PRiME Faculty Members Granted Team Project Award from Medicine by Design

A team of PRiME faculty members has been awarded $3.6 million by the University of Toronto's Medicine by Design initiative, which supports multi-disciplinary team projects accelerating regenerative medicine. The award funds research targeting bottlenecks in mesoderm differentiation for regenerative therapies. Led by PRiME Director Shana Kelley, the eight team members span the Faculties of Pharmacy, Medicine, Arts & Science, and Applied Science & Engineering.

The effort will expand the use of human pluripotent stem cells for therapeutic stem-cell production and mobilization of endogenous stem cells, developing approaches to control self-renewal, differentiation, and proliferation with high specificity — including a new on-cell screening approach for isolating novel antibodies.

Dr. Kelley stated: "This project has significant potential for transformative outcomes. It is the first regenerative medicine-focused effort to link iterative, high-throughput functional genomics with the development of biologic reagents with therapeutic potential." The team includes specialists in genomics, tissue architecture, signal transduction, antibody development, microfluidics, and synthetic biology.