Biotechnology

From the lab to saving lives: Moderna co-founder Derrick Rossi on becoming a serial entrepreneur

rahul.kalvapalle — Mon, 22 Feb 2021 17:08:43 +0000

From the lab to saving lives: Moderna co-founder Derrick Rossi on becoming a serial entrepreneur

rahul.kalvapalle Mon, 02/22/2021 - 12:08

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Derrick Rossi, a U of T alumnus who will speak at a U of T Entrepreneurship Week event on March 11, co-founded COVID-19 vaccine-maker Moderna more than a decade ago. He's since been involved with four other biotech firms (photo courtesy of Derrick Rossi)

Rahul Kalvapalle

Topic

Global Lens

Coronavirus

U of T Entrepreneurship

Alumni

Biotechnology

Entrepreneurship

Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Startups

ThisIsThePlace

When stem cell biologist Derrick Rossi co-founded the biotech firm Moderna, he envisioned that its novel solution – using modified messenger RNA molecules to relay genetic code to human cells – would have widespread applications in the realm of genetic disease.

“We studied in my undergraduate program and grad school that genes and mutations in genes underlie pretty much all human genetic diseases, which is a large fraction of human diseases,” says Rossi, who earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in molecular genetics at the �ؿ�ζSM.

More than a decade later, Moderna – named for “modified RNA” – recently launched its first approved product. It had little to do with Rossi’s original vision but was no less significant in its potential impact: a vaccine for the virus that causes COVID-19.

“Viruses are not a particularly good business model,” says Rossi, who is no longer affiliated with Moderna, but remains an investor.

“It’s not something that a biotech company would be thinking about because there’s not much money to be made there.”

The exception, it turns out, “is in the case of a global pandemic – but that was not foreseen.”

Rossi is set to discuss his unique journey as a biologist-entrepreneur and his thoughts on biotechnology innovation in a March 11 discussion for the RBC Speaker Series event during the fifth annual U of T Entrepreneurship Week. His conversation with BNN Bloomberg anchor Amber Kanwar promises to be a signature event of the annual celebration of innovation and entrepreneurship, which runs from March 8 to 11 and is open to all members of the U of T community and the public.

The free, four-day program, held virtually this year, features an array of events including pitch competitions, startup showcases, workshops and networking sessions. It shines a light on U of T’s vast entrepreneurship ecosystem, which has spawned more than 500 companies and secured over $1.5 billion in investment over the past decade, with U of T recognized as Canada’s top university-managed incubator for research-based startups.

“Derrick’s many achievements – which include laying the groundwork for Moderna and a COVID-19 vaccine that’s poised to save lives in Canada and around the world – are a source of pride for the �ؿ�ζSM,” says Jon French, director of U of T Entrepreneurship.

“We are delighted to welcome him back to his alma mater, albeit virtually, to learn from his journey as a scientist-entrepreneur and hear his thoughts on biotechnology innovation and its potential to save and transform lives.”

Rossi retired from his position at Harvard University in 2018, where he was an assistant professor in the department of stem cell and regenerative biology. He remains an active entrepreneur.

He says one of the most important lessons that he learned, and that he looks forward to sharing with young entrepreneurs at U of T, is the importance of asking the right types of researcher questions.

“There are two types of questions,” says Rossi. “As a biologist in a lab, you can answer a question that’s really interesting but isn’t going to move the needle on patient health at all, or you can ask a different question that. if you get an answer to it, might solve a problem that could be moved towards patients.

“As soon as I realized that, pretty much all the questions we asked in my lab had that type of focus.”

Rossi’s lab at Harvard focused on various aspects of stem cell biology, “a field which, by the way, has its origins in Toronto – Till and McCulloch started that entire field,” he points out, referring to U of T researchers James Till and Ernest McCulloch, who demonstrated the existence of stem cells in the early 1960s.

The question that prompted Rossi’s lab to develop the process underpinning Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine had to do with whether mRNA could be altered to coax cells in the body to produce specific proteins.

He explains that proteins are the “worker bees of the cell,” while DNA holds the genetic code.

