Three Department of Surgery faculty members are among the 11 award recipients in the first Innovation to Commercialization (I2C) competition. These awards will help BC health researchers bridge the gap between discovery and practical application to improve health outcomes in BC.
http://secure.campaigner.com/csb/Public/show/iq87f–d6jni-5kohqi96
Dr Aziz Ghahary (Plastic Surgery)
Liquid skin substitute accelerates burn and non-healing wounds. Dr. Ghahary’s lab has developed a novel, shelf-ready powdered reconstitutable liquid skin substitute called “MeshFill”. MeshFill is liquid at low temperatures and solidified when it is applied to a wound site. As MeshFill is a liquid scaffold, it fills up any cavities, gaps and void areas. MeshFill has already been shown to accelerate the healing process when used on diabetic wounds, and patients with large burn.
Dr. David Granville (Plastic Surgery)
A novel therapeutic for inflammatory skin diseases. Dr. Granville’s lab has identified a protein called Granzyme B (GzmB), to be abundant at the hair follicle or at or just under the epidermis in skin conditions characterized by excessive inflammation (such as burns, blisters, or scarring) or in autoimmune conditions such as lupus. They have developed a topical first-in-class inhibitor of GzmB which will now enter human clinical trials for Discoid lupus erythematosus.
Dr. Chris Ong (General Surgery)
A novel multi-targeted therapeutic for treatment of advanced prostate cancer. Numerous small molecule drugs and therapeutic antibodies individually targeting receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) such as EGFR, Her-2 and MET are currently in clinical use. Dr. Ong’s lab has discovered that SEMA3C drives prostate cancer growth and treatment resistance through activation of multiple RTKs. He has developed a specific fusion protein that is able to inhibit SEMA3C induced activation of EGFR, HER-2 and MET as well as inhibit activation of these RTK by their individual ligands, EGF and HGF.