September 2021: Goodbye lunch for our Selina who is going on maternity leave. We wish you all the best and are looking forward to welcoming the next-gen scientist-to-be 🙂
August 2021: We welcome Faezeh Vahdatihassani who joins the Hedtrich lab as a research assistant. Looking forward to work with you!
July 2021: Time to celebrate: Sarah is promoted to the rank of Associate Professor and receives tenure at UBC. This wouldn’t have been possible without all the great grad students and other lab members.
February 11, 2021: Today we are celebrating the International Day on Women and Girls in Science.
February 2021: We congratulate our (former) Ph.D. student Marijana who successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis. We wish you all the best in your future endeavors and it was a pleasure to have you in the lab.
Janu
ary 2021: Finally! After a 10-month (!!) wait to get her study permit due to Covid, Juliana made it to Canada and UBC! Welcome to the Hedtrich lab! Juliana holds a Bachelor in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Sao Paulo. In her MSc thesis, she will explore delivery strategies to facilitate the topical delivery of gene-editing tools into human skin.
November 2020: A warm welcome to Belal Tafech! Belal holds a BSc in Biology from Simon Fraser University and an MSc in Biochemistry from UNBC. In our lab, Belal will be working on transmucosal-nanoparticle interactions & CRISPR/Cas delivery to the lung. Glad you are here and we are looking forward to working with you.
September 2020: Time to celebrate! Sarah and her co-investigators Drs. Brent Page and David Granville have been awarded with a CIHR project grant over $804,000 CAD for the next five years to develop novel small-molecule inhibitors of TSLP for the treatment and prevention of atopic diseases.
August 2020: Finally (after months of delay due to the pandemic), we are able to cultivate our first human-based tissue models in our new organ-on-a-chip setup from TissUse. We are excited to have this equipment now available and set-up in our lab and look forward to some exciting science.
August 2020: Sarah and Dr. James Feng (Professor; Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, UBC) have been awarded a Mitacs Accelerate project entitled: “Rational Nanoparticle Design for Efficient Transmucosal Gene Delivery”. The project has been approved for a total grant of $160,000.00 and will be conducted in close collaboration with Dr. Don Sin and Dr. Tony Yang from Providence Health Care.
July
2020: The Hedtrich lab was awarded a $50,000 grant from the BC Lung Association for the grant “Skin-Lung Crosstalk: Approaching the Atopic March“. This project will be done in collaboration with Dr. Tillie Hackett from the Center for Heart Lung Innovation (UBC and St. Paul’s Hospital).
July 2020: We say goodbye to our great visiting postdoc Estefania Campos. who returns to Brazil after staying with us for one year. Thank you very much, Estefania, it was wonderful to have you here.
July 2020: We celebrated our regained freedom after the difficult weeks in lockdown doing some stand-up paddling which makes physical distancing very easy 🙂
April 2020: We are very happy and proud to announce that Sarah has been awarded an NSERC Discovery Grant which will fund her research on the development of complex human-based tissue models over the next 5 years.
February 2020: We welcomed our new lab members and guests with a delicious potluck this week. Really exciting to share and enjoy food from so many different parts of the world.
February 2020: Dr. Qurrat Ul Ain (aka Annie) joins the Hedtrich lab! Annie’s educational background includes initially, Doctor of Pharmacy from University of the Punjab, Pakistan. She then did her MSc and Ph.D. in Bioengineering at the Department of Bioengineering and Biotechnology at Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea. After that, she worked as an Assistant Professor at the National University of Medicine, Pakistan and now joined our lab to work on the establishment of an in situ gene therapy for severe, monogenic skin diseases. Her research interests are in gene therapeutics, gene editing, and non-viral gene delivery systems.
January 2020: Anna Loewa successfully defended her PhD thesis on New biomedical approaches for studying (patho)physiological conditions of healthy and inflamed skin in vitro. Congratulations, Anna! And we wish you all the best for future endeavors.