“So, you need this intermediate molecule called messenger RNA that carries code from the DNA to the protein-manufacturing facility inside the cell,” says Rossi. “I call it the trifecta of life. DNA makes RNA, makes protein – makes life.”

But despite the role of mRNA being known to scientists since the 1960s, molecular biologists had struggled to leverage it in their work.

“The question is: why? Well, the answer that most molecular biologists would give you is that RNA is very unstable – it’s a very transient molecule, it’s easily digested by enzymes ... and that’s true, but it seemed unsatisfying to me,” says Rossi.

Rossi’s lab began its work by trying to code genetic instructions for green fluorescent protein – a protein that exhibits green fluorescence in jellyfish – into mRNA and delivering it into cells in a dish. “We got a few green cells, but we mostly got a lot of dead cells,” he says. “Dead cells is not what we wanted.”

The researchers later repeated the experiment – this time using modified versions of nucleosides.

“We found that we could now basically get the green fluorescent protein expressed in all the cells in the dish. So that was the ‘eureka’ moment.”

The process was then established in animal models. A key milestone was an experiment in which Rossi’s lab made a modified mRNA for a protein that causes fireflies to light up at dusk and injected it into the thigh muscles of mice, causing them to glow.

Along the way, Rossi says an entrepreneurial flame was lit – something he says he wouldn’t have predicted when he was starting out as a scientist.

“I was thinking about science primarily as an academic pursuit, answering questions that are previously unknown and being pretty happy to do that,” he says. “It actually even used to be taboo for scientists to think about moving their stuff to [market] ... but that changed in the mid 1-980s when the first biotech companies were being formed.

“Then I did it once with Moderna and I got the bug.”

After Moderna, Rossi went on to co-found Intellia Therapeutics, which uses the genome editing technology CRISPR/Cas9 to create novel medicines for genetic diseases; Magenta Therapeutics, which is developing ways to use stem cell transplants to reset patients’ immune systems to cure autoimmune diseases, blood cancers and genetic diseases; and Stelexis Therapeutics, which focuses on the discovery of drug targets for cancerous stem cells.

He’s now the CEO of Convelo Therapeutics, which is developing a novel treatment for multiple sclerosis.

As for Rossi’s entrepreneurial “bug,” there apparently is no cure.

“I retired from academia two years ago with the intent of really retiring – taking my kids to school, picking them up from school, and just doing some different things in my life,” he says.

“But I can’t say no to the science. I’ve known the scientist behind [Convelo] for many years, so I started helping with moving his science into the clinic and founding a startup, and I got more and more involved with advising ... and somehow I became the CEO of this company.”

With the experience of founding or co-founding five companies now under his belt, Rossi says he’s come a long way since his first foray into entrepreneurship as the founder of Moderna.

“When I did it the first time, I didn’t really know much about it,” he says. “Of course, why would I when I didn’t have any training?

“But now I’ve done it a number of times, so you tend to get pretty good at it.”

U of T event to highlight biotech's potential to improve health care, drive post-COVID-19 economy

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 12 Feb 2021 15:11:11 +0000

U of T event to highlight biotech's potential to improve health care, drive post-COVID-19 economy

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 02/12/2021 - 10:11

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PRiME, a U of T-led precision medicine initiative, is hosting a Feb. 17 event to highlight the high-growth potential for biomedical innovation and biotechnology in Canada (photo by JVisentin via Getty Images)

Nicole Bodnar

Topic

Our Community

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Bioengineering

Biotechnology

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

Mount Sinai Hospital

PRiME, a �ؿ�ζSM-led precision medicine initiative, is working with partners across Canada to generate support for the creation of a network of biotechnology research hubs across the country that would transform health care and propel the post-pandemic economy.

“Growing our talent base and creating a constellation of new companies launched from universities will be essential to realize the economic development and societal impact that the growth of the biotechnology industry can deliver,” said Shana Kelley, University Professor in the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy and director of PRiME.

To highlight the high-growth potential for biomedical innovation and biotech in Canada, PRiME is hosting a virtual showcase on Feb. 17 called Building Biotech: Science and Talent Accelerating Biomedical Innovation. It will feature a panel of biotechnology leaders, scientists, entrepreneurs and investors who represent Canada’s three main biotechnology ecosystems in Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto. The panelists will explore how investment in academic science can create societal impact and health security, while also helping to drive post-pandemic economic growth.

