Jennifer Dorrington Award

Three PhD candidates receive 2024 Jennifer Dorrington Graduate Research Awards

rahul.kalvapalle — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 16:19:32 +0000

Three PhD candidates receive 2024 Jennifer Dorrington Graduate Research Awards

Research & Innovation

rahul.kalvapalle Tue, 08/20/2024 - 12:19

Students

St. George

Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomedical Research

Jennifer Dorrington Award

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

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L-R: Heta Lad, Delaram Pouyabahar and Justin Sing (supplied images)

Three PhD candidates in the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine have been selected to receive Jennifer Dorrington Graduate Research Awards.

Heta Lad, Delaram Pouyabahar and Justin Sing received the award in support of their research in bioengineering muscle tissue to study critical illness myopathy, mapping the liver at single-cell resolution, and improving mass spectrometry data analysis for personalized medicine, respectively.

The award was established in 2006 as a tribute to Jennifer Dorrington, who was a professor in U of T's Banting and Best Department of Medical Research, where she conducted cutting-edge research in reproductive biology and ovarian cancer. It is designed to support outstanding graduate students in achieving their research goals while contributing to the Donnelly Centre's history of excellence in advancing discovery, medicine and health.

“On behalf of everyone on the Jennifer Dorrington Graduate Research Award committee, I would like to offer my congratulations to this year’s winners,” said Gary Bader, professor of molecular genetics and chair of the award selection committee. “Heta Lad, Delaram Pouyabahar and Justin Sing are all exemplary researchers who embody the innovative and collaborative spirit of the Donnelly Centre.”

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Zoe Clarke receives Jennifer Dorrington Award

lanthierj — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 20:19:24 +0000

Zoe Clarke receives Jennifer Dorrington Award

Academic Achievement

lanthierj Mon, 06/20/2022 - 16:19

Students

St. George

Jennifer Dorrington Award

Department of Molecular Genetics

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Zoe Clark

Zoe Clarke, a third-year graduate student in the computational biology program in the department of molecular genetics in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, has received a Jennifer Dorrington Graduate Research Award for 2022.

"I am so grateful to the Dorrington family for their support of science, and specifically my project,” said Clarke, who previously won a Cecil Yip Doctoral Research Award. “Receiving this kind of support really inspires me to work to the best of my ability, and reminds me how much of an impact my research can have on the community.”

Clarke is working to identify cellular processes by which healthy liver cells become cancerous in a bid to shed light on how liver cancer develops from start to finish and to identify targets for future treatments. She is using single cell sequencing to analyze the molecular makeup of individual liver cells following infection with Hepatitis B virus, which causes inflammation of the liver that can develop into cancer.

Clarke is supervised by the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research’s Gary Bader, a professor of molecular genetics and computer science whose team helped produce the world’s first map of the human liver at the molecular level.

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Kai Slaughter receives Dorrington Award

lanthierj — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 19:52:17 +0000

Kai Slaughter receives Dorrington Award

Academic Achievement

lanthierj Mon, 06/20/2022 - 15:52

Students

St. George

Jennifer Dorrington Award

Donnelly Centre for Cellular & Biomolecular Research

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Kai Slaughter, a third-year PhD student in biomedical engineering, has received a Jennifer Dorrington Graduate Research Award for 2022.

Slaughter is developing novel approaches for the delivery of cancer drugs in high doses using nanoparticles. Unlike conventional methods, which rely on helper compounds that can be toxic to the patient, nanoparticles could be designed to carry large amounts of therapeutics and deliver them directly into cells.

He is supervised by the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research’s Molly Shoichet, a University Professor of chemical engineering and applied chemistry in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering who is world renowned for her bioengineering research.

Slaughter is engineering drug-rich formulations by exploiting the natural tendency of some chemotherapy drugs to form aggregates. This results in a nanoparticle composed almost entirely of the active drug, therefore reducing the need for helper compounds.

“This type of drug aggregation was actually discovered as a cause of false hits in drug screening assays, but we’re taking advantage of this phenomenon for more efficacious drug delivery,” said Slaughter, who previously won a Cecil Yip Doctoral Research Award.

