Faculty of Pharmacy

Transforming health care in Ethiopia: �鶹��Ƶ's collaboration with Addis Ababa University takes centre stage

ullahnor — Thu, 19 Oct 2017 17:30:09 +0000

Transforming health care in Ethiopia: �鶹��Ƶ's collaboration with Addis Ababa University takes centre stage

ullahnor Thu, 10/19/2017 - 13:30

Cutline

In a partnership between �鶹��Ƶ and Addis Ababa University, Dr. Michael Ko (in glasses) shows Ethiopian counterparts how to perform minimally invasive thoracic surgery using donated equipment that had been left unused (photo courtesy of Dr. Michael Ko)

Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

Topic

Global Lens

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Faculty of Dentistry

Faculty of Medicine

Faculty of Pharmacy

President Meric Gertler

In 2003, Ethiopia – a landlocked country of 72.5 million people – had only a handful of psychiatrists, all located in the capital city. Psychiatry was in its infancy, and most people sought treatment for mental disorders at religious Holy Water sites.

Fourteen years later, a �鶹��Ƶ-Addis Ababa University partnership has propelled the number of psychiatrists from 11 to 70. There are now seven psychiatry departments around the country, and mental health is being integrated into the Ethiopian government’s primary health-care strategy.

The collaboration, called Toronto Addis Ababa Academic Collaboration (TAAAC), has expanded beyond psychiatry: �鶹��Ƶ faculty helped to develop emergency medicine from scratch, training ER doctors in a country that didn’t have any. A group of �鶹��Ƶ physicians, including Dr. Jane Philpott, now minister of Indigenous services, helped start family medicine in Ethiopia in 2013. And earlier this year, a Toronto-based thoracic surgeon and his Ethiopian counterparts conducted sub-Saharan Africa's first video-assisted pneumonectomy.

The program has inspired other academic fields to come on board – �鶹��Ƶ faculty have helped train Ethiopian pharmacists, radiologists, dentists, anesthesiologists, engineers, hematologists, rehab specialists and librarians.

On average, 80 faculty from across �鶹��Ƶ travel to Ethiopia every year as volunteers to provide academic training, teaching, support, research collaboration, clinical supervision and mentorship in 21 different programs. The program as a whole is making a difference in the east African nation, but Dr. Dawit Wondimagegn, chief executive director of the College of Health Sciences at Addis Ababa University, points to family medicine in particular.

“Having family medicine is changing the face of primary care in Ethiopia,” Wondimagegn said.

�鶹��Ƶ’s efforts in Ethiopia – supporting the development of graduate programs at Addis Ababa University – will be on full display as President Meric Gertler visits the country this week. This is believed to be the first official trip by a �鶹��Ƶ president to the African continent.

President Gertler also travelled to Rwanda during this trip as part of a Mastercard Foundation (MCF) Scholars event, but the bulk of his time in Ethiopia is being spent seeing first-hand how this under-the-radar initiative with Addis Ababa University is helping to transform a nation.

The TAAAC program has not only helped Ethiopia slow down the brain drain – keeping newly graduated medical and academic experts in the country – but it has also become the model for collaboration in global health.

“TAAAC has established itself as a sustainable model of educational partnership between two universities: one situated in a low-income country and the other in a high-income country,” said Dr. Brian Hodges, professor of psychiatry at �鶹��Ƶ who is executive vice-president, education of the University Health Network and chair of TAAAC's governance committee.

“In partnership with our colleagues in Addis Ababa, �鶹��Ƶ and its partner hospitals have supported the establishment of a number of programs for health professionals where there was none, strengthened fledgling ones and helped to create a new generation of specialists who are taking up leadership roles in health care and education across the country.”