“Canadian biotech is a small industry with most of our graduates drawn to opportunities in the world-class U.S. biotech sector,” said Molly Shoichet, a University Professor in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering who is a member of the PRiME steering committee and a serial entrepreneur.

“It doesn’t have to be this way. We have homegrown talent with strengths in basic science fundamentals, drug discovery and therapeutic development. What’s missing is meaningful government investment along the continuum of research to commercialization to transform Canadian biotech from a fledgling industry to a true powerhouse of Canadian economy.”

Kelley, Shoichet and colleagues across U of T say discussion is critical in the context of the pandemic. The global rush to deploy a COVID-19 vaccine – with Canada effectively being out of the game due to the lack of biomanufacturing capacity – highlights how a thriving biotechnology industry could improve the country’s pandemic response while also providing jobs for graduates and significant economic benefits.

There is already evidence the Canadian biomedical community is gaining momentum given recent successes including Repare Therapeutics, a therapeutics company that was based on discoveries made by Dan Durocher, a professor in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine and a researcher at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, part of the Sinai Health System. Repare raised more than US$250 million through an initial public offering last year on on the NASDAQ stock exchange. Fusion Therapeutics and AbCellera are two other spinoffs from Canadian universities that also had successful IPOs over the past six months.

Kelley will kick off the event with her talk, “Tackling Disease with Precision Therapeutics and Diagnostics: PRiME and the GTA Ecosystem.” She will be followed by four speakers representing Vancouver’s and Montreal’s biomedical innovation centres – all of whom lead translational and commercialization-focused organizations.

Following these sessions, Andrew Casey, CEO of BIOTECanada, will moderate a panel of entrepreneurs and investors discussing how to build momentum in the biotech sector. He believes that the social and economic impact of the pandemic has increased awareness of the important role the biotech sector can play in delivering innovative solutions.

“It will be biotech-based solutions – including vaccines and therapeutic drugs – that will facilitate the ability of society and the economy to return to normal,” said Casey. “The biotech sector can also play a foundational role in the significant economic rebuild that lies ahead.

“To maintain a globally competitive biotech sector, it is critical that Canada invest now in manufacturing capacity, research institutes, scientific and entrepreneurial talent and companies.”

Kelley said that establishing a network of biotechnology hubs in Canada could be crucial for post-pandemic economic recovery.

“It’s time to transform Canada from a resource-based economy to a knowledge-based economy,” Kelley said. “With government investment, we can work quickly to build infrastructure, gather talent and create a breakthrough-to-commercialization pipeline of made-in-Canada discoveries that will address the needs of today and the unmet needs of tomorrow.”

Christine Allen, U of T’s associate vice-president and vice-provost, strategic initiatives, said investing in the future is important.

“The biomedical sciences at U of T and across Canada are an area of significant strength and a critical national resource that must be cultivated,” said Allen, a professor at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy. “We must invest in our future and support growth of our ecosystem in this area.”

Gillian Hadfield appointed inaugural director of U of T’s Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society and Schwartz Reisman Chair in Technology and Society

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 26 Jul 2019 16:23:00 +0000

Gillian Hadfield appointed inaugural director of U of T’s Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society and Schwartz Reisman Chair in Technology and Society

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 07/26/2019 - 12:23

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In her new role, Gillian Hadfield will draw on her varied background – in economics and law, humanities, business and high tech – to help ensure technological innovation is implemented fairly and equitably in society (photo courtesy of Gillian Hadfield)

Geoffrey Vendeville

Topic

Our Community

Schwartz Reisman Innovation Centre

Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society

Artificial Intelligence

Biotechnology

Computer Science

Creative Destruction Lab

Economics

Faculty of Arts & Science

Faculty of Information

Regenerative Medicine

Robotics

Rotman School of Management

Social Sciences

Vector Institute

Facial recognition technology. Algorithms that decide who is a good candidate for a loan or medical procedure. Interactive robots in workplaces and seniors’ homes.