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Matthew Osborne receives Dorrington Award

lanthierj — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 19:48:25 +0000

Matthew Osborne receives Dorrington Award

Academic Achievement

lanthierj Mon, 06/20/2022 - 15:48

Students

Jennifer Dorrington Award

Donnelly Centre for Cellular & Biomolecular Research

Institute for Biomedical Engineering

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Matthew Osborne, a fourth-year PhD student in the institute for Biomedical Engineering (BME), has been awarded a Jennifer Dorrington Graduate Research Award for 2022.

The award is an important recognition for Osborne, who noted that the past winners included alumni from his lab. He described them as “pretty incredible researchers.”

“I am thrilled to be in such company,” he said.

Osborne is working with BME Director Warren Chan, whose lab is located in the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research where he is also a principal investigator. The Chan lab is world renowned for developing nanotechnology-based diagnostics method for rapid detection of pathogens.

Osborne, who has a background in mechanical engineering, was tasked with automating the lab’s diagnostic platform for the detection of Sars-CoV-2 into a portable device with a smartphone readout. The method is similar to PCR and therefore highly sensitive, but it also allows point-of care use similar to rapid tests. Osborne, who envisages its use one day in remote communities, is now keenly awaiting real-world data being collected from patient samples by his collaborators at Public Health Ontario.

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Graduate student Jamie Wu receives Dorrington Award

lanthierj — Fri, 09 Apr 2021 13:25:58 +0000

Graduate student Jamie Wu receives Dorrington Award

Research & Innovation

Academic Achievement

lanthierj Fri, 04/09/2021 - 09:25

Students

St. George

Jennifer Dorrington Award

Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Graduate Students

Women in STEM

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Jamie Wu, a third-year PhD student in biomedical engineering, has been awarded a Jennifer Dorrington Graduate Research Award for 2021.

Wu’s research seeks to reveal how medication-carrying nanoparticles are transported from the bloodstream into tumours in a bid to enhance targeted tumour drug delivery. She is supervised by Professor Warren Chan, director of U of T’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering and an investigator in the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research.

“If we can figure out what cell machinery is used to transport nanoparticles, we’ll know what targeting molecule to put on these nanoparticles for them to cross the blood vessel wall and enter the tumour in larger quantities,” says Wu. “These biological insights will allow us to design our particles better and get them into the cancer cells.”

Her lab previously showed that only a fraction of nanoparticles injected into the bloodstream reach tumours – and they undergo active transport across cells lining the blood vessels to enter the tumour, instead of leaking in passively as previously thought. Wu uses a combination of genetic approaches, in collaboration with Jason Moffat’s lab in the Donnelly Centre, as well as optical and electron microscope imaging to identify the cellular components involved in the transport.

“It’s a tremendous honour to win the Dorrington Award,” says Wu. “I’ve always looked up to my lab mates who previously won this award and it is both humbling and encouraging to be recognized in the same way.”

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Graduate student Jessica Knox receives Dorrington Award

lanthierj — Fri, 09 Apr 2021 12:58:58 +0000

Graduate student Jessica Knox receives Dorrington Award

Research & Innovation

Academic Achievement

lanthierj Fri, 04/09/2021 - 08:58

Students

St. George

Jennifer Dorrington Award

Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Graduate Students

Women in STEM

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Jessica Knox, a fourth-year PhD student in molecular genetics, has been awarded a Jennifer Dorrington graduate Research Award for 2021.

“I am very grateful for this award,” says Knox. “It’s very motivating and a big confidence boost, because it means I’m on the right track.”

Knox is working to identify new chemical compounds that can kill worm parasites that destroy crops and threaten global food supply. She is supervised by Peter Roy, a professor of molecular genetics in the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research, whose team previously discovered several chemicals effective against the nematode worm C. elegans which they use as a model for these crop parasites.

Supported by a Burroughs Wellcome Fund travel award, Knox tested these compounds at the U.S. Department of Agriculture research centre in Corvallis, Oregon. She found that some of the compounds were more effective than existing pesticides in protecting the roots of tomato plants from the widespread and highly destructive parasite, Meloidogyne incognita. The chemicals are only toxic to worms and have no effect on other animals, such as fish, or on cultured human cells suggesting that they are harmless to humans.

Knox’s goal for the remainder of her PhD is to establish how the chemicals work at the molecular level so that they can be more easily turned into commercial products.

