By Wendy Haaf
The journey between bench and bedside is long, painstaking, and strewn with obstacles -- but when it comes to breast cancer research, a group of Western-affiliated researchers is bulldozing down some of those barriers, and building bridges over others.
As basic researchers who study metastasis, Ann Chambers, PhD, Eva Turley, PhD, and Alison Allan, PhD, are well-aware the bench and the bedside are separate nations, with distinct languages and cultures. However, the three women act as ambassadors between those two worlds, as part of a unique program aimed at turning discoveries in the basic science of breast cancer into diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic markers as quickly as possible: The Pamela Greenaway Kohlmeier Translational Breast Cancer Research Unit (TBCRU).
“The genesis of the unit was that we wanted to get scientists thinking more about how their research could make an impact on breast cancer patients,” explains TBCRU director Ann Chambers, a Canada Research Chair in Oncology and Professor of Oncology at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry.
To that end Turley, a renowned breast cancer researcher who had successfully pushed some of her own discoveries closer to the cancer clinic, was recruited. Turley uses her expertise to organize monthly seminars which bring basic scientists and clinicians together to hear experts from around the world speak on topics ranging from molecular profiling of tumours to drug development and clinical trials.
Turley says putting the two groups under one roof gets basic scientists considering clinical questions, and sparks the exchange of ideas. “Collaborations happen more or less spontaneously -- you have to be in proximity,” Turley notes.
The TBCRU also nurtures the next generation of translational researchers through a training program that funds between nine and 12 partial post-docs and studentships. “The training program is intended to recruit bright young people at an early stage, and convince them they shouldn’t just do molecular biology, or just clinical work, but to span two worlds,” Chambers explains.
The TBCRU also helps scientists with promising, as-yet-unproven ideas overcome a common Catch-22. “Grant agencies won’t give you funding until you show you have done some work and your hypothesis is probably true -- but you need money to do that,” explains Alison Allan, an assistant professor with the Departments of Oncology and Anatomy & Cell Biology at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry and an oncology scientist with the London Regional Cancer Program.
Building on evidence from animal models suggesting the concentration of endothelial cells in the bloodstream may reflect how rapidly cancer is progressing, Allan and her collaborators developed a non-invasive method of detecting these rare cells.
While the results of that study are still pending, there’s no doubt the program that nurtured it has already successfully toppled some roadblocks. While many organizations merely pay lip service to translational research, Turley says, “When we have annual reviews it’s considered a positive if you’re linked up with a company or clinical research. Not many institutions do that – that’s a big shift.”
By Kathy Wallis
Holistic practitioners believe in the healing powers of crystals like amethyst and rose quartz. Harvey Goldberg, PhD, and Graeme Hunter, PhD, also believe crystals hold the key to healing but they are referring to biological crystals, essential building blocks for strong teeth and bones.
“Mineralized tissues like bones and teeth have physical properties that are critical for their function,” says Hunter. “Obviously, the skeleton has to be rigid enough to support the weight of the body and in the oral cavity the teeth have to be very hard to crush food. In order for mineralized tissue to function properly, it has to have the right ratio of crystals to soft tissue and it has to have the right architecture at the microscopic level.”
Hunter is trying to explain things like why the crystals in tooth enamel are large, long and thin, whereas in dentin and bone, the crystals are very small and irregular in shape. Crystal size, shape, orientation and location are all factors in biomineralization.
But not only do Hunter and Goldberg want to fully understand biomineralization, they want to be able to switch the process off and on; “off” to prevent mineralization where it should not occur such as in the kidneys with kidney stones or in blood vessels with atherosclerosis, and “on” to regenerate new bone to replace tissue lost to disease or injury, and to speed healing for the integration of dental and orthopaedic implants into bone.
The two biochemists are professors of oral biology at Schulich Dentistry. They are also members of the CIHR Group in Skeletal Development and Remodeling, a multidisciplinary group of scientists at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry.
“One of the things I’ve learned is that one person can only do so much, but if you work in a team you can attack a problem from a number of different angles,” says Goldberg.
The two identified osteopontin (OPN) as a potent inhibitor of the kind of crystal formation that results in kidney stones. In the long term, they hope their investigations of OPN will result in a new treatment to prevent kidney stone disease. The knowledge could also be applied to a wide spectrum of human diseases involving pathological calcification, including dental calculus, gallstones, and atherosclerosis.