These are just a few examples of the many new and emerging technologies that promise to reshape society in profound and, perhaps, unexpected ways – often raising thorny ethical questions in the process.

As the inaugural director of the �ؿ�ζSM’s new Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society and the inaugural Schwartz Reisman Chair in Technology and Society, Gillian Hadfield will draw on her varied background – in economics and law, humanities, business and high tech – to help ensure technological innovation is implemented fairly and equitably in societies around the world.

“Technologies are a means to an end,” says Hadfield, who is a U of T professor in the Faculty of Law and the Rotman School of Management.

“And the end must be a world that is better, safer, kinder, fairer for us all.”

The Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society draws on U of T’s across-the-board strengths in sciences, social sciences and humanities to help foster cross-disciplinary solutions to the profound challenges spawned by rapid technological shifts. The institute was established thanks to a landmark $100-million donation – the largest in U of T’s history – by business leaders and philanthropists Gerald Schwartz and Heather Reisman. The gift will also be used to help break ground on the Schwartz Reisman Innovation Centre at the northeast corner of College Street and University Avenue, a new space for students and faculty innovators working in business, computer science and biotechnology, among other fields.

Learn more about the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society

“U of T researchers are leaders in fields as diverse as machine learning, regenerative medicine, philosophy, and culture and communications,” says U of T President Meric Gertler.

“The Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society will leverage these strengths to help us understand the impact of technology on society – and, indeed, on humanity itself. The work of the institute will also explore the ways in which public policy, politics, and culture can shape the development and application of technology to serve societal ends.

“It is an ambitious and important mandate, and we are thrilled to welcome Professor Hadfield to her new role as the institute’s inaugural director and chair.”

Hadfield re-joined U of T’s Faculty of Law last year after teaching for 17 years at the University of Southern California. She was originally on faculty at U of T between 1995 and 2001.

The native of Oakville, Ont. has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Queen’s University and a law degree and a PhD in economics from Stanford University. She clerked for Chief Judge Patricia Wald on the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, and has held visiting professorships or fellowships at Harvard, Columbia, NYU, Chicago, and Stanford.

Hadfield was a fellow at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, an experience she says has influenced her vision for U of T’s new institute. As an example of the serendipity that can happen when scholars of a wide variety of fields come together, she recalls hearing a talk by an art historian on the complex geometry of Gothic architecture during her fellowship that meshed with her own ideas on economies and how they pass down knowledge. The lecture focused on how much of the know-how needed to reproduce intricate Gothic buildings was bound up in practice rather than in plans and sketches.

“The complexity was rooted in simplicity and it was knowing what steps to take – rather than the math of the whole – that generated the result,” she says. “When masters stopped building the buildings, the knowledge was lost. I remember this point converging with my own thinking about how economies find and transmit knowledge, and how that can also be rooted in practices and not just theory.”

She hopes researchers at the Schwartz Reisman Institute will similarly find inspiration and points of connection in each other’s work, sparking new ideas and maybe even whole new branches of knowledge.

U of T is a particularly suitable home for such collaboration because it boasts world-leading scholars in a wide spectrum of disciplines, she adds.

“The �ؿ�ζSM is a top-flight research university in so many different fields,” she says. “Our ambition for the institute is to knit together research across the sciences, social sciences, the humanities and other fields to find new, concrete solutions to make sure our emerging and powerful technologies go in the direction we want them to go.”

Vivek Goel, vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives, points out that U of T is one of the few universities in the world that ranks among the top schools in a wide range of subjects.

“U of T’s broad strength across disciplines makes it the ideal place to encourage a cross-pollination of ideas,” says Goel.

“It’s our job to find innovative ways to break down silos between disciplines so these different ideas and perspectives have the opportunity to collide and, hopefully, yield new avenues for research and scholarship, including for graduate students.”

The Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society is just one example of how U of T is seeking to encourage interdisciplinary approaches, having recently created a new senior administrative position tasked with seeding and scaling such initiatives.

