CRBI

CRBI/CIRC Seminar
2022-04-06 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Toronto)
CRBI Seminar – Dr. Igor Jurisica, Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto
Ai is not Enough: Explainable Biology for Improved Therapies

Dr. Igor Jurisica
2022-04-06 14:00 - 15:00
AI is Not Enough: Explainable Biology for Improved Therapies: Integrative computational biology and AI help improving treatment of complex diseases by building explainable models. From systematic data analysis to improved biomarkers, drug mechanism of action, and patient selection, such analyses influence multiple steps of drug discovery pipeline. Data mining, machine learning, graph theory and advanced visualization help characterize interactome and drug orphans with accurate predictions, making disease modeling more comprehensive. Intertwining computational prediction and modeling with biological experiments will lead to more useful findings faster and more economically. Learning Objectives: Participants will learn about the main challenges and opportunities in precision medicine using artificial intelligence, big data analytics and integrative computational biology workflows

CRBI/CIRC Seminar
2022-05-04 10:00 - 11:00
CRBI Seminar – Dr. Frank Delaglio, Professor, University of Leicester, UK
Exploiting NMR for Biomanufacturing needs

Dr. Frank Delaglio
2022-05-04 14:00 - 15:00
Abstract
Protein therapeutics are a highly successful class of drugs that are used to treat a number of serious and life-threatening conditions such as cancer, autoimmune disorders, and infectious diseases including COVID-19. These therapeutics have numerous critical quality attributes (CQA) that must be evaluated to ensure safety and efficacy, including that they must adopt and retain the correct structural fold without forming unintended aggregates. Furthermore, since these therapeutics are manufactured in living cells, where small variations in growth conditions can have a large therapeutic impact, analytics for cell growth metabolomics are also needed. This need is even more critical for therapies such as CAR-T, where the cells themselves are administered directly to the patient. Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) is powerful and diverse tool to help meet these measurement needs, because NMR spectra are sensitive to molecular shape and interactions as well as chemical structure, and NMR can provide this information at atomic resolution for proteins as well as for the small molecule mixtures comprising the metabolome. Exploiting NMR for these biomanufacturing needs leads to a series of computational challenges which we review, including spectral reconstruction of incomplete data, metrics of spectral similarity, detection and quantification of spectral features, and spectral analysis of mixtures.

CRBI/CREATE Joint Conference - 2022
2022-07-07 | Schulich School of Business

CRBI/CIRC Seminar
2022-11-18 10:00 - 11:00
CRBI Seminar – Dr. Jennilee Gavina, Research Scientist, Gilead
How can you as an analytical chemist contribute towards developing life saving medicines within the pharmaceutical industry

In person seminar by Dr. Jennilee Gavina
2022-11-18 11:00 - 12:00 | Petrie Building – Room 317
How can you as an analytical chemist contribute towards developing lifesaving medicines within the pharmaceutical industry? Let’s explore this rewarding career path through learning the whats, whys, and hows. First, we’ll cover some basics about Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) and regulatory requirements so we can understand what characteristics of a compound need to be controlled and why a wide variety of analytical methodologies are required. Then the fun stuff – how do we apply these methods to manufacturing and when do we need to test? We’ll go over how this all fits together, with some practical tips and case studies along the way, and include some insight on the more recent regulatory expectations for nitrosamine control.
The event will be followed by a roundtable session with students from 12 pm to 1 pm.

CRBI/CIRC Seminar
2022-12-12 10:00 - 11:00
CRBI Seminar – Dr. Terry Sachlos, Associate Professor – Teaching Stream, York University
New paradigm of leukemic stem cells and how they can be targeted using differentiation therapy as novel therapeutic strategy

In person seminar with Dr. Sachlos
2022-12-12 14:00 - 15:00 | Life Sciences Buliding (LSB) 107
Acute myeloid leukemia is a fatal blood cancer. The malignant AML blast cells rapidly overwhelm the bone marrow, disrupting resident hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) and normal blood production and eventually causing death. Treatment involves the administration of DNA-binding chemotherapeutic agents that indiscriminately kill both HSC and progenitors, leading to myelosuppression and ultimately drug dose attenuation. Ideally, drugs should specifically target AML while sparing healthy HSC to reduce potentially lethal myelosuppression side effects and extend the dosing period. In this talk, we will discuss the new paradigm of leukemic stem cells and how they can be targeted using differentiation therapy as a novel therapeutic strategy with reduced side effects. The development of novel stem cell screening platforms able to identify agents that specifically target AML-leukemic stem cells (AML-LSC) while sparing HSC will be explored. Recent results demonstrating the importance of engineered niche microenvironments to extend the ex vivo lifespan of HSC and AML-LSC will also be presented. This work sets the foundations high-throughput 3D organoid drug screening using primary human cells extracted from tumours for the development of precision medicine applications.

