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DTSTART;TZID=America/Toronto:20221130T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Toronto:20221130T123000
DTSTAMP:20221129T192229Z
CREATED:20220824T165254Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221129T192229Z
UID:10000056-1669809600-1669811400@bme.utoronto.ca
SUMMARY:Graduate Seminar Series: Clinical Stream - Andrew Effat
DESCRIPTION:Graduate Seminar Series: Clinical Stream\nGraduate Seminar Series for the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (BME). This day is for clinical stream presenters.\nIf you would like to invite your Principal Investigator\, please add their email via the ‘Add Guest’ button and they will also be notified of your presentation.\nPresentation Title: Combined photothermal therapy\nAbstract: Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death among Canadians and continues to place a heavy cost on the health care system. Screening programs have significantly increased early-stage detection; this has been key in reducing mortality\, and in driving the need for innovation in minimally invasive treatment methods. Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) and Photothermal Therapy (PTT) are novel treatment modalities that may fill that need. PDT relies on the interaction of light with a cancer targeting particle to create reactive molecular species which damage vital structures required for cell survival. PTT generates heat in tissue through light absorption\, which results in protein unfolding and eventually\, cell death. In isolation\, their efficacy is limited based on application. A combination of the two treatments is garnering interest due to the potential for synergistic effects. In this project\, we are working towards developing a treatment protocol for this combination therapy.\nSupervisor Name: Dr. Yasufuku & Dr. Weersink\nYear of Study: 2\nProgram of Study: PhD\nZoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89610372821?pwd=azd4SCtYVWtreVovaGNPV1c2NGY2Zz09\nMeeting ID: 896 1037 2821\nPassword: 483329\nPowered by Calendly.com
URL:https://bme.utoronto.ca/event/graduate-seminar-series-clinical-stream-andrew-effat/
CATEGORIES:Graduate Seminar Series
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Toronto:20221130T123000
DTEND;TZID=America/Toronto:20221130T130000
DTSTAMP:20221129T192229Z
CREATED:20220830T170739Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221129T192229Z
UID:10000081-1669811400-1669813200@bme.utoronto.ca
SUMMARY:Graduate Seminar Series: Clinical Stream - Srdjan Sumarac
DESCRIPTION:Graduate Seminar Series: Clinical Stream\nGraduate Seminar Series for the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (BME). This day is for clinical stream presenters.\nIf you would like to invite your Principal Investigator\, please add their email via the ‘Add Guest’ button and they will also be notified of your presentation.\nPresentation Title: Machine learning approach for predicting severity of symptoms in Parkinson’s disease from intraoperative single-neuron recordings\nAbstract: We hypothesized that pathophysiologically-relevant information about the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease may be directly encoded within neurophysiological features of individual neurons in the basal ganglia. Using an extensive database of intracranial recordings acquired during awake deep brain stimulation surgery (n=225 patients)\, we calculated spiketrain features (e.g.\, firing rate\, burst index\, and spiketrain oscillations in different frequency bands) from 1614 high-quality single-neuron segments of the subthalamic nucleus\, substantia nigra pars reticulata\, or globus pallidus internus. Corresponding preoperative Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale Part III (UPDRSIII) motor scores were also amalgamated for each patient. To account for multiple observations per patient\, we used linear mixed models (LMM) to study the relationships between spiketrain features and UPDRSIII scores. We also trained a light gradient boosting machine (LightGBM) regressor combined with mixed effects random forests (MERF) to predict the severity of patients’ parkinsonian symptoms using a combination of features. Our machine learning framework could accurately predict patients’ total UPDRSIII scores across various symptoms and disease subtypes. Our feature importance analysis also revealed that synchronization coding generally had a higher impact on model prediction than rate coding. Overall\, our findings suggest that the activity of individual neurons contains valuable information about parkinsonian symptom severity.\nSupervisor Name: Luka Milosevic\, Milos R Popovic\nYear of Study: 2\nProgram of Study: PhD\nZoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89610372821?pwd=azd4SCtYVWtreVovaGNPV1c2NGY2Zz09\nMeeting ID: 896 1037 2821\nPassword: 483329\nPowered by Calendly.com
URL:https://bme.utoronto.ca/event/graduate-seminar-series-clinical-stream-srdjan-sumarac/
CATEGORIES:Graduate Seminar Series
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Toronto:20221201T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Toronto:20221201T123000
DTSTAMP:20221130T192258Z
CREATED:20220908T180738Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221130T192258Z
UID:10000101-1669896000-1669897800@bme.utoronto.ca