Hadfield’s research spans different disciplines and addresses questions ranging from the philosophical to the mathematical. She has called for reforms to the legal system to reduce fees and other barriers faced by the roughly 80 per cent of people who go to court without a lawyer. She expanded on those ideas and the twin challenges of globalization and digitization in her 2017 book, Rules for a Flat World: Why Humans Invented Law and How to Reinvent it for a Complex Global Economy (a reference to Thomas Friedman’s bestseller The World Is Flat.) She has taught a course based on her book at U of T and co-led the Legal Design Lab (with her husband Dan Ryan, a professor at U of T’s Faculty of Information), an incubator-workshop bringing together students in law, engineering, business, design and information studies to come up with innovative solutions to problems involving access to justice. At Rotman, she teaches about AI and how to ensure its responsible development with the Creative Destruction Lab and the new Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence-affiliated Master in Management Analytics.

In addition to research and teaching, Hadfield brings experience as a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Agile Governance, which focuses on “adaptive, human-centered, inclusive and sustainable” policy-making in the face of technological advancement. She is also deeply engaged in questions about rules and governance surrounding artificial intelligence as a policy adviser for Open AI in San Francisco, an adviser to courts and tech companies, and as a faculty affiliate at the Vector Institute.

One of her early goals as director of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society and Schwartz Reisman Chair in Technology and Society will be to build a “truly integrated, team-based approach to problem solving” by connecting researchers in different disciplines.

“One of the first things we will be doing is looking for people who are really interested in engaging with, and respectful of, approaches in other disciplines,” she says. “The first thing we can do is find those people and start to build that community of collaboration. That’s something that takes thoughtfulness and care.”

In the future, she wants the institute to be known around the world as the go-to place to learn about the technological challenges facing society and to convene to work on their possible solutions.

“I think it’s a great ambition that in 10 years, we’ll have generated new fields of research,” Hadfield says. “I’ll be asking, ‘Have we really created something where we have broken down the silos between disciplines and created truly cross-disciplinary approaches?’

“I’d like to see us being part of inventing a new way to do intellectual work. And with that, to have invented new ways to make sure that our powerful technologies develop in ways that serve humanity well.”

Toronto makes pitch to be world’s ‘Stem Cell City’ with new, state-of-the-art lab

rasbachn — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 14:44:38 +0000

Toronto makes pitch to be world’s ‘Stem Cell City’ with new, state-of-the-art lab

rasbachn Thu, 10/12/2017 - 10:44

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A researcher at the Centre for Advanced Therapeutic Cell Technologies pulls a sample of pluripotent stem cells from a bioreactor. The reactor, which uses disposable bags, can generate up to 25 billion cells at a time (photo by Jennifer Robinson)

Topic

Research & Innovation

Stem Cells

With a prized view overlooking Queen’s Park, a trio of tiny bioreactors are quietly creating millions of stem cells – the building blocks of life and the foundation of some of the most promising medical treatments of the future.

Housed in the new Centre for Advanced Therapeutic Cell Technologies (CATCT) at MaRS, the bioreactors, which are used to feed and grow new cells, are the smallest of several located on site in the state-of-the-art lab. CATCT is seeking advanced manufacturing solutions to industrialize the cell manufacturing process to meet the needs of cell therapy companies around the globe.

The centre, funded by the federal government's FedDev progam and GE Healthcare for $40 million, is integral to the operations of CCRM, a leader in developing and commercializing regenerative medicine technologies and cell and gene therapies.

CCRM and its 10^th-floor neighbour Medicine by Design, a �ؿ�ζSM initiative, are at the heart of an emerging global regenerative medicine powerhouse populated by biotech startups, multinational corporations and hospital and university researchers clustered in Toronto’s Discovery District. The Ontario Institute for Regenerative Medicine is also housed here. It funds "disease teams" to move therapies to clinical trials.

All of that activity is why Toronto is quickly becoming known as "Stem Cell City," said Vivek Goel, U of T’s vice-president of research and innovation, borrowing a term often used by Michael May, president and CEO of CCRM and a U of T alumnus.

CCRM is helping to “bring all the pieces together” to build on the 1961 discovery of pluripotent stem cells by �ؿ�ζSM researchers, biophysicist James Till and hematologist Ernest McCulloch. It was a “no brainer” to support CCRM as its institutional host, Goel told the audience at CCRM’s recent official opening.