2023-01-18 10:00 - 11:00
CRBI Seminar – Dr. Simchi, Professor, Fraunhofer Institute

In person seminar with Dr. Simchi
2023-01-18 13:00 - 14:00 | Life Sciences Buliding (LSB) 107

2023-02-01 10:00
CRBI Seminar – Dr. Leo Chou, Professor, University of Toronto

CRBI seminar - Dr. Leo Chou
2023-02-01 14:00 - 15:00 | Life Sciences Buliding (LSB) 107

CRBI seminar - Philip Britz-McKibbin
2023-03-07 08:00 - 17:00
Abstract:

New advances in analytical chemistry for large-scale epidemiological studies: Insights into nutrition and smoke exposures for global health

A suboptimal diet and tobacco smoking are two leading modifiable risk factors in chronic disease burden globally that are typically evaluated using questionnaires by epidemiologists despite being prone to bias and misreporting. This presentation will focus on new advances in mass spectrometry (MS)-based metabolomics research when coupled to capillary electrophoresis (CE) that may allow for more reliable assessment of exposures and their health impacts in large-scale epidemiological studies. A capillary electrophoresis assay for surveillance of iodine deficiency in the Canadian population will first be presented. This work revealed differences in iodine nutrition and exposures to environmental iodine uptake inhibitors in four different regions across Canada. Also, recent developments to expand CE-MS techniques for untargeted lipid profiling when using nonaqueous conditions will be discussed. This approach was used to identify specific circulating lipids associated with omega-3 index status, including biomonitoring changes following high-dose fish oil supplementation. Lastly, I will present a new approach for biochemical verification of tobacco smoke exposures in various countries at different socioeconomic status in support of global health and chronic disease prevention. Stratification of fast from slower nicotine metabolizers offers a unique way to better assess the true hazards from tobacco smoking in diverse populations.

CRBI/CREATE Joint Conference - July 2023
2023-07-11
CREATE/CRBI joint CONFERENCE JULY 2023
The joint CREATE Technology-Enhanced Pharmaceutical Discovery (TEPD) and CRBI conference was held at York University on Monday July 10th and Tuesday July 11th . Day one included workshops featuring guest speakers from Eurofins, Gilead and GSK. Students were able to learn from industry experts and connect with their peers. Day two featured student presentations from various labs in Chemistry and Biology as well as students from the Centre for Research on Biomolecular Interactions (CRBI) lab.

CRBI/CIRC Seminar
2023-12-18 10:30 - 11:30
CRBI Seminar – Karen C. Waldron
Department of Chemistry, Université de Montréal
Crosslinked proteolytic enzymes for microscale proteomics applications
Proteolytic enzymes are routinely used to cleave the potentially thousands of proteins in a biological sample into smaller, more manageable peptide fragments. This facilitates their separation and identification by nano-HPLC, capillary electrophoresis (CE) and/or mass spectrometry (MS). This process, called peptide mapping, is one of the steps used in the workflow for identifying, quantifying, characterizing or probing the function of proteins in the vast field of proteomics, specifically “bottom-up” proteomics. Insoluble proteolytic enzymes (i.e., trypsin, chymotrypsin, pepsin, Lys-C, Asp-N, etc.) offer several benefits such as limited autolysis, reusability and rapid digestion because high enzyme-to-substrate ratios can be used. The added advantage of adaptability to microreactor formats and microfluidic platforms comes from using glutaraldehyde (GA) to crosslink enzymes and render them insoluble instead of immobilizing them on solid-phase supports. In 2004 we reported a multi-step GA-crosslinking procedure for trypsin and compared its specific activity and peptide maps to trypsin immobilized onto GA-functionalized glass beads. The procedure was later adapted for chymotrypsin to digest nanomolar concentrations of fluorescently labelled protein substrate with peptide mapping by CE laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) detection. A GA-chymotrypsin microreactor was fabricated in a capillary column by programing reagent delivery in a CE instrument. Despite the ease in making GA-crosslinked trypsin and chymotrypsin “particles”, their re-use for multiple digestions has been problematic. Our successes and setbacks will be discussed, as well as our efforts to improve the robustness of the crosslinked enzymes using a Design-ofExperiments (DOE) approach to investigate the experimental parameters in our multi-step crosslinking method.

CRBI/CIRC Seminar
2024-01-09 10:30 - 12:00
CRBI/CIRC Seminar –
Dr. Seyed M Moghadas, Professor, Dept of Mathematics, York University
COVID-19 Quarantine and Testing Strategies for Preventing Onward Transmission
Jason Kindrachuk, Associate Professor, Medical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases, University of Manitoba
Investigating emerging zoonotic virus circulation and spillover at the human-wildlife interface in diverse global settings – increasing preparedness and response capacities

CRBI/CIRC Seminar
2024-01-23 10:30 - 12:00
CRBI/CIRC Seminar – Dr. Jianhong Wu, Professor Dept. of Mathematics, York University
Identifying contact mixing patterns in respond to public health interventions and behavioral changes

CRBI/CIRC Seminar
2024-02-13 10:30 - 11:30
CRBI/CIRC Seminar – Dr. Jude Dzevela Kong, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics, York University
Harnessing Light for Molecular-Specific Sensing and Imaging of Biological Samples