Minister of Indigenous Services Jane Philpott (fourth from right) was one of several �鶹��Ƶ faculty instrumental in helping Addis Ababa University's school of medicine train family physicians (courtesy of TAAAC)

Ethiopian partners reach out to Canadian partners to identify needs, and then �鶹��Ƶ faculty and affiliated hospitals volunteer to train on-site specialists, develop graduate-level and professional programs and supervise doctoral researchers in Ethiopia. The idea is once those new specialists graduate, they can go on to build up capacity in their field.

The Partners in Health program at Harvard University, started by global health guru Dr. Paul Farmer, has spent time getting to know TAAAC, hoping to base seven new programs on the model, said TAAAC co-director Dr. Clare Pain.

“The program works because of decent people on both sides who care about health equity and education,” Pain said. “Ethiopians are amazing people. We all fall in love with the country, the people, the students, the patients – they are gracious, generous people. What little we can do is multiplied many times by our Ethiopian colleagues, which feels inspiring and very rewarding.”

In 2002, Addis Ababa University’s three psychiatry professors, Dr. Atalay Alem, Dr. Mesfin Araya and Dr. Abdul Rashid Bakali, began reaching out to western universities, requesting assistance to open the university’s first psychiatry residency program to quell the exodus of psychiatrists leaving to study abroad and not returning. �鶹��Ƶ Faculty of Medicine’s psychiatry department took them up on their offer.

In 2014, �鶹��Ƶ's Faculty of Dentistry began collaborating with Addis Ababa University. With only 11 postgraduate specialists and roughly 250 dentists in the country, the training by �鶹��Ƶ faculty has been in periodontology, oral and maxillofacial radiology, preventive and restorative dentistry (courtesy of TAAAC)

Pain had been visiting Ethiopia for several years at this point – initially living there and working as a physiotherapist, and later after she had finished training as a psychiatrist.

“I think Dr. Atalay wrote to everyone he knew in the West to assist, but thanks to Dr. Donald Wasylenki, the then chair of the department of psychiatry at �鶹��Ƶ, we were able to explore the possibility and follow through,” Pain recalled.

�鶹��Ƶ researcher and JLABS draw U.S. drug delivery startup to Toronto

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 10 May 2017 16:49:21 +0000

�鶹��Ƶ researcher and JLABS draw U.S. drug delivery startup to Toronto

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 05/10/2017 - 12:49

Cutline

�鶹��Ƶ's Christine Allen and Pendant Biosciences are working on a new polymer-based drug delivery system (photo by Chris Sorensen)

Chris Sorensen

Author legacy

Chris Sorensen

Topic

Shawn Glinter, the CEO of Nashville-based Pendant Biosciences, was born in Winnipeg and played hockey in college.

But it took a leading University of Toronto researcher – and last year’s launch of life sciences incubator JLABS @ Toronto – to rekindle his interest in Canada.

Though Pendant originally licensed its polymer-based drug delivery technology from Vanderbilt University, the path to commercializing it soon led Glinter and his team to Christine Allen, a professor in �鶹��Ƶ’s Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy.

“I courted her for about a year before she finally said yes,” says Glinter.

Allen's research focuses on new technologies for drug delivery. She's one of only a handful of people in North America familiar with Pendant's polymer technology, which promises to make drugs more efficient, longer lasting and opens the door to drug-impregnated implants and other medical devices.

Glinter calls her a “rock star” in the field.

Now the relationship is poised to grow even closer – and more productive – after Pendant was accepted into Toronto's JLABS life sciences incubator earlier this year. The 40,000 sq. ft. facility, which celebrates its one-year anniversary on Thursday, is housed on one of �鶹��Ƶ’s floors in the MaRS West Tower and provides biopharmaceutical, medical devices and consumer digital health startups with shared lab and office space, as well as connections to experts, industry and investors.

Toronto's JLABS location, the first to be opened outside the United States, is the result of a unique collaboration between Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Janssen, �鶹��Ƶ, MaRS Innovation, the Ontario government and several hospital partners. The number of resident startups calling Toronto's JLABS home has nearly doubled over the past 12 months, with nearly half of them boasting connections to �鶹��Ƶ. They include WinterLight Labs, Nanovista, 6Biotech App4Independence and DNAstack.

