About
My lab applies engineering design principles, computational modeling and fundamental stem cell biology across all our endeavors to advance our understanding of cell fate control mechanisms and to develop new cell therapy bioprocess engineering and manufacturing strategies and principles with the goal of enabling accessible therapeutic approaches to disease treatment using living cells. Many of the industrially-oriented clinical stage products being developed today are using engineering innovations developed by my lab (either directly or through the efforts of the not-for-profit translation centre CCRM, which I co-founded).
Awards
- Companion Member, Order of Canada, 2021
- Fellow, Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (CAHS), Distinction, 2020/ 2021
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, 2014
- Till & McCulloch Investigator Award, 2013
- Ontario Premier’s Research Excellence Award, 2000-2004
Relevant Publications
- Discher, DE., Mooney, DJ, and Zandstra, PW. (2009). Growth factors, matrices, and forces combine and control stem cells. Science. 324 (5935), 1673- 1677. https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1171643
- Varelas, X., Sakuma, R., Samavarchi-Tehrani, P., Peerani, R., Rao, BM., Dembowy, J., Yaffe, MB., Zandstra, PW., and Wrana, JL. (2008) TAZ controls Smad nucleocytoplasmic shuttling and regulates human embryonic stem-cell self-renewal. Nat Cell Biol. 10(7), 837-48. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncb1748
- Ng, SW., Mitchell, A., Kennedy, JA., Chen, WC., McLeod, J., Ibrahimova, N., Arruda, A., Popescu, A., Gupta, V., Schimmer, AD., Schuh, AC., Yee, KW., Bullinger, L., Herold, T., Görlich, D., Büchner, T., Hiddemann, W., Berdel, WE., Wörmann, B., Cheok, M., Preudhomme, C., Dombret, H., Metzeler, K., Buske, C., Löwenberg, B., Valk, PJ., Zandstra, PW., Minden, MD., Dick, JE., and Wang, JC. (2016) A 17-gene stemness score for rapid determination of risk in acute leukemia. Nature. 540(7633), 433-437. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature20598
Support Us
CIFAR is a registered charitable organization supported by the governments of Canada, Alberta and Quebec, as well as foundations, individuals, corporations and Canadian and international partner organizations.