CRBI/CIRC Seminar
2024-02-20 10:30 - 12:00
CRBI/CIRC Seminar – Dr. Ebrahim Ghafar-Zadeh, Associate Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, Lassonde School of Engineering
Electronic Point-of-Care Diagnostics: Recent Advances and Future Prospects
Bill Kim, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Chemistry, York University
Next-generation Genome Editing: Technology and Applications

CRBI/CIRC Seminar
2024-03-12 10:30 - 12:00
CRBI/CIRC Seminar – Dr. Nima Tabatabaei, Associate Professor Department of Mechanical Engineering York University
Harnessing Light for Molecular-Specific Sensing and Imaging of Biological Samples

CRBI/CIRC Seminar
2024-03-26 10:30 - 12:00
CRBI/CIRC Seminar – Dr. Pouya Rezai, Associate Professor, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Lassonde School of Engineering
Functional Materials Integrated with Microfluidics for Sample Preparation and Detection of Pathogens and Contaminants in Fluids

CRBI/CIRC Seminar
2024-04-09 08:00 - 17:00
CRBI/CIRC Seminar – Dr. Derek Wilson, Professor Department of Chemistry
Understanding COVID vaccine efficacy on the molecular level

CRBI/CIRC Seminar
2024-04-23 10:30 - 12:00
CRBI/CIRC Seminar – Dr. Sebastian Magierowski, Associate Professor, Dept of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science York University
Sequencing on Silicon

CRBI/CIRC Seminar
2024-04-25 13:30 - 14:30
CRBI Seminar – Dr. Martin Schmeing, McGill University Thursday April 25th 2024
Biosynthesis and use of the most interesting polymer you didn’t know existed
Abstract:

Cyanophycin is a natural product polymer with a poly-aspartate backbone and arginines linked to each Asp side chain. Used in bacteria for storage of fixed nitrogen, carbon and energy, long chains of cyanophycin coalesce into inert, membrane-less granules which can occupy most of the volume of a cell. Cyanophycin has a variety of potential green industrial and biomedical applications. Cyanophycin is made by cyanophycin synthetase 1 or 2 through ATP-dependent polymerization of Asp and Arg, or β-Asp-Arg, respectively. It is degraded into dipeptides by specialized exo-cyanophycinases, and these dipeptidase are hydrolyzed into free amino acids by nonspecific isoaspartyl dipeptidases. I will share highlights of our structural and functional studies of cyanophycin biosynthesis and degradation, which led to surprising discoveries: Our structures and biochemical assays of the cyanophycin synthetase 1 revealed it to be a remarkable, multi-domain, multi-functional biosynthetic machine and uncovered a hidden hydrolytic active site that is crucial for rapid biosynthesis. We also showed that cyanophycin synthetase 2 can assume several elegant architectures that influence its synthetic activity. Further, we discovered and characterized a novel, large family of isoaspartyl dipeptidases dedicated to cyanophycin metabolism, which allows the human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa to use β-Asp-Arg as a sole carbon source, and as good a sole nitrogen source as ammonium. Bioinformatics results underscore how common it is for bacteria to be cyanophycin producers or scavengers, much more so than currently appreciated.

CRBI/CIRC Seminar
2024-05-14 10:30 - 12:00
CRBI/CIRC Seminar – Dr. Alvine Boaye Belle, Assistant Professor, , Dept of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science York University
Humanity 101 for cyber-physical systems

CRBI/CIRC Seminar
2024-05-28 10:30 - 12:00
CRBI/CIRC Seminar – Dr. Jennifer Chen, Associate Professor, Chemistry, York University
Nanocrystals and their assemblies for sensing and imaging

CRBI/CIRC Seminar
2024-06-11 10:30 - 12:00
CRBI/CIRC Seminar -Dr.Laleh Seyyed-Kalantari, Assistant Professor, Dept of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science York University
Fair generative AI in the era of foundation models
Dr. R. Shayna Rosenbaum, Professor, Department of Phycology, York University
Assessing and improving engagement in protective behaviours during COVID-19

CRBI/CIRC Seminar
2024-06-25 10:30 - 12:00
CRBI/CIRC Seminar – Dr. Darius Rackus, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Chemistry, TMU
Microfluidic tools for determining disease immunity

CRBI/CREATE Joint Conference - July 2024
2024-07-22 08:00 - 17:00
CREATE/CRBI joint CONFERENCE JULY 2024

The CREATE Technology-Enhanced Pharmaceutical Discovery (TEPD) and CRBI conference was held at York University on Monday July 22nd and Tuesday July 23rd. Day one featured academic, industrial partner and pharmaceutical guest speakers. Students were able to learn from field experts and connect with their peers and industry partners. Day two featured a presentation from Innovation York on Intellectual Property which provided students and other attendees with a broader understanding on this important topic . The two day event included student presentations from CREATE as well as students from various labs in Chemistry and Biology who presented their research.
