2024 Conference Travels

Several Santerre Lab members had the opportunity to attend two World Congress meetings this spring and summer. We are very grateful for the opportunity to present our work - big thanks to the organizers of these conferences!

12th World Biomaterials Congress

In May, Brian Webb, Yizhou Chen, Dr. Santerre, Zach Gouveia, and Katya D’Costa had the opportunity to attend this conference in Daegu, South Korea. For more information about this event, check out the website here: https://wbc2024.com/.

Yizhou presented a poster titled: “Micro-sized gelatin polyurethane composite scaffolds: a new delivery vehicle for intramyocardial hPSC-derived cardiomyocyte transplantation.”

Katya delivered an oral presentation called: “Coupling mechanical distension and sodium ascorbate treatments to generate autologous small-diameter vascular grafts with human adipose stromal cells and monocytes.”

Zach presented his work in an oral presentation titled: “Concept, synthesis, and bio-evaluation of biostable and clinically-translatable dental restoratives.”

Brian delivered an oral presentation titled: “Engineering gingival grafts seeded with human adipose-derived stem cells.”

7th TERMIS World Congress

In June, Kate MacQuarrie had the opportunity to attend this event in Seattle, Washington and present a poster titled “Differentiated and non-differentiated adipose-derived stromal cells accelerate autologous, non-thrombogenic endothelialization of an electrospun scaffold.” For more information about this conference, visit https://wc2024.termis.org/.

Santerre Lab 2024 Summer Students

Our lab is very excited to introduce three amazing undergraduate students who are working with us this summer!

Sahej Kaur Saini

Sahej is an undergraduate student studying cellular and molecular biology, physiology, and immunology at the University of Toronto. She will work with Kate MacQuarrie to explore the optimal support cell type to produce a non-thrombogenic and fully endothelialized vascular graft. 

Genevie Tran

Genevie is an undergraduate Biology student at the University of Waterloo, and a Biotechnology Technician graduate from Conestoga College. She is working with Brian Webb to characterize the proteomic profile of autologous tissue constructs seeded with adipose-derived stem cells used for gingival tissue engineering.

Elaine Yan

Elaine is studying Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, and Human Biology at the University of Toronto. She is working with Suja Shrestha, using uniquely defined lipid additives to enhance mRNA transfection in murine myoblasts by oligo-urethane-based nanoparticles

Congratulations to Chantal Trepanier for successfully defending her Master’s thesis!

In her graduate work, Chantal was working on developing a surface modification technique to optimize and functionalize nanoparticles (NPs) designed by inverse emulsion polymerization for high drug loading efficiency. A drug-coated balloon prototype was developed that successfully delivered NPs carrying an anti-restenosis drug to arterial tissue in vivo that showed enhanced vessel transfer and retention compared to delivery of the drug alone.

She has been incredibly successful throughout her studies, with her work being the subject of a US Provisional Patent, and, a first authored publication from the lab on the advancements of nanotechnology in the treatment of restenosis, in the American Heart Association’s ‘Atherosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology’ (May 2023).

Chantal is now producing two additional manuscripts based on her thesis work, as well as assisting CDMO Hovione with microparticle research using microfluidic techniques through a collaboration with UofT.