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Graduate student Shubham Gupta receives Dorrington Award

lanthierj — Fri, 09 Apr 2021 12:43:45 +0000

Graduate student Shubham Gupta receives Dorrington Award

Academic Achievement

lanthierj Fri, 04/09/2021 - 08:43

Faculty

St. George

Jennifer Dorrington Award

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research

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Shubham Gupta, a fourth-year PhD student in molecular genetics and computational biology, has been awarded a Jennifer Dorrington Graduate Research Award for 2021.

Gupta’s research goal is to develop computational methods for identification of early biomarkers of diabetes years before symptoms appear. He is supervised by Assistant Professor Hannes Röst in the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research.

Using machine learning and other advanced methods, Gupta is developing tools for tracking hundreds of protein species in blood plasma over long periods of time. Such methods would open the door to molecular diagnostics on a more granular level than what is currently possible with blood analyses that typically look at a handful of protein markers at a time.

Collaborating with personalized medicine pioneer Michael Snyder at Stanford University, Gupta has access to a unique dataset comprising a thousand blood samples collected from 100 prediabetic individuals every three months over five years, and is in the process of identifying early molecular signs of diabetes.

“The Dorrington award means a lot to me,” says Gupta. “It’s a great recognition for my work especially in this year of the pandemic when I didn’t get as much chance to interact with my co-workers and bounce off ideas.”

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Donnelly Centre graduate students recognized with Jennifer Dorrington Award

lanthierj — Thu, 08 Apr 2021 13:31:15 +0000

Donnelly Centre graduate students recognized with Jennifer Dorrington Award

Research & Innovation

Academic Achievement

lanthierj Thu, 04/08/2021 - 09:31

Faculty

St. George

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Department of Molecular Genetics

Institute for Biomedical Engineering

Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomedical Research

Jennifer Dorrington Award

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(L-R) Shubham Gupta, Jamie Wu, Jessica Knox

Three students working on doctoral research in the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research have received Jennifer Dorrington Graduate Research Awards for 2021.

The annual award recognizes students enrolled in graduate programs at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine who are doing research in a Donnelly Centre lab. Established by the Dorrington family in 2006, the award celebrates late ��οProfessor Jennifer Dorrington who did pioneering research on ovarian cancer at the iconic Banting and Best Department for Medical Research which was succeeded by the Donnelly Centre.

The students, whose research holds potential for global food security, early disease detection and better cancer treatments, are:

Jessica Knox, department of molecular genetics, supervised by Professor Peter Roy
Shubham Gupta, department of molecular genetics, supervised by Assistant Professor Hannes Röst
Jamie Wu, Institute of Biomedical Engineering, supervised by Professor Warren Chan

“On behalf of everyone on the Dorrington award committee, I would like to offer warmest congratulations to the winners. We were really impressed by the exceptionally strong pool of candidates this year,” says Gary Bader, professor of computational biology and molecular genetics in the Donnelly Centre and chair of the award committee whose members are Donnelly Centre investigators Liliana Attisano, Henry Krause and Fritz Roth.

“Jessica, Shubham and Jamie have made amazing progress, especially during this challenging year, and their research will have an important impact on peoples’ lives,” said Bader.

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Three graduate students receive Jennifer Dorrington Award

s.anderson — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 13:23:46 +0000

Three graduate students receive Jennifer Dorrington Award

Research & Innovation

s.anderson Mon, 02/24/2020 - 08:23

Students

St. George

Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research

Graduate Students

Faculty of Medicine

IBBME

Jennifer Dorrington Award

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Sanna Masud, Nil Sahin and Benjamin Kingston (photo of Kingston by Qin Dai)

Graduate students Sanna Masud, Nil Sahin and Benjamin Kingston are the winners of the 2020 Jennifer Dorrington Award, which recognizes outstanding students in the Faculty of Medicine who are doing research in the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research.

“These three winners are doing some of the most innovative research in biology, which has already revealed important new insights and has the potential to improve patient lives,” says Gary Bader, a University of Toronto professor of molecular genetics and computer science, and the chair of the award committee.

Masud’s research is shedding new light on the cellular basis of Barth syndrome, a rare genetic disorder for which there is currently no treatment. Sahin is developing AI-powered computer vision tools to reveal gene function from cell microscopy images. And Kingston is mapping tumours in three dimensions to help the development of targeted therapies.

Established in 2007 by the Dorrington family, the annual award is named after Jennifer Dorrington, who carried out pioneering work on ovarian physiology in U of T’s Banting and Best department of medical research, which was later integrated into the Donnelly Centre.

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