Scholarships Awarded

We 'again' congratulate our gifted students Laura Rose and Nesrine Mostafa for securing new Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) studentships. Laura and Nesrine secured the prestigious CIHR Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships. Nesrine's project was titled "Growth Factor and Gene Delivery for Bone Regeneration in Cleft Palates", while Laura submitted a project titled "Gene Delivery for Bone Regeneration". These are the latest scholarship Nesrine and Laura secured and it will be sufficient to carry them over their PhD studies. Both Laura and Nesrine were ranked in the top 5% of the applicant pool, clearly attesting to the quality research they pursue and the scholarly promise they possess. Congratulations!

Personnel News

We welcome short-term visitors Dr. Selçuk Özcan (Assistant Professor, Bilecik University, Turkey) and Burçin Akgün (M.Sc. Student, Bogazici University, Turkey) to our lab. Selcuk and Burcin will get further research training in Canada, exposing themselves to drug delivery and tissue engineering research. Both will work on biomineralization of scaffolds, developing novel and mineralized scaffolds and exploring their use for applications involving biomineralization, bone regeneration and DNA delivery. We wish them a productive stay in our lab

Other short-term students spending the summer with us are Anuja Samuel and Michael Leung, both from the Chemical & Materials Engineering Department, U. of Alberta. Anuja is exploring siRNA delivery to leukemic cells, working along with Breanne Landry. Michael is exploring the physicochemical properties of polymer/DNA complexes, working along Laura Rose. Both Michael and Anuja secured NSERC summer studentships to conduct their research projects. Congratulations to both !

Project Funded

We recently secured Alberta Cancer Foundation funding ($150,000 per annum for 2 years) to pursue a High Risk-High Reward Project. The project is intended to develop siRNA therapeutics for treatment of leukemic cancers. We plan to develop non-viral formulations of siRNA in order to curb uncontrolled growth of leukemic cells in circulation. This is a new project for our lab and we plan to generate proof-of-principle studies in order to explore the efficacy of siRNA in this deadly disease.

Congratulations to our colleague Dr. Gaetan Laroche (Laval University, Quebec) who successfully secured funding from NSERC for a CREATE Program on Regenerative Medicine. The program funding is $1,650,000 over 5 years. Dr. Laroche organized a highly skilled team of biomaterials scientists and engineers in order to pursue a focused educational program on regenerative medicine. We are delighted to be part of this team, whose investigators include Drs F. Auger (Laval University), D. Mantovani (Laval University), M.J Lee (Dalhousie University), P. Santerre (U. of Toronto), J. Kizhakkedathu (U. of British Columbia), E. Stone (U. of Toronto), and L. Unsworth (U. of Alberta). We look forward to interacting with other labs and gifted students to create innovative materials and therapeutic approaches.

New Research Tool

We recently acquired a Carestream Animal Imager (FX Pro) to investigate biological events in situ, thanks to funding support from NSERC. This is a powerful system capable of conducting x-ray, bioluminescence and fluorescence imaging in animals. The imager will enable to (i) to visualize bone regeneration, (ii) conduct pharmacokinetics and efficacy studies in tumor models, and (iii) inspect gene expression in biomaterial scaffolds, to name a few examples. We are excited to incorporate this important tool into our research. We envision conducting more comprehensive studies with the availability of the imager as well as probing scientific events that was not possible with our current toolbox.

Graduation

Since the last update on our news page, we lost (in the good sense) three 'long-timers' from the lab. Vanessa Incani (now Dr. Incani) completed her PhD degree in the Faculty of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences. Meysam Abbasi (now Dr. Abbasi) completed his PhD degree in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Medicine. Guilin Wang (now Dr. Wang) completed his studies in Chemical & Materials Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering. All three of them have done marvelous jobs during their studies, publishing well-designed studies in good quality journals and paving the way to successful research endeavors for new comers to the lab. While Dr. Incani chose a postdoctoral fellowship at a local institute (NRC National Institute for Nanotechnology), Dr. Abbasi and Dr Wang chose industrial positions to continue their careers. We wish them all the luck in their new endeavors.

Scholarships Awarded and Other Personnel News

We congratulate Laura Rose for securing an Alberta Innovates Health Solutions (formerly AHFMR) studentship. Laura is the latest in a long line of students in the Uludag lab with funding from this local agency dedicated to supporting Alberta science and technology. With this scholarship, Laura secured funding until the end of her PhD studies, which should allow her to focus on her studies without $$ worries. Congratulations!

Dr. Hamidreza M. Aliabadi successfully renewed his fellowship from the Alberta Innovates Health Solutions (AIHS) for a total of 3-year period. Hamid is doing groundbreaking research on new ways to silencing drug transporters on cancer cells by using siRNA-based therapeutics. He will be well supported to continue his studies in the Uludag lab, generating proof-of-principle studies from the conceptualization to preclinical testing of novel anti-cancer therapeutics.

Project Funded

We recently secured NSERC funding ($87,000) to purchase a new animal imager in order to follow drug delivery and tissue regeneration events in animals. We are excited to follow gene induction in situ, as well as bone regeneration events non-invasively. We hope to be able to conduct pharmacokinetics and drug delivery studies based on fluorescently labeled probes. The new instrument is expected to allow us to visualize events that were not possible before and reduce animal use for our research.