Engineered cellular models to explore human disease heterogeneity

ChE Seminar Series Presents: 

Alison McGuigan, PhD

Professor, Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry, University of Toronto

Abstract:

Ex vivo culture models provide powerful tools to interrogate the role of tumour heterogeneity in human cancers. Patient-derived organoids (PDOs) are emerging as powerful models to capture the genetic heterogeneity of human tumors. However, extrinsic factors present in the tumor microenvironment (TME) of a tumour, such as the presence of stromal cells and gradients of small molecules such as oxygen, also affect cancer phenotype and response to therapy. This talk will describe tissue-engineered platforms we have developed 1) to enable controlled assembly and disassembly of organoid structures to study the impact of both genetic and microenvironmental heterogeneity on tumor cell behavior and 2) to explore tumour microenvironment remodelling, heterogeneity in response to therapy, and potential to re-grow after therapy.

Bio:

Dr. Alison McGuigan is a Professor in Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry and the Institute for Biomedical Engineering at University of Toronto. She obtained her undergraduate degree from University of Oxford, her PhD from University of Toronto working, and completed Post Doctoral Fellowships at Harvard University and Stanford School of Medicine. Dr. McGuigan research group is focused on the engineering of tissue models to explore mechanisms of disease and regeneration. Dr. McGuigan has established strategies to generate multi-component tissue systems with specified organization. Furthermore, she has pioneered the design of tissue platforms for smart data acquisition, with a focus on stratifying heterogeneous bulk data by cell population, by spatial location, or by time. In recognition of Dr. McGuigan’s work she has received numerous awards including the 2013 TERMIS-AM Young Investigator Award, and the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering Hatch Innovation Award. In 2018 was elected to the Royal Society of Canada-College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists and in 2022 she was elected a Fellow of TERM by the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society. She serves on the executive leadership team of CFREF Medicine by Design program and on the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM) incubation and outreach committee.