20/20: NSERC Ophthalmic Materials Network

Heather Sheardown is a Professor in Chemical Engineering and the School of Biomedical Engineering and Associate Dean (Graduate Studies) at McMaster University. She also holds a cross-appointment with the School of Optometry at the University of Waterloo. She has gained an international reputation for her research on ophthalmic biomaterials, including her innovative work on the development of new materials for artificial cornea and drug delivery applications. Sheardown has published more than 70 papers in top biomaterials journals, five book chapters on artificial cornea and corneal tissue engineering and has several patents pending on various ophthalmic materials. She has worked extensively with major ophthalmic materials companies including Vistakon, CIBA Vision, Coopervision and AMO, and has consulted for Health Canada as an expert witness in the field of biomaterials. She has sat on a number of peer review panels for NSERC, CIHR and the National Science Foundation including chairing the NSERC Bioproducts Strategic Panel in 2006. She has an active and vibrant research group of more than 10 graduate students and post doctoral fellows. Projects in her laboratory involve the development of new polymeric materials and delivery systems for all areas of the eye.

Brian Amsden is a Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Queen’s University. He is an internationally recognized researcher for his work in polymer biomaterials development, protein delivery and diffusion in hydrogels and a consultant for the pharmaceutical and biomaterials industry. His research and innovative ability has been recognized through multiple awards: an Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research Independent Establishment Award (1998), an Ontario Premier’s Research Excellence Award (2003), a Queen’s University Chancellor’s Research Award (2005), and an Ontario Centres of Excellence Mind to Market Award (2006). He began his professional career with Angiotech Pharmaceuticals Ltd. in 1996, during which time he obtained two US patents and one PCT patent. His MSc thesis yielded two US patents and one PCT patent, and in his academic career to date he has obtained an additional US patent and has two US patents and three Canadian patents filed.

Yu-Ling Cheng, University of Toronto, is a well-established researcher in drug delivery - encompassing the development of novel materials such as stimuli-responsive polymers, gels and interpenetrating polymer networks, modelling and understanding of transport mechanisms in polymers and polymer composites, and clinical applications and pharmacokinetic modelling in the eye. Prior to joining University of Toronto, she was a group leader at ALZA Corporation designing transdermal drug delivery systems and bioeroable polymer technologies. Her work at University of Toronto and at ALZA has produced numerous publications and patents. Her breadth of research expertise, her industrial experience and her administrative experience bring a unique perspective to the role of drug delivery theme leader.

Edgar Acosta is an Associate Professor with the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry at the University of Toronto with expertise in the area of colloid science and formulation engineering. Professor Acosta's background is in the area of surfactant-enhanced oil recovery, environmental remediation, transdermal drug delivery, and detergency. He has published 40+ articles, and four book chapters. His research group has further developed the combined linker approach to formulate alcohol-free, non-toxic microemulsions. Part of that work has resulted in the development of microemulsion in-situ patches for transdermal delivery. That work has received a number of awards from the Society of Cosmetics Chemists, the American Oil Chemist Society, and the Ontario Government. Professor Acosta's recent involvement in oral drug delivery for food applications has resulted in two book chapters of delivery technologies for nutraceuticals, and a review article on the uptake of nanoparticles in the intestinal track.

Christine Allen is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto. She is cross-appointed in the Departments of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry and the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering. Her research is focused on the rational design and development of new materials and technologies for the delivery of drugs and contrast agents (Lab Website: http://phm.utoronto.ca/~allen/). Allen completed her doctoral research in the Department of Chemistry at McGill University and post-doctoral research in the Department of Advanced Therapeutics at the B.C. Cancer Agency. She joined University of Toronto in 2002, from Celator Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Vancouver, B.C.) where she had worked as a scientist and Assistant Director of materials research. She has over 50 publications, numerous patent applications, and six book chapters on both lipid and polymer-based delivery systems. She has served on several peer review panels for granting agencies including CIHR, NCIC and NIH. In 2004, she was awarded a CIHR-RxD Career Award (2004-2009) for her research on the design and development of technologies for cancer treatment. In 2006, she was awarded the Association of Faculties of Pharmacy of Canada/AstraZeneca New Investigator Research Award and the Canadian Society Pharmaceutical Science/GlaxoSmithKline Early Career Award. She is involved in numerous scientific societies or organizations including CRS, CC_CRS, CSPS and NanoDDS.