While Hunter’s lab primarily directs its attention to turning off biomineralization, Goldberg’s wants to find ways to boost it. The ability to stimulate bone to repair itself could help in complex fractures, bone replacement and spinal fusions. It may even eliminate the need for bone grafts or artificial bone substitutes, commonly used now to anchor teeth or implants in cases of severe periodontal disease. .
Goldberg and Hunter have received funding from CIHR to work on the development and testing of novel specific peptides to stimulate bone regeneration. If successful, it could lead to a new commercial product, an orthobiologic to help those with skeletal and dental problems.
By Anthea Rowe
If home building were like drug development, foundations would always be shifting and some houses would harm rather than harbour their occupants.
That’s the challenge facing the molecular neuroscience team at Robarts Research Institute. Led by Stephen Ferguson, PhD and Jane Rylett, PhD, the team is dedicated to understanding the molecular and cellular basis of a wide range of neurological diseases, including ALS, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington’s, epilepsy, depression, and stroke. And although their research is a long way from identifying specific targets for drug therapy, they're definitely developing the blueprints.
"Many of the drugs available today are imperfect," explains Ferguson. "They may become toxic, produce side effects, lose efficacy over time, or have the frustrating effect of working marvellously for some patients and not at all for others."
That imperfection rests with the body's fundamental building blocks: proteins. Participating in every cellular process, proteins provide structure, support metabolic processes, send cellular messages, and initiate and assist immune responses; however, they are not limited to single functions or even to specific locations within the body.
"There are no rules in biology,” says Rylett. “We have to remain open-minded and approach cellular and molecular research from a number of angles."
Enter Robarts' molecular neuroscience team, which is conducting fundamental research into how cells live, die, proliferate, function, and communicate – in both healthy and diseased environments. With the identification of each new cellular mechanism and molecular function, the team moves one step closer to developing meaningful blueprints for human biology.
Having grown from four to eight scientists over the last four years, the molecular neuroscience team expanded again in July 2008 to include Drs. Marco and Vania Prado from Brazil. Vania Prado has the ability – unique within the University and the city – to develop models of aging and dementia in mice, enabling team members to move their investigations of neurodegenerative diseases into animal models.
“The group’s collaborative approach to disease research exemplifies Robarts’ unique strength as a research institute,” said Dr. Victor Han, Associate Dean, Research at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry. “The collective expertise of Robarts researchers to study a disease problem from molecules to humans should lead to more effective therapies at a faster pace.”
When Robarts Research Institute expanded in 2002 to include a 100,000 square-foot addition, the J. Allyn Taylor Centre for Cell Biology was established as an open concept lab shared by four cell biology research groups. Relatively unique among research institutions, the open concept arrangement has enhanced the group’s collaborative approach to research.
“Our trainees really enjoy the open concept space,” says Rylett. “Not only do they share equipment and lab supplies but, more importantly, they discuss common problems and brainstorm new approaches to their respective research programs. It’s an exciting environment in which to learn.”
By Kathy Wallis
There’s a horrific multi-vehicle crash on Highway 401. Why is it that some of the drivers involved will be able to get behind the wheel again with no problem and even travel that same stretch of road, while others might never get past the trauma to be able to face highway driving again? It’s one of the mysteries of the mind that Dr. Ruth Lanius is trying to solve. An associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry, Lanius has made Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) the focus of both her practice and her research.
“Most people can say this was an awful accident, but they know it was in the past,” explains Lanius. “But for someone with PTSD, they relive the trauma, actually feeling they are back at the scene of the trauma with all the anxiety and fear responses they had at the time of the actual event. This can actually be seen in brain scans.”
“I wanted to combine my interest in neuroscience with my clinical interest and learn more about what happens in the brain when people have been traumatized, and how through therapy, we could rewire some of that brain circuitry.” She established the Traumatic Stress Service at University Hospital, London Health Sciences Centre, which specializes in treating and studying PTSD and related co-morbid disorders.
In December of 2006, Lanius became the first researcher named to the Harris-Woodman Chair in Psyche and Soma. “This Chair looks at the mind-body connection,” says Lanius. “It’s been shown that people with histories of early life trauma have significantly higher risks of developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, ischemic heart disease, liver disease and a whole host of other medical problems, so we really want to look at the relationship between PTSD and physical illness.”
Through her patient studies, Lanius has identified a number of risk factors for PTSD including: a past history of traumatic events, psychiatric disorders, exposure to recent lifetime stressors, or showing signs of disassociation during the event. By understanding how these risk factors relate to the activation of brain regions which regulate emotions, Lanius believes physicians will be better able to predict whether someone will develop PTSD or not.