SUMMARY:Graduate Seminar Series: Cell and Tissue Stream - Lauren Baerg
DESCRIPTION:Graduate Seminar Series: Cell and Tissue Stream\nGraduate Seminar Series for the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (BME). This day is for cell and tissue stream presenters.\nIf you would like to invite your Principal Investigator\, please add their email via the ‘Add Guest’ button and they will also be notified of your presentation.\nPresentation Title: Leveraging probiotic-derived membrane vesicles as a postbiotic therapeutic for Crohn’s disease\nAbstract: Bacterial membrane vesicles (BMVs) are bilipid nanoparticles produced as a conserved method of intercellular communication for the delivery of diverse bacterial products. These biological nanoparticles have potential for significant biomedical application\, such as in the context of Crohn’s disease (CD). CD is a chronic inflammatory bowel disease that is influenced by host-microbe interactions. In CD\, NOD2 signalling pathway is disrupted by genetic and environmental factors. Overcoming NOD2 hypoactivity presents a novel therapeutic target for restoring host-microbe communication in CD. However\, muramyl dipeptide (MDP)\, the NOD2 agonist\, is a poor drug candidate due to its large molecular weight and hydrophilicity. MDP is a product of bacterial peptidoglycan (PG) degradation and is a potential cargo of BMVs. We propose the application of probiotic-derived BMVs as an MDP delivery system for the management of CD. In preliminary work\, we demonstrated that isolated BMVs from B. subtilis carry PG fragments capable of inducing IL-8 secretion and CXCL1 expression in HCT116 cells in a NOD2-dependent manner. In addition\, we applied metabolic engineering approaches to optimize BMV production and MDP packaging through the inducible expression of PG hydrolases in both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. Overexpression of PG hydrolases resulted in increased production of BMVs and coincided with increased NOD2 activity of bacterial supernatants. Facilitated delivery of MDP by probiotic-derived BMVs demonstrates a promising strategy to enhance NOD2 signalling activity. This work contributes to the advancement of complementary CD therapeutics\, towards the goal of improving therapeutic outcomes and quality of life for CD patients.\nSupervisor Name: Radhakrishnan Mahadevan\nYear of Study: 2\nProgram of Study: MASc\nZoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89610372821?pwd=azd4SCtYVWtreVovaGNPV1c2NGY2Zz09\nMeeting ID: 896 1037 2821\nPassword: 483329\nPowered by Calendly.com
URL:https://bme.utoronto.ca/event/graduate-seminar-series-cell-and-tissue-stream-lauren-baerg/
CATEGORIES:Graduate Seminar Series
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Toronto:20221201T123000
DTEND;TZID=America/Toronto:20221201T130000
DTSTAMP:20221130T192258Z
CREATED:20221125T192234Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221130T192258Z
UID:10000162-1669897800-1669899600@bme.utoronto.ca
SUMMARY:Graduate Seminar Series: Cell and Tissue Stream - Jo Nguyen
DESCRIPTION:Graduate Seminar Series: Cell and Tissue Stream\nGraduate Seminar Series for the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (BME). This day is for cell and tissue stream presenters.\nIf you would like to invite your Principal Investigator\, please add their email via the ‘Add Guest’ button and they will also be notified of your presentation.\nPresentation Title: Proposing a contractility checkpoint defining muscle cell cycle heterogeneity\nAbstract: Skeletal muscle tissues allow us to move\, smile\, and breathe. Our muscles get injured on a daily basis but fortunately\, they are capable of self-repair. This repair capacity owes in large to muscle stem cells\, residing in-between muscle fibers. Mechanical niche factors like stiffness can control muscle stem cells’ repair potential and activity\, but the mechanisms for such regulation remain elusive. In this study\, we propose contractility heterogeneity as a framework to study stiffness-dependent functional heterogeneity in myogenic cells.\nSupervisor Name: Penney Gilbert\nYear of Study: 4\nProgram of Study: PhD\nZoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89610372821?pwd=azd4SCtYVWtreVovaGNPV1c2NGY2Zz09\nMeeting ID: 896 1037 2821\nPassword: 483329\nPowered by Calendly.com
URL:https://bme.utoronto.ca/event/graduate-seminar-series-cell-and-tissue-stream-jo-nguyen/
CATEGORIES:Graduate Seminar Series
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Toronto:20221202T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Toronto:20221202T123000
DTSTAMP:20221201T193733Z
CREATED:20220922T213739Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221201T193733Z
UID:10000124-1669982400-1669984200@bme.utoronto.ca
SUMMARY:Graduate Seminar Series: Molecular Stream - Teddi Shaw
