Christine Strelchuk is in her second year of the Doctor of Dental Surgery (DDS) program at the University of Toronto and is a recipient of the Faculty of Dentistry Research Fellowship and the TBEP Undergraduate Summer Research Program (USRP) Award. Her summer research project is focused on enhancing drug delivery of exogenous biomolecules to fibrotic tissue. She is interested in quantifying the amount of Agrin, MIF, TGFB1, TIMP-1, and TIMP-2 in monocyte secretions cultured on D-PHI film. Christine was drawn to the Santerre Lab because the lab focuses on modifying materials used in the dental field and using these materials to enhance drug delivery. Outside of the lab, Christine enjoys hiking, cooking, traveling and spending time with her family and friends.
Trevor Ung is a summer student at the Santerre Lab. He is in his fourth year, studying Biomedical Systems engineering at the University of Toronto. Trevor’s research interests include the development of drug delivery vehicles using polymer, gel, and nanomaterial approaches. His project focuses on using polymeric particles to deliver angiogenic growth factors for blood vessel regeneration in ischemic patients. He is supported by funding from the Translational Biology and Engineering Program (TBEP) and Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering (IBBME). In his spare time, you may find him biking along the perilous Toronto streets, or playing ultimate frisbee at the nearest available field.
Shirley Chung is going into her fourth year of Biotechnology with Co-op at the University of Waterloo. Her project for the summer is to determine an optimal dosage of micro-encapsulated C-type natriuretic peptide to use as an anti-fibrotic agent towards the application of suppressing fibrosis in tissue engineered heart valves (TEHV). This project is involved in the effort towards utilizing umbilical cord perivascular cells as a cell source for TEHV, with the goal of evading the fibrosis that is present with current prosthetic heart valves. Shirley is a recipient of the Translational Biology and Engineering Program (TBEP), Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research Undergraduate Summer Research Program Scholarship. What drew Shirley to the Santerre Lab and to the TBEP was the translational and interdisciplinary nature of their research as she hopes to learn more about the chemistry behind biomaterials and how they are being employed for medical applications.