A current research project involves having trauma patients undergo neuroimaging before and after treatment to actually see how the brain changes with therapy. One of the therapies, Lanius uses is called “mindfulness,” a way of thinking which helps people to live in the present and not relive past traumatic experiences. But it’s also a practice that she applies to her own busy life to help achieve balance.
“I think knowing more about stress responses and knowing more about interventions such as being ‘mindful’ has changed my life, and I think the only way you can teach ‘mindfulness’ to patients is to practice and understand it yourself.”
By Kris Dundas
If you've had a positive experience at your family doctor's office lately, it just may be due in part to the work of Moira Stewart, PhD, and her colleagues. If you haven't, rest assured they are working on it.
As Director of Schulich Medicine & Dentistry's Centre for Studies in Family Medicine (CSFM), Stewart leads a multidisciplinary team that works daily towards improving primary health care. Stewart also holds the Dr. Brian W. Gilbert Canada Research Chair in Primary Health Care.
“Primary care represents the first point of contact of the patient to the health care system. It could be a visit to the family doctor, a pharmacist, a dietitian or various other practitioners,” explains Stewart, an epidemiologist who has studied primary care for more than 25 years. “About 80 per cent of health care takes place in that sector.”
One of the main foci for the centre is patient-centred care. “The patient-centred clinical method has been one of (the Department of Family Medicine's) planks for a long time. It's what we are known for internationally.”
Stewart's current research is proving the value of the patient-centred model. “We now know the important outcomes – greater patient satisfaction, the patient's health gets better and it's more efficient for the system ... If you are thinking of a sustainable health care system and a desire to be wise stewards of health care dollars, this is clearly one of the solutions.”
The other big research area is electronic medical records. The Centre has developed a unique database with records from across Southwestern Ontario that has already delivered valuable data on patient encounters, wait times, and diabetes care.
“We always have a commitment to make sure the results get into practice and the hands of policy makers who can make decisions in the best interest of the public,” says Stewart, who regularly meets with family doctors and Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care officials. Though she is quick to credit the CFSM team, Stewart's leadership has not gone unnoticed. In June, she delivered a keynote address at the Asia-Pacific meeting of the world organization for family medicine practitioners and she was named Canada's Family Medicine Researcher of the Year in 2007."
As for the future, Stewart says the big opportunity is to transform patient-centred care to be the “cornerstone” of the interdisciplinary health team. “As you might guess, I've got a team working on that.” She also sees a much wider use of electronic medical records on the horizon. “I could imagine a provincial primary care database. Someday it may happen, and it may happen here. You don't get the big results if you don't have a big vision.”
By Kris Dundas
For over three decades transplantation has been one of London’s pinnacle examples of a world-class translational research program that integrates the work of basic scientists and clinicians in a common goal: saving lives.
Dr. Bill Wall, Professor in the Department of Surgery at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry, vividly remembers the snowy day in 1978 he went to Toronto airport to collect the first vial of cyclosporine to arrive in Canada. It was the “magical white powder” transplant surgeons had been waiting for – a drug that could prevent the immune system from attacking a transplanted organ. Since then the London transplant program has never looked back.
The enormous research enterprise crossing multiple departments at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry, Lawson Health Research Institute and Robarts Research Institute has been the engine driving the clinical success, and continues to push the boundaries of transplantation. Thanks to the research breakthroughs here, the Multi-Organ Transplant Program at London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC)) has achieved dozens of firsts, including leading the first clinical trial in Canada on cyclosporine, the first liver transplant in Ontario, the first heart-lung transplant in Canada, the world’s first liver-bowel transplant, and the first living donor liver transplants in Canada. With two new Co-Directors in place, Dr. Patrick Luke and Dr. Anthony Jevnikar, the program is poised to build a brilliant future, inspired by the legacy of the past.
The Legacy
It all started in 1972 when University Hospital opened and it was determined transplantation would be a focus. At that time the results were dismal. Most died within months and few thought there was a future in transplantation.
Dr. Calvin Stiller led the development of the transplant program and was Director until 1997. He also led the groundbreaking Canadian study on cyclosporine in kidney recipients. Cyclosporine proved to be a “quantum leap” in organ transplantation, pushing the success rate of kidney transplants to 80 per cent, and sparking a renewed interest in other transplants such as liver and heart.
