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Dr. Xing Hua Wang obtained his medical degree from the renowned Shanghai University, with a specialization in Pediatrics and Hematology. He practiced as a pediatric general surgeon and taught in the hospital before pursuing a research fellowship in Hematology at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada under the supervision of Dr. Zipursky. Following a second research fellowship in Hematology at Princess Margaret Hospital with Dr. Hans Messner, he joined Dr. Armand Keating's research group.
Dr. Wang has led the basic and translational research lab for many years, and during this time has undertaken research spanning both the mesenchymal and hematopoietic fields. He has been involved in a wide range of projects, from basic research to correlative studies for clinical cell therapy trials.
Dr. Huijie Jiang obtained her PhD from the Bioscience Department at Niigata University, Japan. The aim of her current project is to develop new strategies to improve heart regeneration by inducing the differentiation of mesenchymal stromal cells into cardiomycytes.
Before joining the Cell Therapy Program, Simone Helke worked for more than 12 years as a biological lab technician at a pharmaceutical company in Berlin, Germany. She is now in charge of flow cytometry in the Translational Cell Therapy Research lab. Her current research focuses on analyzing clinical samples & cell monitoring, as well as assisting other group members and contributing to the design of new assays combining her flow cytometry and cell culture expertise.
Yoko received her BA in biology from the University of Pennsylvania and her PhD in immunology from Dartmouth Medical School. She conducted postdoctoral studies studying the regulation of mast cell function at the University of Massachusetts Medical School before coming to Princess Margaret Hospital in 2007. Currently, she is developing various methods to follow and evaluate the immune responses of patients enrolled in cell therapy clinical trials to assess the effectiveness such therapies and to advance our understanding of the complex events that are involved in successful immunotherapy. She is also interested in developing preclinical animal models to study the potential efficacy of cell therapy in other malignancies, such as breast cancer.
Gabrielle Siegers (HBSc, Guelph'97; MA, Queen's'99) earned a PhD from the University of Freiburg in Molecular Immunology in February 2007. Her doctoral work was completed at the Max-Planck-Institute for Immunobiology, Freiburg, in the laboratories of Dr. Wolfgang Schamel and Prof. Michael Reth. Using techniques in biochemistry, microbiology, molecular biology and immunology, she studied the structure and function of both B and T cell receptors. Her most recent PhD work was focused on elucidating the stoichiometry and multimerization status of both human and mouse gamma delta T cell (GDTc) receptors.
Gabrielle's postdoctoral project is to establish a pre-clinical chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML)-mouse model and use it to investigate the efficacy of expanded GDTc to eliminate the leukemia. Our ultimate goal is to develop GDTc therapy to eradicate minimal residual disease in CML patients, whereby patient GDTc would be expanded in culture and subsequently infused back into the same patient. She is also planning to compare the composition and function of GDTc repertoires from healthy donors and CML patients, in order to verify the capability of patient cells to combat leukemic targets.
Gustavo Yannarelli obtained his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina). The aim of his current project is to determine the role of marrow mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) and human umbilical cord perivascular (HUCPV) cells in the regeneration of cardiac tissue. More specifically, Gustavo is studying the capacity of these cells to differentiate into functional cardiomyocytes and the molecular mechanism involved in this process. To this end, he is analyzing the expression of early cardiac genes and proteins using Real-Time PCR, Western-Blot, immunocytochemistry and flow cytometry.
Dr. Iran Rashedi obtained her MD from Tehran University School of Medicine and her M.Sc. from the Department of Biochemistry and Medical Genetics at the University of Manitoba in 2008. For her Master's project, she characterized a DNase-X knock-out mouse model. DNase-X is a Dnase I-like gene highly expressed in skeletal muscle. She has recently joined Dr. Armand Keating's lab as a Ph.D. candidate through the Institute of Biomaterial and Biochemical Engineering.
Dr. Brent Williams is a Pediatric Hematologist/Oncologist certified by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and the American Board of Pediatrics. He is currently engaged in a PhD program in the Institute of Medical Sciences at the University of Toronto as a resident in the Royal College Clinician Investigator Program. He remains affiliated with The Hospital for Sick Children as a Clinical Research Fellow and his PhD studies are being conducted at Princess Margaret Hospital. His research proposal, "Immunotherapy of leukemic cancer stem cells" was supported by a Terry Fox Foundation Clinical Research Fellowship from the National Cancer Institute of Canada (NCIC). The goal of his research is to understand the molecular mechanisms by which natural killer cells identify and destroy leukemic cancer stem cells.
Donna obtained her Bachelor of Science degree from the National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan. She is now pursuing her Masters of Science degree through the Institute of Medical Sciences, University of Toronto. Her current project is investigating the effects of human mesenchymal stromal cells on cytotoxic signaling pathways in natural killer cells. In particular, she is examining changes in natural killer cell cytotoxicity, phenotype, ERK phosphorylation, and granule polarization.
Sonia Montanari earned her degree as a Medical Biotechnologist from the University of Bologna in Italy. She is currently pursuing her Master in Science degree at the Institute of Medical Science, University of Toronto. The overall aim of her study is to investigate whether cardiac and bone marrow derived cells can be mobilized by cardiac injury and, if so, to determine whether they have characteristics of stem cells. In order to address these questions, she is using a novel experimental heterotopic heart transplantation model developed by the study collaborator, Dr E. Kobayashi at the Jichi Medical School, Tochigi, Japan.
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