McEwen Institute Symposium

Keynote Speaker
Chair, Department of Neurosurgery, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Dr. Viviane Tabar is the Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and an affiliated member of the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program at the Sloan Kettering Institute. She is a neurosurgeon with expertise in brain tumors, and a scientist who studies stem cell biology.

Her research includes the development of cell-based therapies for neurological disorders, using human pluripotent stem cells. This portfolio includes the development of human pluripotent stem cell-derived dopamine neurons for Parkinson's disease, and the completion of a recent first-in-human Phase I clinical trial. Her lab has also studies glioma biology and has pioneered the use of human embryonic stem cell-based models of brain tumors, with a focus on histone-mutant high-grade glioma. She is elected to the membership of the Academy of Neurological Surgeons, the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the National Academy of Medicine.

Professor, Department of Surgery, University of California San Francisco

Work by Dr. Sonja Schrepfer is at the forefront of stem immunobiology and paves the way for treatment of a wide range of diseases – from supporting functional recovery of failing myocardium to the derivation of other cell types to treat diabetes, blindness, cancer, lung, neurodegenerative, and related diseases. Her work demonstrates that protecting transplanted cells from immune rejection is the key to unlocking the potential of regenerative medicine.

Dr. Schrepfer is Professor at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), Gladstone-UCSF Institute of Genomic Immunology, and a Scientific Founder and SVP (Head of the Hypoimmune Platform) of Sana Biotechnology, Inc.

Associate Professor, Department of Surgery, University of Toronto
Surgical Director, Pancreas and Islet Cell Transplantation, UHN

Dr. Trevor Reichman completed his residency in General Surgery at the University of Chicago Medical Center and subsequently performed a fellowship in Abdominal Organ Transplantation and HPB Surgery in Toronto between 2009 and 2011. Following his fellowship, Dr. Reichman moved to the Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans, Louisiana where he assumed the role of Co-Director of Living Donor Liver Transplantation and Pediatric Liver Transplantation. He also started and was the Co-Director of the abdominal transplant fellowship at Ochsner. After 5 years, he relocated to Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia where he was the Surgical Director of Liver Transplantation and the Director of Pediatric Liver Transplantation. He returned to the Division of General Surgery and the UHN Transplant Program at TGH in 2019. He is the Surgical Director of the Pancreas Transplant and Islet Cell Programs and also directs the surgical fellowships for abdominal transplantation and HPB surgical oncology at the University of Toronto. His research interests include organ preservation, ex-vivo organ perfusion and malignancies of the liver and pancreas.

Senior Scientist, McEwen Stem Cell Institute, UHN
Associate Professor, Department of Physiology, University of Toronto

Dr. Nostro is a Senior Scientist at the McEwen Stem Cell Institute at University Health Network, Associate Professor at the University of Toronto and holds the Harry Rosen Chair in Diabetes Regenerative Medicine Research.

Her work is focused on the generation of pancreatic islets from human pluripotent stem cells with the goal of developing novel treatments for type 1 diabetes.

Professor of Medicine, University of Toronto
Medical Director, Toronto Liver Transplant Program, Ajmera Transplant Centre, UHN

Dr. Elmar Jaeckel is a trained gastroenterologist/hepatologist as well as endocrinologist/diabetologist and transplantation specialist. He is the Medical Director of the Liver Transplant Program at the Ajmera Transplant Centre, University Health Network. Since 2003, he has been leading a research group on immune tolerance and metabolic inflammation at the MHH. The group is focused on establishing tissue-specific tolerance in autoimmunity, transplantation and metabolic inflammation. Since 2008, he has been an attending physician for gastroenterology, hepatology, endocrinology and diabetology at Hannover Medical School. Since 2010, he has been the medical attending of the liver transplant program at MHH, one of the largest liver transplant programs within the Eurotransplant region.

He has published numerous articles on viral hepatitis, autoimmune liver disease, autoimmune diabetes and transplantation tolerance. He developed tissue-specific regulatory T cell therapies for local tolerance induction. He has numerous patents on tolerance-inducing therapies and is co-founder of Quell Therapeutics aiming to develop clinical therapies for tolerance induction with regulatory T cells.

Since January 2022, he has been the medical director of the liver transplant program of the Ajmera Transplant Center at UHN. His research focuses on signatures of tolerance, individualized immunosuppression and cell/gene therapy for tolerance induction.

Chair, Department of Hematology, St. Jude's Children Research Hospital

As a physician-scientist and pediatric hematologist, Dr. Weiss strives to perform research of relevance to clinical medicine and to gain scientific inspiration from my patients. His laboratory has studied red blood cell (RBC) development and the pathophysiology of associated diseases for many years. For the past 5 years, he has led a team of multi-disciplinary investigators in a project to treat sickle cell disease (SCD) and -thalassemia using novel genome editing and base editing tools. Scientific discoveries related to this project have advanced greatly and his team is now translating this work into a therapeutic clinical trial. Additionally, his laboratory is studying protein quality control pathways that promote the degradation of free -globin in -thalassemia and investigating pharmacological strategies to enhance this process therapeutically.

