Researcher Bios

Janet Rossant
Dr. Janet Rossant is a recognized world leader in mammalian developmental biology and genetics, she has received numerous prestigious awards for her contributions to the health sciences, including the 2004 Killam Prize for Health Sciences, the National Cancer Institute of Canada’s Eli Lilly/Robert L. Noble Prize, and the Royal Society of Canada’s McLaughlin Medal. She trained at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, is a Fellow of the Royal Societies of both Canada and London, a University Professor in the Department of Medical Genetics and Microbiology and Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Toronto and Chief of Research at The Hospital for Sick Children.

Peter Dirks
Dr. Peter Dirks is an innovator in cancer stem cell research and is part of the team that discovered that a cancer stem cells are responsible for brain tumors. Dirks graduated from Queen’s University Medical School in Kingston, Ontario in 1989. He completed a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Pathology in 1997 at the University of Toronto, followed by neurosurgery training at the University of Toronto 1998 (Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Canada, 1998) and paediatric neurosurgery fellowship training at Necker Enfants Malades (Paris) in 1998. Dirks was appointed to Neurosurgical Staff at The Hospital for Sick Children in the University of Toronto in 1998 and joined the Research Institute in 1999, establishing a lab to study brain tumors at the Arthur and Sonia Labatt Brain Tumor Research Centre.

Freda Miller
Dr. Freda Miller is best known for her studies of neuronal stem cells and of neuronal growth, survival and apoptosis. Major findings from her lab have provided evidence that skin contains a multipotent stem cell that can be isolated and purified. Dr. Miller is a cell and molecular neurobiologist at the SickKids Research Institute, a professor at the University of Toronto, and holds the Canada Research Chair in Developmental Neurobiology. She is also a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a councillor of the American Society for Neurosciences, and an Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) International Research Scholar Dr. Miller has authored more than 100 scientific papers, reviews and book chapters and has 13 patents (issued and pending).

Benjamin Alman
Dr. Benjamin Alman’s work focuses on the care of children with syndromes, with spinal deformity, with neuromuscular disorders, and with tumors involving the bones, joints and soft tissues. He is head of the division of Orthopaedic Surgery at SickKids and the Multidisciplinary Musculoskeletal Tumour clinic at SickKids, the largest clinic of its kind in Canada. He runs an active basic science research program, studying the role of developmental signaling pathways in musculoskeletal tumours and has identified novel treatments for these tumors. He has received numerous awards for his research work, including the Premier’s Research Excellence Award (for outstanding basic science work in Ontario), the Huene Award (for outstanding contributions to Pediatric Orthopaedics in North America), the OREF Research Award (the highest award for an orthopaedic investigator in North America, given jointly by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, the Orthopaedic Research Society and the Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation), and the Royal College Medal in Surgery.

James Ellis
Dr. James Ellis’ research is concentrated on gene therapy .Gene therapy of blood diseases involves gene transfer into stem cells but is hindered by low gene expression levels. Stem cells silence retrovirus vectors by compacting DNA into inaccessible chromatin structures. He received his BScH from the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, McGill University in 1984. After completing his PhD in 1990 under the supervision of Dr. Alan Bernstein, he held a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute for Medical Research, London, U.K until 1994. Dr. Ellis joined the SickKids Research Institute in 1994 and is currently a senior scientist in Developmental & Stem Cell Biology

David Kaplan
David Kaplan was part of the team that identified and characterized the regulatory subunit of the signal transducing protein PI-3 kinase and his laboratory focuses upon examining signal transduction processes in neurons and neural tumor cells. He received his BA from Clark University in Worcester, MA, in 1978, and his PhD from Harvard University in Cambridge, MA in 1987. Dr. Kaplan performed his post-doctoral studies from 1988-1990 at the University of California, San Francisco with Dr. Harold Varmus, identifying novel substrates that interact with growth factor receptors. In 2002, he became a senior scientist and head of Cancer Research at SickKids and professor, Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto. He holds a Canada Research Chair in Cancer and Neuroscience.

Rett Syndrome and induced Pluripotent Stem cells goes “Green”

June 17, 2009 by Aaron Cheung

Stem cell researchers at The Hospital for Sick Children have now devised a method, reported in the scientific journal Nature Methods, that will facilitate the generation of induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells. I have previously blogged about the promise of iPS cells (see related articles). iPS cells are cells which have been reprogrammed from a differentiated somatic cell (such as your skin cells) to a pluripotent stem cell (like an embryonic stem cell, only that you don’t need to use embryos!). The generation of iPS cells is inherently very rare which occurs at a frequency of about 0.01% meaning you can generate about one iPS cell line out of hundred thousand cells. Out of which, many lines fail to satisfy the different rigorous tests necessary to be given the prestigious name of “iPS cell”.

A group led by Dr. James Ellis, and lead author Dr. Akitsu Hotta, at The Hospital for Sick Children has generated a reporter, named EOS, that will facilitate the generation of iPS cells for both mouse and human. The reporter has DNA elements (called promoters) that will drive the expression of a fluorescent protein (GFP) and an antibiotic resistance gene (puromycin) that will only turn on in pluripotent stem cells, but remain off in differentiated cells. Therefore, scientists can now generate iPS cells from different sources and the iPS cells will literally “light up with a green colour” once reprogramming has been achieved. Furthermore, by adding puromycin to your culture, it will keep the iPS cells in a pluripotent state as iPS cells will normally spontaneously differentiate.

To demonstrate the applicability of EOS, Ellis also derived iPS cells from patients who have a neurodevelopmental disorder called Rett Syndrome. Rett Syndrome is an Autism Spectrum Disorder which affects almost exclusively females at an incidence of 1 in 10,000 and is one of the leading causes of mental retardation in girls. These Rett Syndrome iPS cells were green when placed under a fluorescent microscope and Ellis demonstrated that neurons can be generated from these Rett Syndrome iPS cells, the cell type affected in Rett Syndrome.

In conclusion, the EOS reporter will facilitate the generation of iPS and will be particularly useful for new labs going into this rapidly developing field. Furthermore, Rett Syndrome iPS cells that were also generated in this study will be invaluable for future drug screens that may be beneficial to those with Rett Syndrome.

Article:
Hotta, A. et al. Isolation of human iPS cells using EOS lentiviral vectors to select for pluripotency. Nature Methods 6, 370–376 (2009).

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