Join us! Sarah will give a presentation at the Genetic Medicines Symposia at UBC. On Thursday, February 6 there will be a 1/2 day symposia on the development of genetic drugs using lipid nanoparticles and functionalized synthetic nucleic acids. If you have an interest in personalized medicine and the development of precision health tools, this will be a useful event. Symposia – Developing genetic drugs using functionalized nucleic acids and lipid nano particles final
November 26th : Join the first webinar of the CRS focus group on topical drug delivery with Dr. Hedtrich on November 26 at noon (EST) – sponsored by Catalent. Dr. Hedtrich will talk about novel approaches for topical delivery of biomacromolecules.
October 2019: Sarah Hedtrich joins the Canadian Chapter of the Controlled Release Society as a board member.
October 2019: Dr. Selina Rahman Shanta started as a Research Assistant and Lab Manager in the Hedtrich lab. She completed her PhD in Molecular Biotechnology from Konkuk University, Seoul, South Korea. Her PhD research was on phospholipid biomarker development in neurological disease models and human cancer samples using MALDI Imaging Mass Spectrometry. She also worked as a  ‘Laboratory Supervisor’ at Charles Stuart University, Australia.
A warm welcome to Selina and we are looking forward to working with you!
September 2019 (2): The Hedtrich lab had a fun day in Deep Cove with kayaking and a potluck. The lab is almost complete now and it was a great opportunity for team building.
September 2019 (1): The Hedtrich lab attended the Vancouver Nanomedicine Day 2019, where Dr. Hedtrich gave a presentation about the current status of nanoparticles in skin research. After the meeting, the lab joined the boat cruise and enjoyed the scientific conversations, the drinks and the rain… 🙂
(Ariel, Sarah & Kim)
September 2019: Ariel Huyhn and Zheng Tan join the Hedtrich lab! Ariel is a master’s student in the Hedtrich Lab. She completed her BSc. in Pharmacology at McMaster University. Ariel will apply her background in nanomedicine to the development of non-viral delivery of CRISPR-Cas to epithelial and stem cells of the human skin. Zheng obtained her bachelor’s degree in molecular biology and biochemistry at Simon Fraser University and completed her master’s degree in experimental medicine at UBC. She will work on the development and optimization of multi-organ co-cultures.
August 2019: Dr. Estefania Campos joined our lab. Her stay is funded by the Brazilian government for 1 year. Estefania holds a bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology from the University of Sorocaba (2012), a Master’s Degree in Functional and Molecular Biology from the State University of Campinas (2015) and a PhD in Functional and Molecular Biology from the State University of Campinas (2018). She has experience in the field of macromolecule chemistry, working mainly in the area of nanobiotechnology, through the development of different types of carriers (cyclodextrins, polymeric and lipid nanoparticles, metallic nanoparticles) as well as labeling of these systems with fluorescent probe for the sustained release of agrochemicals , biopesticides and drugs. Welcome, Estefania! We are looking forward to work with you!
July 2019 (2): Dr. Hedtrich was awarded with a CIHR Project Grant to develop a topical approach for correcting monogenic skin diseases in situ using gene editing. We are looking forward to this exciting research!
July 2019 (1): Kim Silberreis from the Charité Berlin joined our group as a visiting scientist for 3 months. She will study the anti-inflammatory potential of dendritic polyglycerol-sulfate in human skin. Our warm welcome to Kim and we hope she enjoys her stay with us!
April 2019: Dr. Partho Adhikary starts as a new postdoc in the Hedtrich lab. Partho completed his MSc. in Bioengineering at Hanyang University, South Korea and a PhD in Biomedical Science at Charles Stuart University, Australia. After completing his PhD, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the International Research Center for Medical Sciences (IRCMS), Kumamoto University, Japan. Just recently, he joined the Hedtrich lab at UBC as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow. His research interests are nanomedicine, in vitro tissue model development and non-viral gene delivery system. His work on adipose tissue targeted non-viral gene delivery system has been published in Nature Materials.
Welcome Partho and we are looking forward to work with you!