In July 2014, Dr. Weiss became Hematology Department Chair at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital where he oversees the Divisions of Experimental Hematology and Clinical Hematology. His mission as Hematology Chairman at St. Jude's is to facilitate cutting-edge basic, translational and clinical research, foster faculty and trainee development and promote outstanding clinical care for patients with non-malignant blood disorders.

Affiliate Scientist, McEwen Stem Cell Institute, UHN
Associate Professor, Department of Laboratory Medicine & Pathobiology, Univeristy of Toronto

Dr. Shinichiro Ogawa joined the McEwen Stem Cell Institute in 2019 as a Principal Investigator. His research program is focused on developing cell- and tissue-based replacement therapies that can provide an alternative therapy to liver transplant for patients with liver failure.

Dr. Ogawa completed his PhD at Shinshu University School of Medicine in Nagano, Japan and his MD at the Tokyo Medical University in Tokyo, Japan. He completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Gordon Keller at the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine prior to his appointment. As a trained clinician and liver transplant surgeon in Japan, he also holds an appointment as Professor at the Department of Surgery at Shinshu University School of Medicine in Japan.

In his research, he has developed methods to use human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) to generate liver progenitors (hepatoblasts), which can generate functional liver cells. He has used these progenitors to develop mature liver cells and bile duct epithelial cells, both of which have the characteristic properties of functional cells in the liver. In his work with the McEwen Stem Cell Institute, Dr. Ogawa is using hPSC-derived liver cells and organoids to assess restoration of liver function in an experimental model with the goal of developing treatments for liver failure. He is also using hPSC-derived bile duct epithelial cells to develop models to study Cystic Fibrosis Liver Disease and screen drugs for treatment.

Associate Professor, Medicine, Cardiology, and Genetics, Icahn Genomics Institute, Mount Sinai

Dr. Lior Zangi is an Associate Professor of Cardiology and Associate Professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences, with tenure, and holds the Chan Soon-Shiong Professorship in Cardiovascular Research at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Zangi completed his Bachelor's degree in Biology and his Master's degree in Experimental and Developmental Medicine at Hebrew University in Israel before earning his PhD in Immunology at the Weizmann Institute of Science. He completed postdoctoral fellowships in stem cell biology, mRNA therapeutics, and cardiac regeneration at Tel Aviv University, Harvard University, and Harvard Medical School, where he was promoted to an Instructor position.

Dr. Zangi's research focuses on methods for delivering modified mRNA (modRNA) to the heart to induce cardiac and cardiovascular regeneration and protection following ischemic injury. Dr. Zangi's published work was the first to demonstrate modRNA delivery into cardiac and skeletal muscle and pioneered the use of modRNA to treat ischemic heart disease. His publications showed, for the first time, that modRNA technology can generate cardiac repair after a heart attack and prevent heart failure formation, in both small and large animals.

Throughout his studies, Dr. Zangi's innovative work laid the foundation for four biotech startup companies and led to eleven modRNA-based patent applications and two awarded patents. The two awarded patents led to the first phase II cardiac modRNA therapeutic clinical trial and the establishment of a novel modRNA-based method for minimally invasive gene delivery into specific cell types and organs to fight conditions such as heart failure, cardiotoxicity and cancer.

Dr. Zangi is a founding board member a member of the Executive Committee and Treasurer of the Society for RNA Therapeutics and currently serves as Scientific Director of the PSMC5 Foundation and a founding board member of the American Friends of ALUT. He has been honored with several awards, including the American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, and was Co-Winner of the Mount Sinai Faculty Idea Prize, SINAInnovations.

Professor, Regenerative Biomaterials and Therapeutics, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University

Dr. Adam Feinberg is the principal investigator of the Regenerative Biomaterials and Therapeutics Group and a Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He earned his BS in Materials Science and Engineering from Cornell University in 1999 with Co-op experience at Abiomed, Inc., working on total artificial hearts. He then earned his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Florida, focused on engineering cell-material interactions to prevent and enhance adhesion. This was followed by postdoctoral training at Harvard University, developing new biomaterials and stem cell-based cardiac tissue engineering strategies. He joined the faculty at Carnegie Mellon in the fall of 2010 with joint appointments in Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering.

Dr. Feinberg has co-authored over 80 peer-reviewed publications, holds over 30 US patents and patent applications and is Co-Founder and CTO of FluidForm Inc, a start-up company commercializing FRESH 3D bioprinting technology. He has also been awarded the NSF CAREER Award and the NIH Director's New Innovator Award, and is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical And Biological Engineering (AIMBE). Current research is focused on extracellular matrix (ECM) protein scaffolds engineered using advanced nanofabrication and 3D bioprinting approaches for a wide range of applications including breast cancer, cornea, skeletal muscle and cardiac muscle tissue engineering. Key to this is identifying engineering design principles from developmental biology and applying these to build therapeutic-scale human tissues, with a focus on manufacturability and scalability to support future clinical translation.

