200 College St.
Abstract
In research, we wonder, we re-examine dogma, we ask the “what if?” questions that lead to new insights and discoveries.
In business, we look for gaps, unsolved problems and intentionally develop solutions that fill a market need.
In this seminar, I will discuss both approaches in three stories. I will highlight how a series of “I wonder if?” questions led us to design a completely new way for target discovery and drug screening in cancer.
I will show how our new way to deliver therapeutics locally to the spinal cord and brain led to the invention of a new biomaterial that we have now tested clinically.
I will describe how we purposely designed a new vitreous substitute to overcome an unmet need and our path to translation.
Acknowledgements: The Shoichet Lab is grateful to have the opportunity to advance knowledge with exceptional researchers and collaborators and with the support of funding agencies: NSERC, CIHR, Medicine by Design-CFREF, Mend the Gap-NFRF, Krembil Foundation, DoD, ISRT, PRiME, among others.
Speaker Bio
Professor Molly Shoichet is University Professor, a distinction held by less than 2% of the faculty, and is Scientific Director of Precision Medicine at the University of Toronto, She is the inaugural Pamela & Paul Austin Chair in Precision and Regenerative Medicine. Dr. Shoichet served as Ontario’s first Chief Scientist in 2018 where she worked to enhance the culture of science. She has published over 800 papers, patents and abstracts and has given over 580 lectures worldwide. She currently leads a laboratory of 30 and has graduated 260 researchers. Her research is focused on drug and cell delivery strategies in the central nervous system (brain, spinal cord, retina) and 3D hydrogel culture systems to model cancer. Dr. Shoichet co-founded four spin-off companies, is actively engaged in translational research and science outreach. Dr. Shoichet is the recipient of many prestigious distinctions and the first person to be inducted into all three of Canada’s National Academies of Science of the Royal Society of Canada, Engineering and Health Sciences. In 2018, Professor Shoichet was inducted as an Officer of the Order of Canada and in 2011, she was awarded the Order of Ontario. Dr. Shoichet was the L’Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science Laureate for North America in 2015, elected Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Engineering in 2016, won the Killam Prize in Engineering in 2017 and elected Fellow to the Royal Society (UK) in 2019. In 2020, Dr. Shoichet was awarded the NSERC Herzberg Gold Medal and won the Margolese National Brain Disorders Prize. In 2023, Dr. Shoichet was elected Fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors. Dr. Shoichet received her SB from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1987) and her PhD from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in Polymer Science and Engineering (1992).