DESCRIPTION:Graduate Seminar Series: Molecular Stream\nGraduate Seminar Series for the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (BME). This day is for molecular stream presenters.\nIf you would like to invite your Principal Investigator\, please add their email via the ‘Add Guest’ button and they will also be notified of your presentation.\nPresentation Title: Improving AAV targeting through nanobody inclusion by alternative splicing.\nAbstract: Adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) are viral vectors that can be engineered to act as a gene therapy. AAVs contain a single-stranded DNA genome\, with a capsid protein shell. Although AAVs have desirable characteristics for a gene therapy\, their targeting and specificity can be improved. To increase the specificity of AAV targeting\, the inclusion of nanobodies into the surface of the AAV capsid is proposed. This concept will be proven in plasmids by synthetically developing alternative splicing\, specifically\, intron retention. This results in intron inclusion in the final protein. In this construct\, the nanobody will become the intron so\, we can optimize how many copies of the nanobody are included in the final product. To alter the strength of the splicing\, various properties will be modified. Firstly\, linker sequences that flank the intron differentiate the intron-exon border and promote splicing of the intron. The 5’ linker sequence contains the splice donor and the 3’ linker contains the splice acceptor\, polypyrimidine tract (PPT) and the branch point. These features promote the assembly of the spliceosome\, thereby increasing splicing activity. Secondly\, G triplets located in the interior of an intron enforce intron-exon borders. To investigate splicing activity\, three constructs are proposed. The first is read-through\, or no splicing\, where both the linker sequences and G triplets are absent. In the weak splicing construct\, only linker sequences are present. Finally\, in the strong splicing construct\, linker sequences and G triplets are present. When intronic elements are included in the construct\, the splice percentage is increased\, thereby lowering the inclusion of the intron. Once this methodology is proven in plasmids\, it will be applied to AAVs.\nSupervisor Name: Dr. Kevin Truong\nYear of Study: 2\nProgram of Study: MASc\nZoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89610372821?pwd=azd4SCtYVWtreVovaGNPV1c2NGY2Zz09\nMeeting ID: 896 1037 2821\nPassword: 483329\nPowered by Calendly.com
URL:https://bme.utoronto.ca/event/graduate-seminar-series-molecular-stream-teddi-shaw/
CATEGORIES:Graduate Seminar Series
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Toronto:20221202T123000
DTEND;TZID=America/Toronto:20221202T130000
DTSTAMP:20221201T193733Z
CREATED:20220922T213739Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221201T193733Z
UID:10000123-1669984200-1669986000@bme.utoronto.ca
SUMMARY:Graduate Seminar Series: Molecular Stream - Shana Alexander
DESCRIPTION:Graduate Seminar Series: Molecular Stream\nGraduate Seminar Series for the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (BME). This day is for molecular stream presenters.\nIf you would like to invite your Principal Investigator\, please add their email via the ‘Add Guest’ button and they will also be notified of your presentation.\nPresentation Title: Effect of Fc targeting on induction of T cell responses by DNA origami vaccine\nAbstract: Cancer immunotherapy aims to educate the body’s own immune system to fight cancer in ways analogous to how they fend off disease-causing pathogens. As such\, cancer therapies targeting T cells\, like immune checkpoint blockade and adoptive cell therapy\, have revolutionized the field of oncology. However\, only a subset of cancers seem to respond because 1) the patient lacks pre-existing T cells that can recognize the tumor and 2) the delivery of the therapeutics is ineffective. Cancer vaccines are a promising class of immunotherapy that I believe can overcome the first barrier. Cancer vaccines promote the expansion of fresh antigen-specific T cells that are better equipped with antitumour functions. They do this by delivering unique molecular identifiers of tumour cells (antigens) and immunostimulatory molecules (adjuvants)\, to dendritic cells. Dendritic cells baring the vaccine interact with the killer cells of our immune system (T cells) and program them to selectively target tumour cells for destruction. The second barrier\, ineffective delivery\, can be overcome using DNA nanostructures (DNs) which can achieve targeted co-delivery of vaccine components directly to the target cell. Lastly\, I am proposing that controlling the DN cellular uptake pathway by engaging Fc receptors on the surface of dendritic cells may enhance T cell expansion\, as demonstrated in viral infections. Therefore\, my research will focus on developing an Fc targeted DN vaccine that can enhance antigen presentation and antigen-specific T cell expansion compared to untargeted DN vaccines. The results of my thesis will demonstrate how we can use DNA nanotechnology to design therapeutic cancer vaccines with greater T cell responses leading to increased tumour eradication. The discovery of these principles may be incorporated into many cancer vaccination strategies and thus\, will impact the current and future of cancer therapeutics.\nSupervisor Name: Leo Chou\nYear of Study: 2\nProgram of Study: PhD\nZoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89610372821?pwd=azd4SCtYVWtreVovaGNPV1c2NGY2Zz09\nMeeting ID: 896 1037 2821\nPassword: 483329\nPowered by Calendly.com
URL:https://bme.utoronto.ca/event/graduate-seminar-series-molecular-stream-shana-alexander/
CATEGORIES:Graduate Seminar Series
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