Senior Scientist, McEwen Stem Cell Institute, UHN
Staff Pathologist, Laboratory Medicine Program, UHN
Professor, Department of Laboratory Medicine & Pathobiology, University of Toronto

Dr. Michael Laflamme is the Robert McEwen Chair in Cardiac Regenerative Medicine, Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine, Senior Scientist in the McEwen Stem Cell Institute, Staff Pathologist in the Laboratory Medicine Program at the University Health Network (UHN) and Professor of Laboratory Medicine & Pathobiology at the University of Toronto. He leads a research program that is focused on developing novel cardiac cell therapies based on human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs), and his laboratory has made a number of important contributions in this area including efficient protocols to guide hPSCs into cardiomyocytes, proof-of-concept transplantation studies with hPSC-derived cardiomyocytes in preclinical models and the first direct demonstration that hPSC-derived cardiomyocytes can become electrically integrated and activate synchronously with host myocardium in injured hearts. Dr. Laflamme has been the recipient of honors including the Society for Cardiovascular Pathology Young Investigator Award, the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy Outstanding New Investigator Award, and the UHN Inventor of the Year. He also practices cardiovascular and autopsy pathology and is a founding investigator of BlueRock Therapeutics.

Associate Professor, Biomedical Ethics Unit, Social Studies of Medicine, McGill University

Jonathan Kimmelman, PhD, is James McGill Professor of Biomedical Ethics at McGill University. His research group, STREAM (Studies in Translation, Ethics and Medicine) uses empirical and theoretical methods to understand the ethical, policy and scientific dynamics of developing new drugs. Kimmelman received the Maud Menten New Investigator Prize (2006), a CIHR New Investigator Award (2008), a Humboldt Bessel Award (2014) and was elected a Hastings Center Fellow (2018). He has sat on various advisory bodies within the U.S. NHLBI and NIAID, served for four tours of duty on U.S. National Academies of Medicine committees, and chaired the International Society of Stem Cell Research Guidelines for Stem Cell Research and Clinical Translation revision task force 2015-16. His research has been covered in major media outlets, including NPR's All Things Considered, STATNews and Nature. Kimmelman is deputy editor at Clinical Trials and associate editor at Med.

Scientist, McEwen Stem Cell Institute, UHN
Assistant Professor, Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Toronto

Dr. Stephanie Protze is a cardiovascular stem cell scientist and holds the McEwen Stem Cell Institute Chair in Cardiac Regenerative Medicine. Her research program applies cutting-edge stem cell biology, molecular biology and electrophysiology to study the development and diseases of the human heart with a special focus on the cardiac conduction system that regulates the heart rhythm. Dr. Protze's team drives to pursue translational research and aims to develop cell therapies using stem-cell derived biological pacemakers as novel treatments for patients with heart rhythm disorders.

Dr. Protze received her PhD in Cell Biology and Biomedicine from the International Max Planck Research School at the University of Dresden, Germany. For her postdoctoral fellowship, she moved to Toronto, Canada to join Dr. Gordon Keller's laboratory, where she specialized in stem cell research. In 2018, Dr. Protze was appointed as a Principal Investigator at the McEwen Stem Cell Institute at the University Health Network and Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto.

Her research has been published in leading journals such as Nature Biotechnology, Cell and Cell Stem Cell. She has attracted funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Canadian Stem Cell Network, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, as well as industry partners to support her research program.

Senior Scientist, Krembil Research Institute, UHN
Associate Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto

Dr. Singh is a Senior Scientist in the Donald K. Johnson Eye Institute and Krembil Research Institute, located with University Health Network (UHN) since 2020. He is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Ophthalmology and Vision Sciences and Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology (LMP) at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto. Prior to this, he was at McMaster University from 2012-2020 where he was a Scientist and Neural Program Lead at the Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute, The David Braley Chair in Stem Cell Research and an Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster University. His lab utilizes patient-derived neural 3D organoid/assembloid models, in combination with multi-omic approaches, to study neurodevelopmental and adult neurological and vision disorders. The long-term goal is to utilize these platforms to study disease etiology and develop regenerative medicine approaches such as genetic therapies. He holds national and international funding from CIHR, NSERC, SCN, NFRF, ERARE, ERA-NET and the Ontario Brain Institute.

Scientist, Hospital for Sick Children
Assistant Professor, University of Toronto

Dr. Yun Li is a neurobiologist interested in understanding human brain development and diseases. She attended graduate school at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Her Ph.D. work, conducted in the lab of Luis Parada, focused on understanding the role of growth factor signaling pathways in brain development and neurological disorders. She completed her postdoctoral training in the lab of Rudolf Jaenisch at the Whitehead Institute and MIT, where she continued her research in neurodevelopment using human pluripotent stem cell-derived 2D and 3D models.

In 2018, Dr. Li established her independent lab in Toronto. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, a Scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children and a Medicine by Design Investigator. Her laboratory studies how the human brain forms, what makes it unique from those of other species and how disorders like autism impact its development and function. Her group takes the experimental approach of modeling human brain development in the dish, utilizing a combination of pluripotent stem cell technology, CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome engineering and 3D brain organoids.