“It was a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do this,” he said, later asking Till, who was seated in the audience with his family, if he could have ever imagined the day when their discovery would have led to the creation of an entirely new industry.

Till, with a smile, shook his head “no”.

Biophysicist James Till in front of a new permanent sculpture commemorating the discovery of stem cells by Till and hematologist Ernest McCulloch, which was unveiled on the north side of the MaRS building (photo by Jennifer Robinson)

In the decades since their discovery, regenerative medicine has emerged as a promising approach to disease prevention and treatment, harnessing the power of stem cells to repair, regenerate, or replace damaged cells, tissues, and organs affected by disease.

The future path for cementing Toronto’s cutting-edge role in the field, which is growing exponentially more valuable every year, lies in continuing advanced research, commercializing discoveries, providing quality stem cell manufacturing and the ability to support clinical testing – all in Toronto, said May.

“If we are the leaders of [stem cell] manufacturing, the companies we create here will be sticky,” he explained.

Already, pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG and venture capital firm Versant Ventures have made Toronto the home to one of the largest Series A financing the biotech world has ever seen – US$225 million to create BlueRock Therapeutics, also located in New York and Cambridge, Mass., which promises to turn stem cell science into real-world treatments for the heart and for degenerative brain diseases.

“Why Canada? Why Toronto? The answer is simple,” Jerel Davis, a managing director at Versant Ventures, said when the news was announced last December. “We go where the science is best.”

The BlueRock announcement followed on the heels of Medicine by Design, established in July 2015 with a $114-million grant – the largest single research award in U of T’s history – from the federal government’s Canada First Research Excellence Fund.

Medicine by Design is accelerating discoveries in regenerative medicine research to improve treatments for conditions such as heart failure, diabetes and stroke. The initiative brings together more than 100 researchers from across U of T and its affiliated hospitals to collaborate at the convergence of engineering, life and physical sciences, mathematics and medicine. It works with CCRM, which provides it with commercialization and regulatory advice services.

Dr. Ger Brophy, general manager of cell therapy for GE Healthcare, said the regenerative medicine industry is at an inflection point with the recent approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of a new leukemia treatment.

Called Kymriah and produced by global drug giant Novartis, it’s considered to be the first gene therapy cleared for the American market.

The important work being done at CCRM, Brophy said, is “underpinning translational activities” like this in regenerative medicine because of its “white-hot relevant technical and clinical skills.”

“Canada is proving itself well in this developing space,” he said.

In addition to the formal opening of the new space for CCRM, a new permanent sculpture commemorating the discovery of stem cells by Till and McCulloch was unveiled on the north side of MaRS, east of the Queen’s Park subway entrance.

The installation by sculptor Ruth Abernethy, who also designed the Glenn Gould statue outside the CBC’s Toronto headquarters, was commissioned by Dr. Allen Eaves, chairman, president and CEO of Vancouver-based STEMCELL Technologies, a global biotechnology company. Eaves is also a member of CCRM’s board of directors.

The invisible clean-up crew: Engineering microbial cultures to destroy pollutants

ullahnor — Thu, 23 Feb 2017 17:32:57 +0000

The invisible clean-up crew: Engineering microbial cultures to destroy pollutants

ullahnor Thu, 02/23/2017 - 12:32

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Chemical engineering professor Elizabeth Edwards and her team develop microbial cultures that can destroy harmful pollutants and clean up contaminated sites (photo by Jen Hsu)

Tyler Irving

Author legacy

Tyler Irving

Topic

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

U of T engineering professor Elizabeth Edwards is internationally recognized for using biotechnology to clean up industrial solvents in soil and groundwater. Her technique earned her the prestigious Killam Prize in 2016 and has already been used to restore more than 500 sites around the world.

One way to decontaminate industrial sites involves digging up the soil, but this costly technique is impractical once solvents have seeped into groundwater. At some sites,
Edwards noticed that anaerobic microbes – bacteria that live without oxygen – were breaking down the solvents naturally. But no one understood how.

