News
The TRAC is launched!
The Toronto Recombinant Antibody Centre (TRAC) is a research laboratory led by Dr. Sidhu that features state-of-the-art, phage display-based generation of therapeutic grade antibodies against hundreds of antigens in a high-throughput pipeline.
For more information on the TRAC, please visit the TRAC website: trac.utoronto.ca
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Congratulations!
Congratulations to Nicolas Economopoulos, who successfully
defended his Master's thesis in May 2011.
Nicolas is off to dental school and we wish him all the
best.
Synthetic Antibody Workshop
On May 15-17, 2011, Dr. Sidhu lead a workshop entitled “Synthetic Antibodies, Novel Tools and Therapeutics.” The workshop was sponsored by the Ontario Genomics Institute, the Donnelly Centre, MaRS Innovation, the University of Toronto’s Innovations and Partnerships Office, and Life Technologies.
The goals of the workshop were to educate the scientific community about synthetic antibody engineering and their applications, and make synthetic antibody technology readily available to the scientific community; and to foster new collaborations among academic and industry scientists, and commercial partners. Additionally, strategies for developing both scientific and commercial networks for biologics research in Canada were discussed.
The workshop was attended by about 100 people, and featured a series of outstanding talks by leaders in the field of synthetic antibody engineering and their applications, as well as a highly motivating discussion on the process of commercializing new discoveries involving synthetic antibodies. Participants included academic scientists and trainees, and industry and government representatives, who were able to interact and discuss potential collaborations.
back to topRecent Funding News
In collaboration with Dr. Charlie Boone (Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research, University of Toronto) and a large team of talented researchers at the University of Toronto, we have recently launched a major collaboration geared towards a large scale effort at producing antibodies to fight cancer. This initiative has recently been approved for funding by Genome Canada through the Ontario Genomics Institute, with matching funds from the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation's Ontario Research Fund.
The Sidhu lab has ongoing funding from several Ontarian, Canadian and international agencies.
Summary of project proposal: Over the past decade, human antibodies have emerged as prime candidates for fighting cancer and other major diseases. With funding from Genome Canada, scientists are using cutting edge technology to develop antibodies targeted at proteins that have been associated with cancer. Scientists from the Donnelly Centre’s Toronto Recombinant Antibody Technology Centre are working together with researchers from the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research’s Selective Therapies Program to develop a program of large scale antibody production. This project will have a major impact on basic research in cancer biology, expand the options for cancer therapy and yield numerous commercial opportunities. Researchers are also examining the ethical implications of the large-scale production of antibodies. In particular, these issues are being studied in the context of distributive justice - the equitable sharing of scarce resources among all socioeconomic groups.
The Sidhu lab is part of a large collaboration project lead by Drs. Benjamin Neel and Bradly Wouters (University Health Network, University of Toronto), which was recently funded ($10,109,310) by the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation’s Ontario Research Fun through the Global Leadership Round in Genomics & Life Sciences (GL2) Program. The project focuses on functional genomics of solid tumours (including genetic screens, genome sequencing, tumour models and antibody development approaches) for discovery and development of new biologics and biomarkers, with the aim of developing antibody-based cancer treatments. This work will help position Ontario as a leader in this field.
The Sidhu lab has ongoing funding from several Ontarian, Canadian and international agencies. In particular, we are the recipients of major grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR), the Ontario Research Fund (ORF) of the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation (MRI), the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Canada (LLSC), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Genome Canada through the Ontario Genomics Institute (OGI), and the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).
We are also part of several collaborative projects with
researchers in Toronto, across the country and in the US.
The Sidhu lab also operates with support from industrial
partners who fund and collaborate on specific projects. We
currently have 8 collaborations with industrial partners.