“We got the drug before anyone else in Canada because of our connections with the group in Cambridge, England who were the first ones to prove its use both in the laboratory and the clinic,” explains Wall, who trained as a transplant surgeon in Cambridge in 1975 and 1976.
“It was exciting to go from a miserable level of failure to a high level of success within several years. It was a wonderful experience to see these patients who were facing certain death from organ failure have their lives saved.”
The Research
Today, dozens of researchers advance transplantation from many angles. From basic molecular studies of the immune system, to microsurgery models of transplantation, to clinical trials on immunosuppressive drugs – the research covers the full spectrum.
“Every member of our current group and every new member as we recruit … has to want to solve the fundamental problem of transplantation,” says Dr. Jevnikar, a nephrologist and clinician scientist named to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Wyeth Chair in Transplantation at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry in 2009.
It’s what transplant surgeon Dr. Luke, a surgeon and clinician scientist, calls a “bench to bedside and bedside to bench” continuum. “Every patient will benefit from the research that we do.”
One quarter of transplant patients at LHSC are in clinical studies (about 160 organs are transplanted annually here). In total, the transplant program has attracted $32.9 million in research grants over the past five years and published 229 publications in peer-reviewed journals. It is the only centre outside the United States to receive National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding to study transplant tolerance. The program also has three endowed research chairs.
Dr. Joaquin Madrenas holds the Canada Research Chair in Transplantation and Immunobiology at Western. His work focuses on T-cells – the ‘generals’ of the immune system’s army that attacks a transplanted organ. His research is essential to improving outcomes and ensuring recipients don’t return for a second or third transplant.
“What we are trying to do is reach a state in which we know what signals can turn off the immune system. As soon as we have those signals, we can reproduce them with certain types of medication. We still don’t know exactly what these signals are, but we are closer than we were a few years ago,” says Madrenas, noting that they use less medication now to achieve transplant survival than 20 years ago.
Another internationally renowned success story in transplant research is microsurgery, an area pioneered by the late Dr. Robert Zhong, professor in the Departments of Professor of Surgery, Pathology and Microbiology & Immunology at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry. “He developed in the microsurgery laboratory here the technique for transplanting all organs and tissues in rodents and it provided an enormous platform for transplantation models in which we could study rejection, the effectiveness of immunosuppressants or the combination of immunosuppressants,” explains Wall.
“Now we have a shelf of the best options for patients.” More than 150 microsurgeons have been trained in London. The program has also trained hundreds of basic science graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and clinical fellows.
The Future
With all of the program’s success, they are still unable to help everyone because of a shortage of donated organs.
Some of the solutions will come from the laboratory. Prevention of chronic disease is key; also designing better medications and finding ways to prevent organ injury. But there is also the promise of stem cells and regenerative medicine to repair or regenerate organs. Madrenas says "Transplantation should be a step to fuly regenerative medicine ... but this is a global initiative at very, very early stages."
Not waiting on this futuristic solution, the team is working hard to improve the success rate and health of transplant recipients, and also expanding organ retrieval.
One of the milestones for the program will undoubtedly be the Matthew Mailing Centre for Translational Transplant Studies, a new 10,000 square-foot facility expected to open at LHSC in 2011. The centre will be close to the Multi-Organ Transplant Unit at University Hospital, which Luke says will be a huge advantage. “Five hundred feet from where patients are taken care of, we’ll be doing studies on medications they will receive in five years. It’s amazing.”
“We have a mature program that has been excellent for so many years, sometimes we take that for granted,” says Jevnikar. “If you have a miracle every day, it can just become routine … but they’re still miracles.”
Schulich Medicine & Dentistry is helping to support a new transplant scientist and surgeon through the Schulich Clinician Scientist Program, raising funds to establish an endowed research chair in memory of Dr. Zhong and has announced a unique Centre for Human Immunology which encompasses multi-disciplinary research on transplant immunology.
By Wendy Haaf
In her work, Dr. Rennian Wang takes certain types of mature pancreatic cells and induces them to return to an earlier phase of development – a process that mirrors the transformation the one-time surgeon underwent before eventually becoming a basic science researcher.
Nineteen years ago, Wang left behind a successful career in China and traveled to Belgium with to pursue studies at the Free University of Brussels. There, Wang embarked on the journey that ultimately led her to Western and her current research interests – finding a way to identify progenitor cells capable of maturing into insulin-producing beta cells. Her goal is to overcome one of the barriers preventing islet transplantation from becoming a commonplace diabetes treatment – a limited supply of donor organs.