Shelley Boyd is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology and Vision Sciences at the University of Toronto. After graduate training in Molecular Neurobiology, she studied Medicine, and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Canada, with specialization in Ophthalmology. She has three Fellowships in Medical Retina, Ocular Pathology, and Cell Biology (Angiogenesis) – the first two from University College London, UK, and the latter from the Scripps Research Institute, California. After less than one year in academia, she accepted the position of Disease Expert with the Novartis Institute of Biomedical Research (NIBR), Basel, Switzerland, where she was Director, world-wide, of the ophthalmology pre-clinical ocular angiogenesis division. She was also head of the NIBR ophthalmology translational program where she was responsible for strategic planning, and importantly, for ensuring that the pre-clinical models and the methodologies used to study them were directly relevant and aligned with clinically available outcome measures. Having returned to the University of Toronto three years ago, she dedicates over 90% of her time to basic research, where she focuses on transgenic models of diabetic retinopathy, acute retinal neurodegeneration, and retinal stem cells. She is currently Founding Director of Toronto’s adult Visual Electrophysiology Unit, and within these three years has obtained over $4 million of funding from the CIHR, CHRP (Canadian Health Research Program), the Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund, the Canadian Diabetes Association, and several others.

Mike Brook is a Professor of Chemistry at McMaster University. His main expertise is in the synthesis of silicon-based materials: he wrote the solely authored book 'Silicon in Organic, Organometallic, and Polymer Chemistry' (Wiley 2000). Current research interests revolve around the application of silicon chemistry to materials science, particularly in interfacial control for biomedical applications. Active projects include controlled surface manipulation of silicone biomaterials, including ophthalmic surfaces, exploitation of protein/silicone (or silica) interactions for biosensors and as immobilized enzymes, and structuring silicone surfactants based on biological hydrophiles. Brook consults extensively, and has served on Expert Advisory Panels on Breast Implants for the Therapeutic Products Directorate of the Health Canada in 2002 and 2005. He has been a visiting professor at 5 universities in Europe and Australia. Brook was recently a Walton Research Fellow in Galway Ireland, and was a Canadian Killam Research Fellow in 2003-2004. With Mark McDermott (McMaster University), he won the Synergy Prize for Industrial Collaboration (Partner: Aventis, then Pasteur Mérieux Connaught) from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Conference Board of Canada (1996).

Maud Gorbet recently started at the University of Waterloo as an NSERC University Faculty Award supported Assistant Professor in Systems Design Engineering. She is also cross appointed to the School of Optometry. Her research and expertise focus on understanding interactions between biological systems and biomaterials. She is well recognized in the blood biocompatibility research area and her review on biomaterial-associated thrombosis (co-authored with Professor Michael Sefton) was selected as one of the 25 most significant papers in the 25 years of publication of the journal Biomaterials. While relatively new to the field of ophthalmic materials, she has already made important contributions. Her post doctoral research on cell interactions with contact lenses was an invited presentation at the biennial meeting of the International Society for Contact Lens Research (the “think tank” of contact lens research and industry) in 2007. Her approach to biocompatibility problems and knowledge of cell-material interactions has led Gorbet to design new in vitro models or modify existing ones to better reproduce the in vivo situation and allow for a more complete assessment of the biocompatibility of materials. While working in industry, she played a significant role in characterizing the biocompatibility of a novel polymer to allow its entry into clinical trials, gaining valuable experience as project coordinator of biocompatibility studies in collaborative research projects with university and industry partners.