After sequencing their DNA, Edwards discovered that different microbe species collaborate to break solvents down in stages. She and her colleagues grew a culture of these microbes, pumped them into contaminated groundwater and proved they could clean it up inexpensively, effectively and safely. These invisible allies can also be used to create biodegradable plastics and even capture energy from waste. As Edwards says, we’ve only just begun exploring “the enormous, untapped potential of anaerobic microbes.”

Edwards spoke with U of T's Tyler Irving about her research.

Can you briefly describe the problem you’re trying to solve?

As careful as humans try to be, every industrial site – whether it’s an oil refinery or a dry-cleaning facility – has contamination from pollutants that have leaked onto the ground. These pollutants can affect not only the site itself, but also groundwater that travels through the soil.

In the past, people were not as aware of the risks of these chemicals, so there is a legacy of thousands of contaminated sites around the world. Industry and government have a responsibility to clean them up so they can be used for other purposes.

How does your research help clean up contaminated sites?

We started by just looking at the natural processes that affect the contaminants over time. It turns out that most of them do slowly transform, as a result of action by various microorganisms living in the soil or water. One way to speed up this process is to add oxygen, either by pumping air into the ground or digging up the underlying earth. That does encourage the growth of certain toxin-degrading microbes, but it takes a lot of energy.

Our work focuses on anaerobes – organisms for whom oxygen is poison – that do wonderful biochemistry and actually degrade these harmful compounds without the need to dig up or aerate the earth. Relatives of these organisms exist everywhere, but a given industrial site might not have just the right ones for the compounds they are dealing with.

In our lab, we start with soil or water from contaminated sites and grow enriched cultures of the anaerobic microbes that live there. By selecting the best performers over many generations, we create enriched cultures that are very good at degrading specific pollutants. We can then add these cultures back to the contaminated sites and speed up the natural degradation process. This is called bioaugmentation.

How did you commercialize your work?

I worked for an engineering consulting company for three years after finishing my PhD. I made a network of friends and colleagues in that community, and we continued to work together when I became a professor at U of T.

Consultants are the ones working with companies on clean-up, so they had access to the sites I needed to study. They could also tell us whether what we were doing in the lab was relevant to the problems they were dealing with. And when we finally sniffed something interesting – when we found a culture that seemed to be good at degrading these compounds – they were there to help turn it into a business.

In 2001, we founded SiREM, an environmental engineering consulting company. They grow and distribute our bioaugmentation cultures, as well as providing testing, monitoring and all the other services needed to clean up these sites.

What’s next for your lab?

Our earlier microbial cultures focused mostly on chlorinated solvents, which are chemicals used primarily in dry cleaning and industrial degreasing. Over the years, we have also developed anaerobic cultures that can degrade benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene – collectively known as BTEX – which are often found in sites contaminated by oil and gas.

We have finally figured out who are the most critical members of these microbial communities. Because their numbers are often low at contaminated sites, we are working with SiREM to grow up large quantities of these cultures and test them in the field to boost numbers and accelerate degradation rates. If it works, it will greatly expand the number of sites we can treat.

We also study the organisms that grow in anaerobic digesters. These are large facilities that process organic waste from farms or cities and turn it into methane, which is then burned to generate heat and electricity. It turns out that many of the same organisms we studied in groundwater and soil also exist in these anaerobic digesters. If we can help that process work even better, we can generate lots of renewable, clean energy.

Why did you choose to be a professor at U of T?

When I was working in industry, I missed the interactions with students and constant streaming of new ideas and buzz that happens at a university. I missed going to seminars, but most of all I really missed doing lab work – I wanted to test stuff out for myself, not just read papers others had published.

My boss in consulting, Dr. David Major, realized that I was wishing for a lab of my own and encouraged me to apply to academic positions. I began my career at McMaster, then joined U of T in 1997. What began as a series of informal collaborations with colleagues both inside and outside the university eventually grew into BioZone, a multidisciplinary centre that focuses on applied work at the intersection of biology and engineering from idea to commercialization.

We now have a critical mass of equipment, tools and institutional knowledge in this area, which ensures that we don’t have to re-invent the wheel every time we gain a new student. Instead, we have this collaborative, friendly atmosphere where we talk about the things that don’t work, and try to solve difficult problems together. Our researchers are limited only by their imagination.