Learn more about entrepreneurship and startups at �鶹��Ƶ

The presence of JLABS in Toronto has added to the city's growing reputation as a life sciences hub, centred on �鶹��Ƶ and its adjoining cluster of partner hospitals, research institutes and business incubators.

Global giant Johnson & Johnson “made a conscious decision to invest in Toronto life sciences,” says Glinter, when asked about the decision to move his company north (Glinter himself plans to remain in Nashville but will travel to Toronto several times a month). “That, to me, speaks volumes.”

Allen, meantime, envisions her graduate students and post-doctoral researchers moving seamlessly back and forth between Toronto's JLABS and her lab at �鶹��Ƶ – precisely the type of private-public cross pollination that was envisioned by its founders. She says Pendant’s biodegradable polymer technology promises to vastly improve drug treatments for patients because it’s far more flexible than Poly (lactide-co-glycolide), or PGLA, the industry’s current polymer of choice.

“Think of all the drugs that are out there and how every single molecule is different,” Allen says. “But molecule-material interaction impacts drug formulation performance. It impacts its stability, the amount of drug you can incorporate and the drug’s release-rate.”

For patients, that could mean the difference between having one injection every three to six months, instead of every couple of days.

“It’s about making drugs more effective,” Allen says. “If you can give patients an injection, and they don’t have to come back to the doctor every day, week or month that improves their compliance and quality of life.”

Pendant’s polymer can also be stretched into thin sheets to be used for coatings on medical devices or fashioned into tiny nanoparticles. Another possible application: using the polymer to make transparent, drug-infused contact lenses that allow allergy sufferers to forgo eye drops.

Allen’s partnership with Pendant has been very much a two-way street.

She says working with the hard-driving Glinter and his team has injected her lab with a strong dose of business savvy and helped her better understand the market opportunities facing Nanovista, another startup that she co-founded with David Jaffray, a professor in �鶹��Ƶ’s Faculty of Medicine and the director of the Institute for the Advancement of Technology for Health, as well as Jinzi Zheng, an assistant professor at �鶹��Ƶ’s Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering (IBBME). Nanovista makes an imaging agent that helps surgeons see tumours more precisely.

“I think JLABS has been great for Toronto,” Allen says. “It’s been huge for us, and it’s been huge for Canada. And we can make the most of this at �鶹��Ƶ because we’re right across the street.”

New, no-needle prenatal genetic disease test at �鶹��Ƶ gets Connaught Fund support

ullahnor — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 20:16:07 +0000

New, no-needle prenatal genetic disease test at �鶹��Ƶ gets Connaught Fund support

ullahnor Tue, 01/31/2017 - 15:16

Cutline

Professor Aaron Wheeler is among nine �鶹��Ƶ researchers from a variety of faculties receiving funding from the Connaught Fund

Jennifer Robinson

Author legacy

Jennifer Robinson

Topic

Breaking Research

Connaught

Innovation

Research & Innovation

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Faculty of Arts & Science

Faculty of Dentistry

Faculty of Pharmacy

Subheadline

Among nine innovative research projects at �鶹��Ƶ sharing $790,000 in funding through 2016-17 Connaught Innovation Award

Imagine a simple prenatal diagnostic test that checks for genetic diseases such as Down syndrome but has zero risk for the mother and unborn baby.

Aaron Wheeler, a chemistry professor at the University of Toronto who collaborates with experts in prenatal screening at Mount Sinai Hospital, says he believes his team’s digital microfluidic laser cell lysis platform holds great promise as an alternative to amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling (CVS) – the current gold standards in prenatal diagnosis, both of which are invasive procedures.

“We believe we’ll be able to test for many genetic diseases but at no risk,” he explains. “There’s also reason to believe we’ll be able to conduct these tests five to six weeks earlier.”