“If we can discover the identity of the stem cells, we can take a tiny piece of pancreas from a family member, grow the cells in vitro, and transplant them,” Wang says, or even perform autologous transplants in type 2 diabetics who retain some healthy beta cells. “This is my dream.”
Wang delved further into pancreatic regeneration while studying for her PhD, when she demonstrated that following the destruction of the exocrine portion of an adult pancreas, ductal cells were capable of proliferating and differentiating.
During her post-doctoral training, Wang began examining exactly what happens to islet cells that undergo isolation and purification in preparation for transplant. Wang was able to marry this new knowledge with her early interest in pancreatic stem cells in 2000, when she came to London. “Dr. David Hill, the scientific director of the Lawson Health Research Institute (Lawson), was looking for someone who was doing islet regeneration,” she says. She wrote a flurry of grant applications – four within three months – ultimately receiving a University Faculty Award from NSERC and a New Investigator Scholarship Award from the Canadian Diabetes Association. Lawson also provided some start-up funds to set up her lab.
One of her discoveries is that a specific c-Kit mutation leads to early-onset diabetes in male mice. “We want to learn more about this receptor, and how it’s involved in beta cell function and differentiation,” Wang says. She’s also exploring the importance of several different factors – particularly matrix proteins and the integrin receptor – in beta cell differentiation. She believes one of the keys to nurturing new beta cells that can successfully respond to a glucose challenge may turn out to be communication with the other types of surrounding islet cells.
Outside the laboratory, Wang tries to impart the importance of knowing what happens at the bench to students. “I tell them a lot of clinical stories, and I tell them they should learn how to do research,” to help them understand the incredibly lengthy, complex process that lies behind the treatments they will use in the clinic.
“I still have a little bit of regret for giving up my first career,” she admits. “But I love my present job as well.”
By Mark Kearney
Dr. Michael Strong likens amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) to what Parkinson’s disease was back in the 1940s, and that’s good news for anyone who may end up with what’s better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
In the mid-20th century, Parkinson’s sufferers, like those with ALS today, could expect a lifespan of five years after they were diagnosed, but now they can have a good quality of life for 20 years. Thanks to groundbreaking research by Strong and his team, he believes a similar time frame can be extended to those with ALS.
“I don’t think we’ll cure ALS (in my lifetime), but we’ll slow it down significantly,” says Strong, who is co-chair of the Department of Clinical Neurological Sciences at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry.
Strong says it’s not so much what causes ALS that interests him as it is understanding how best to deal with it once a patient is diagnosed. Because the symptoms can lie dormant for an average of 14 months, doctors who see ALS patients are usually dealing with someone who already has it “full tilt,” he says.
Strong, Co-Chair of the Department of Clinical Neurological Sciences at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry and Chief, Division of Neurology at the London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) and a Robarts Research Institute scientist, has made several advances in the understanding of ALS in the past 20 years which have led not only to a better understanding of the affliction but have provided ways to cope with its effects. Among his findings is the idea that ALS is “a syndrome rather than a disease” that is linked to frontotemporal dementia (FTD).
His findings have influenced how clinicians view this nerve-wasting disease. FTD is a shift in mental processes that appears to accompany ALS in a number of patients and may even precede motor symptoms in some cases.
While studying ALS has been the driving force in his medical career, Strong became interested in the syndrome only by happenstance. As a medical student, he saw an ALS patient and was told the condition was so rare that he’d likely see few others. But work at a teaching hospital in Denmark shortly thereafter exposed him to many other ALS patients, something that happened again when he returned to Western to do residency work.
“At the time we knew very little of the biology of it” he says, but he was confident that it was a medical puzzle that could be easily solved. “Twenty years later it isn’t so easy,” he says.
But recent research into a genetic variation of ALS indicates that this form of the syndrome can be stopped within five years, he explains. “It’s the first time that I can say this to patients,” which gives hope to their children who may inherit ALS.
Editor's Note: this profile of Dr. Strong was written in 2006. Since that time, Dr. Strong has concluded his term as Co-Chair of the Department of Clinical Neurological Sciences and has stepped into the role of Dean for the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry. For more on Dr. Strong and his accomplishments, visit our "Meet the Dean" page.
