On December 8, Medicine by Design will be hosting its 7th Annual Symposium from 8:15am to 5:30pm virtually and in-person at the MaRS Auditorium. Registration closes on December 5! The theme for this year is Grand Questions in Regenerative Medicine.
The session on Deconstructing Cell Fate and Morphogenesis will include Professor Alison McGuigan (ChemE PhD 0T5) who was inducted into the Canadian Academy of Engineering this summer. McGuigan, a cross-appointed professor in U of T’s Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry (ChemE) and Institute of Biomedical Engineering (BME), is a leader in the field of tissue engineering and disease modelling. Her group applies methods from materials and chemical engineering to assemble artificial tissues in a dish to accelerate drug discovery and the development of next-generation regenerative therapies. She has also trained more than 80 researchers and developed several innovative graduate research training tools. The impact of her work has been recognized with prestigious national and international awards, including the CSChE Hatch Innovation Award and the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society Americas Young Investigator Award.
ChemE is proud of McGuigan’s participation in this year’s symposium as well as our longstanding collaboration with Medicine by Design, a strategic hub where scientists, engineers, and clinicians converge to conceive and translate regenerative medicine approaches that transform human health.
Medicine by Design began in 2015 with Professor Peter Zandstra (BME) and University Professor Molly Shoichet (BME, ChemE) leading the way. Since its inception, the hub has sharpened the peaks of excellence and pushed the frontiers of regenerative medicine through large-scale investments in transformative, interdisciplinary research and translation projects, and through the recruitment of world-class faculty and trainees. Medicine by Design is now led by University Professor Michael Sefton (ChemE 7T1) and Allison Brown (ChemE 9T9, PhD 0T5).
Our department has received over $6M in funding from Medicine by Design that support innovative research including McGuigan’s project on recording cell history. McGuigan and her team are finding ways to record cells’ communications with each other, also known as signaling. To make cell therapies work, researchers need to understand not only how cells function on their own, but also how interactions with neighbouring cells and the environment affect what they do. Learn more about McGuigan’s research at the Medicine by Design 7th Annual Symposium!