Currently, CVS tests can be done after 13 weeks and amnio after 15 weeks, giving parents vital information to help make decisions about the pregnancy.

This month, Wheeler is among nine researchers from a variety of faculties sharing $790,000 in funding from the Connaught Fund as part of the annual Connaught Innovation Award.

See below for a full list of this year’s recipients.

“I’d like to congratulate all of the recipients of this year’s Connaught Innovation Award,” said Professor Vivek Goel, �鶹��Ƶ’s vice-president of research and innovation.

“It’s not only a recognition of the excellence of the work, it’s also an important boost by the Connaught Fund to help accelerate the development of promising technology that has a potential for great impact, as well as support its commercialization.”

Wheeler and his team, who are known for developing lab-on-a-chip techniques for applications in chemistry, biology and medicine, have joined forces on the project with Dr. Elena Kolomietz, Dr. David Chitayat and others at Mount Sinai, which is one of nine �鶹��Ƶ affiliated hospitals in Toronto.

Finding a non-invasive way to implement a comprehensive prenatal diagnostic test is an important mission for the hospital, which delivers approximately 7,000 babies each year, the highest volume of births in Ontario. It’s also one of the largest perinatal centres in North America.

“This would be the ultimate prenatal diagnostic test,” says Kolomietz, who is also an associate professor in laboratory medicine and pathobiology at �鶹��Ƶ.

For the past four years, her team has been collecting cervical mucosal specimens – taken in a similar manner to a Pap smear – which are “a perfect test case for our new technology,” Wheeler says.

These specimens, collected five to 14 weeks after conception, contain fetal cells from placenta that is shed into the uterus. Even a small number of intact cells should be sufficient for a comprehensive whole genome analysis.

But the wrinkle is that the specimens contain both maternal and fetal cells. “It is a needle in a haystack problem,” Wheeler says.

Isolating the individual fetal cells – without contamination from the maternal cells or damage to their DNA – is tricky. Using existing methods met with limited success for Kolomietz and her team. So she looked for an alternative solution and up popped Wheeler’s work.

“I sent Dr. Wheeler an email and we had a meeting and he was immediately excited about the project,” she recalls. “It’s been a delight to work with his group.”

Using Wheeler’s digital microfluidic laser cell lysis platform, the fetal cells will adhere in situ and grow on a specially designed microfluidic device rather than using suspended cells in flowing tubes. The researchers will stain and mark the fetal cells and a laser will blast the cells to break them open. Tiny fluid droplets containing the cells’ contents will be collected and analyzed for genetic anomalies.

“It sounds a little science fictiony,” he admits but says “optimistically” the technology could be widely available in five years’ time for pregnant women if the tests function well.

Kolomietz is hopeful it could be even sooner.

“Once we solve the problem of cell isolation, everything else is in place,” she said, envisioning a future that sees women having the specimens collected by a nurse or family doctor during a regular Pap smear as soon as their pregnancy is confirmed.

And, the platform’s prenatal usage is only the beginning.

“We propose that this system may be useful for evaluating adherent-cell heterogeneity for a wide range of applications,” Wheeler says. “That is one of the reasons that we are grateful for this funding from the Connaught Foundation, which will allow us to explore.”

In addition to Wheeler, the recipients of this year’s Connaught Innovation Award are:

Robert Bonin of the Faculty of Pharmacy for “Automated behavioural platform for rapid in vivo pharmaceutical testing”

David Fleet of the department of computer science for “Advanced algorithms to discover protein structures for drug design”

Glenn Gulak of the department of electrical & computer engineering for “Secure homomorphic search for confidential approval and verification of bank card and online purchases”

Donald Kirk of the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry for “Electrochemical glycerol carbonate production”

Cindi Morshead of the department of surgery for “Promoting neurorepair via novel biphasic electrical stimulation therapy”

Paul Santerre of the Faculty of Dentistry for “ReFilx: A soft tissue filler for the reconstruction of breast tissues defects”