By Kathy Wallis
David Hess doesn’t hesitate when he’s asked what first sparked his interest in stem cell biology. “I’m a bone marrow transplant survivor. When I was 15, I was diagnosed with aplastic anemia.” He was told his only chance for survival was to have a transplant, and fortunately his brother was a match. Ever since then, he’s had an interest in cellular therapies, which he investigates now as a scientist at the Robarts Research Institute’s Krembil Centre for Stem Cell Biology.
Hess is also an Assistant Professor in Physiology & Pharmacology, the department where he achieved his PhD in 1999. He then joined one of Canada’s top stem cell researchers, Mick Bhatia at Robarts for postdoctoral training. “I spent three years with Mick and learned a lot about stem cell biology and became completely enthralled with it,” says Hess.
Hess left Robarts for the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “I felt I needed more training to basically find that needle in the haystack, to find those rare stem cells that could be involved in blood vessel formation … or used to induce beta-cell regeneration.” He returned to Robarts and Western in 2006.
Hess and his colleagues recently published a paper in the journal Blood, illustrating the successful regeneration of blood vessels in mice which have surgically-induced critical limb ischemia. Hess drew human bone marrow and isolated three different types of stem cells that coordinate together to form new blood vessels. The stem cells were purified and injected into immune-deficient mice. The research showed these stem cells have a natural ability to hone in on the area of ischemia to induce blood vessel repair and improve blood flow.
“Many people with long-term severe diabetes have very poor blood flow which causes resting pain and affects wound healing in their limbs, so much so that every year more than 100,000 people in North America will lose a limb,” explains Hess. “If we can use their own bone marrow stem cells to form new blood vessels, or to make blood vessels in their limbs more healthy and functional, we can perhaps stave off the need for those amputations.”
Aldgaen, a biopharmaceutical company, is already conducting clinical trials using Hess’ data, and first results are very promising. The treated group of patents with critical limb ischemia showed improvements in overall clinical status as well as increased blood flow in the affected limb. Aldagen is also testing this therapy on patients with end-stage ischemic heart failure.
Hess admits, “I didn’t think it would happen as fast as it did, and I’m ecstatic that it’s working.” Twenty-two years ago, research saved David Hess’ life. Now he’s determined to pay it forward.
By Kris Dundas
In order to solve big problems, sometimes you have to look at the big picture – even if it is at a molecular level.
That's just what Shawn Li, Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Paediatrics and Canada Research Chair in Functional Genomics and Cellular Proteomics aims to accomplish by investigating protein-to-protein interaction in the cell. His goal is to understand how the interruption of protein-to-protein interaction networks could affect tumorogenesis and cancer therapy.
“It's a conceptual jump in how we see cancer as a disease – or any disease for that matter. Traditionally, the first step of understanding a disease at the molecular level is to identify the gene underlying that disease,” says Li. “But really understanding or identifying the gene responsible for that disease is not going to lead to therapy because the protein is the one that does the job – the one that does the damage.”
Examining the structure, function and characteristics of proteins is not new but Li's approach goes a step further. Rather than viewing a single protein in isolation, it takes into account all of the other proteins it might interact with to complete its own function – sometimes hundreds or even thousands.
It’s not a unique approach, stresses Li, noting that ‘systems biology’ has been developed and adapted by institutions worldwide.
“We only have a few dozen of new drugs coming to market every year, despite the number of scientists involved in disease related research has probably doubled or tripled in the last decade,” explains Li. “These new views of disease and approach to understanding disease mechanisms will probably lead to novel approaches to therapeutics.”
Fueled by a multi-million dollar grant from Genome Canada and funding from the National Cancer Institute of Canada, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Cancer Research Society, Inc, and the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Li's lab uses peptide and protein arrays to look at proten-protein interactions in a high throughput manner. Li collaborates closely with his partners on the Genome Canada grant, Tony Pawson and Jeff Wrana of Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. He extends his cell-based proteomic research to clinical samples by collaborating with scientists at the Sun Yat-Sen university medical school in China to look at how protein-to-protein interactions can turn normal tissues to tumors.
“Every day we have something new to do – that's really challenging and pushes you to learn new things constantly,” says Li about what motivates his work. A Schulich faculty member since 2000, Li joined Western after completing his PhD at the University of Toronto and postdoctoral studies with Pawson at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital. Prior to that Li completed a Masters degree in biochemistry and undergraduate chemistry degree in China. Visibly passionate about research, Li simply states the best thing about it is getting to know the unknown.
“Ultimately a lot of scientific discoveries are made because their results are not within their original predictions – that's where major breakthroughs in science come from.”
Social Media
Accessibility at Western