Frank Gu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Frank Gu received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at Queen’s University. During his Ph.D. program, he was awarded the Japanese Society the Promotion of Science (JSPS) summer fellowship to work on nanoparticle formulation at the University of Tokyo. In 2006, he was award with NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship to join the Laboratory of Professor Robert Langer lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he pursued in-depth research training in nanomedicine and drug delivery. He is an expert in the development of nanotherapeutics and diagnostic modalities targeting human and animal diseases. His research on the formulation of disease-targeted nanoparticles has generated over 20 papers, and 15 US and World pending patent applications. His technologies related to the precise engineering of therapeutic nanoparticles have been licensed to several biotechnology companies including BIND Biosciences and Selecta Biosciences as their core technologies for the manufacturing of clinical grade targeted nanoparticles.

Todd Hoare is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at McMaster University. After finishing his Bachelors degree in Engineering Chemistry at Queen's University, he went on to pursue a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at McMaster University and an NSERC-sponsored Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Robert Langer's lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before returning to McMaster in 2008. He is an expert in environmentally-responsive materials and has published over 20 papers, including two invited reviews, as well as seven pending patent applications. Hoare has particular expertise in engineering phase transitions of materials, characterizing hydrogels using both experimental and modeling approaches, and designing and assaying formulations and devices for ocular and intramuscular drug delivery. Hoare has significant experience in designing materials for commercial drug delivery applications, having been awarded an NSERC Innovation Challenge Prize recognizing the commercial potential of his invention of glucose-responsive microgels for smart insulin delivery. In addition, he was a co-inventor of a novel drug-eluting contact lens which recently won the Life Sciences track of MIT's $100k entrepreneurship competition. His current research focuses on the application of nanoparticles, hydrogels, and hydrogel composites for drug delivery and spans a broad range of fields such as nanotechnology, interfacial engineering, biomaterials engineering, polymer science and pharmaceutical science Some of his current projects include developing methods for engineering nanogel morphologies, synthesizing biodegradable environmentally-responsive microgels, developing injectable composite hydrogels for drug delivery, and investigating microgel-biomolecule interactions. ((c

Lyndon Jones, University of Waterloo, is the only Optometrist in the world with a PhD in Biomaterials, which was gained from the Biomaterials Research Unit within the Chemical Engineering Department, at Aston University, Birmingham, UK. His research interests primarily focus on the interaction of novel and existing contact lens materials with the ocular environment. His group is involved in clinical trials investigating the performance of new contact lens materials, contact lens solutions and dry eye products and the role of inflammatory markers in dry eye disease. He is also involved in studies looking at the development of new materials for keratoprostheses (artificial corneas), drug delivery to the ocular surface and the development of novel methodologies to characterise the interactions of proteins, lipids and glycoproteins with biological interfaces. In addition to publishing almost 100 peer-reviewed publications, he has over 100 professional publications on topics relating to contact lens performance and comfort and has given over 500 invited lectures at conferences in over 30 countries. He is the current Chair of the Research Committee of the American Academy of Optometry and a Topical Editor for Optometry and Vision Science.

Judith West-Mays is a Professor in the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine, was recruited to McMaster in 2002 from the Tufts Center for Vision Research, Tufts University and New England Medical Center in Boston, where she held a prestigious Career Award from Research to Prevent Blindness. Her expertise is in molecular biology and genetics of vision and she was awarded two major grants from the NIH for investigating genes and molecular mechanisms involved in eye development and ocular disease, with emphasis on genes causing cataracts, glaucoma and retinal disease. Dr. West-Mays has also embarked on a collaborative endeavour with the Centre for Gene Therapeutics at McMaster in developing approaches for therapeutic gene transfer in the treatment of eye disease. Dr. West-Mays has given numerous invited lectures, sits on a number of grant review panels including those for the NIH, and has been a guest editor for a number of journals including Investigative Ophthalmology and Vision Science (IOVS). She has published extensively in high level peer-reviewed journals including PNAS, Molecular Cell Biology and Developmental Biology.