Xiao Yu (Shirley) Wu of the Faculty of Pharmacy for “Intelligent nanoparticle theranostics for CNS diseases”

Andrei Yudin of the department of chemistry for “An enabling macrocyclization technology for the development of pharmaceutical agents”

Fighting cancer: �鶹��Ƶ researchers develop new tool to track circulating tumour cells

ullahnor — Mon, 21 Nov 2016 17:15:59 +0000

Fighting cancer: �鶹��Ƶ researchers develop new tool to track circulating tumour cells

ullahnor Mon, 11/21/2016 - 12:15

Cutline

Circulating tumour cells are targeted with magnetic nanoparticles and then trapped using x-shaped microscale obstacles (photo illustration by Ella Marushchenko)

Jef Ekins

Author legacy

Jef Ekins

Topic

Global Lens

Cancer

Faculty of Pharmacy

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Ted Sargent

Shana Kelley

Institute for Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering

Cancerous tumours are known to release cells into the bloodstream, and it is these circulating tumour cells (CTC) that are the sources of metastatic tumours – tumours that spread and form in distant locations in the body and can eventually kill patients.

A breakthrough by Professor Shana Kelley’s research group at the University of Toronto published in Nature Nanotechnology provides a new tool to characterize CTCs that may help cancer biologists and clinicians understand how to use these cells to provide better treatment.

Monitoring circulating tumour cells has been a tremendous challenge as they are outnumbered in blood by healthy cells at a level of over 1 billion-1. Moreover, they can display varied and dynamic properties, and the collection of CTCs found in the bloodstream of a cancer patient may have differing metastatic potential. Consequently, efforts to integrate the analysis of these cells into mainstream clinical medicine have been limited because it has been difficult to pinpoint what types of cells and what phenotypic properties should be targeted.

But the potential of CTCs to allow the collection of a non-invasive “liquid biopsy” to monitor cancer progression is a tantalizing possibility that has continued to attract significant attention to this problem.

The Kelley research group found that by using magnetic nanoparticles, CTCs in blood samples could be targeted based on proteins displayed on the cell surface, and separated based on the levels of the protein present. Using a high–resolution microfluidic device, cells were then separated into 100 different capture zones to generate a profile that provides phenotypic information related to metastatic potential.

Using this approach and monitoring cells generated in animal models of cancer and in samples collected from prostate cancer patients, the properties of CTCs were shown to evolve and become more aggressive as tumours became more advanced.

“Through this approach, we aimed to provide a new way to profile CTCs beyond simply counting their numbers in clinical samples,” explained Mahla Poudineh, lead author of the paper who is a graduate student at the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. “Instead, we wanted to provide phentotypic information that might allow these cells to be classified as benign or more dangerous, which would then inform treatment options.”

Kelley is a professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy and the Institute for Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering. The Kelley group along with collaborators at the Sargent Group, Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering Professor Ted Sargent's research lab, hope to turn the approach they reported into a device that can be used by cancer researchers and eventually clinicians to allow CTC analysis to be monitored routinely and used to limit the progression of cancer.

“We were very fortunate to collaborate with a number of oncologists at the Sunnybrook Research Centre and Princess Margaret Hospital as we developed this technology so that we could test our approach with real patient specimens and better understand how to adapt it for use in the clinic,” Kelley said.

Faculty of Pharmacy

Transforming health care in Ethiopia: �鶹��Ƶ's collaboration with Addis Ababa University takes centre stage

Read more about the psychiatric initiative

Read more about �鶹��Ƶ's psychiatric partnerships in Ethiopia

Read more about Dr. Maskalyk

�鶹��Ƶ researcher and JLABS draw U.S. drug delivery startup to Toronto

Learn more about entrepreneurship and startups at �鶹��Ƶ

New, no-needle prenatal genetic disease test at �鶹��Ƶ gets Connaught Fund support

Fighting cancer: �鶹��Ƶ researchers develop new tool to track circulating tumour cells