But by 2020, she predicts, all of southern Ontario extending east to Quebec and north to southern parts of Algonquin Park will be high-risk areas for Lyme-carrying ticks. And, thanks to climate warming, the GTA has developed the ideal conditions for ticks to live here year-round.

Read the entire Doctors' Notes column in the Toronto Star

#UofTGrad17: The doctor will see you now

ullahnor — Tue, 06 Jun 2017 19:04:22 +0000

#UofTGrad17: The doctor will see you now

ullahnor Tue, 06/06/2017 - 15:04

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Venus Valbuena is part of the Faculty of Medicine's Class of 2017. She promoted student wellness at U of T and worked on a resilience curriculum for the Faculty

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Faculty of Medicine grads come from varied backgrounds

Before joining U of T's Faculty of Medicine, Justin Lam completed an undergraduate degree in art history from Stanford University, Venus Valbuena trained as a registered nurse, and Ryan Giroux, who is Métis from rural Alberta, did his bachelor's degree in anthropology.

Today, all three are members of the Faculty of Medicine's Class of 2017.

They graduated Tuesday, and are part of the more than 18,000 students who are part of the Class of 2017 at U of T, with almost 14,000 graduating in 27 ceremonies running from June 6 to June 22.

Lam (above) says his humanities background offered him a unique perspective on the “bigger picture” of health care.

“My training in the humanities and social sciences taught me the art of close looking – the skill of visual analysis for little details and fitting those details into a larger picture, literally and figuratively,” says Lam. “I’ve always been interested in the bigger picture – understanding context and structural and systemic issues. This pushed me to be a better medical student.”

He's hoping to pursue a career in paediatrics.

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Painting of historic insulin lab by U of T’s Frederick Banting up for auction

Read the Toronto Star article

Canada is facing a tsunami of liver disease and cancer: U of T expert

The role of hepatitis and obesity

A lack of liver cancer specialists

How to reverse the trend

Read U of T expert on why all Canadian infants need a hepatitis B vaccination

First Canadian-born Black doctor studied at U of T

Lyme disease: U of T expert says don't let fear of tick bites keep you inside

Read the entire Doctors' Notes column in the Toronto Star

#UofTGrad17: The doctor will see you now

Read more about Lam

Read more about Valbuena

Read more about Giroux