Elizabeth Edwards is the director of BioZone, a professor in the department of chemical engineering & applied chemistry and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Her anaerobic biotechnology is just one example of extraordinary innovation and impact at U of T. Learn more at utoronto.ca

“Person-on-a-chip”: U of T engineers create lab-grown heart and liver tissue for drug testing and more

sgupta — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 15:57:52 +0000

“Person-on-a-chip”: U of T engineers create lab-grown heart and liver tissue for drug testing and more sgupta Thu, 03/03/2016 - 10:57

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Milica Radisic and her team have created a new platform for growing realistic human heart and liver tissue outside the body (photo by Caz Zyvatkauskas)

Tyler Irving

Author legacy

Tyler Irving

Topic

Breaking Research

Forging an image of the 3D-printing future

sgupta — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 13:05:45 +0000

Forging an image of the 3D-printing future sgupta Mon, 02/22/2016 - 08:05

Cutline

Matt Ratto of U of T's iSchool with orthopaedic technologist Joyce Nakibirango at the CoRSU hospital in Uganda. (Photo by ginger coons/Critical Making.)

Dominic Ali

Author legacy

Dominic Ali

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Printed prosthetics are here, and complex bioprinting is coming, Matt Ratto says

Once confined to the realm of science fiction, 3D printers have become part of the mainstream. These machines fabricate physical objects by melting and layering plastic through a nozzle. Users can create or download professionally designed plans and produce custom objects ranging from tree ornaments to prosthetic limbs.

No one understands the process better than U of T’s Matt Ratto. This associate professor at the iSchool and director of the Semaphore Research Cluster researches the intersection of digital technologies and the physical world.

U of T News talked to Ratto about how 3D printing will evolve, especially when combined with other contemporary technologies.

Is there one use for 3D printing that will revolutionize the world?

A lot of claims have been made about what will be the “killer app” of 3D printing, from just-in-time production of Tupperware lids to the printing of food. The first idea misses the energy costs of 3D printing. It’s a terrible replacement for mass producing forms that can easily and cheaply made through injection molding.

The second idea seems to imply that most people like processed foods. 3D printing a food basically means grinding up the base form into a slurry and then printing it into a new shape or arrangement. We actually have a lot of foods like this in the marketplace. The Pringle is probably the best example. I think that the revolutionary qualities of 3D printing have to do with the ability to produce novel things: smart objects, unique biological forms, hybrid materials and topologies that could not be made before.

3D printers have evolved from large, expensive machines to smaller, cheaper units for home use. Where do you think the technology is heading?

I think 3D printing is moving away from general-purpose hardware and software towards more specific functions and uses. Such a move allows a better fit between user, use context and the design of the 3D tools and technologies. For instance, we are now seeing bioprinters that make use of the same general printer technology as plastic-based hobbyist printers. But they add heated environmental areas for the printing material (cells) and purified compressed air drivers that maintain a sterile printing area, functions specific to the printing of complex biological forms. There are even inexpensive versions of these printers, such as the Biobot, which is a 3D printer for living cells.

Which industries will be most affected as 3D printers become more pervasive?

Medical industries and specifically patient care are really set to be disrupted by 3D printing. Bioprinting of complex cellular assemblies is probably the furthest out, but this will really change how patients are treated. Closer to the market are custom medicines – pills that contain the specific active ingredients for an individual, rather than mass-produced units made for a general profile. And the 3D printing of custom braces, prosthetics and orthotics is right around the corner. We have a research project and non-profit spin-off called Nia Technologies that is already doing this in developing countries.

Alumni named to Forbes Top 30 under 30 for startup that began in basement of University College residence

sgupta — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 11:23:45 +0000

Alumni named to Forbes Top 30 under 30 for startup that began in basement of University College residence sgupta Tue, 02/24/2015 - 06:23

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Members of the OOHLALA team including co-founders and U of T alumni Daniel Jameel (holding up hand), James Dang (first row of standing, in company t-shirt) and Peter Cen (front row, far right)

Blake Eligh

Author legacy

Blake Eligh

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Alumni named to Forbes Top 30 under 30 for startup that began in basement of University College residence