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Innovation Profile: Dr Gordon Keller Director
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Visitors to the Toronto lab of Dr Gordon Keller can expect to see something that will take their breath away: human heart cells, grown from embryonic stem cells, beating away in a petri dish.
"It's really spectacular to look down a microscope and see contracting cells, and to know they were derived from a stem cell within a matter of two weeks," says Dr Keller. "For most people, it's hard to imagine that we make these heart cells in our lab every week."
A world-renowned stem cell scientist, Dr Keller caused a stir of excitement in 2007 when he became Director of the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University Health Network in Toronto. He was attracted to the centre after spending 16 illustrious years in the US, where he was described by New York Magazine as one of "six doctors New York can't lose."
The McEwen Centre's ultimate goal is to accelerate the development of better and more effective treatments for life-threatening conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, respiratory disease
and spinal cord injury. The potential of regenerative medicine is "huge and it's going to explode,"
Dr Keller predicts. His area of research focuses on understanding how mouse and human pluripotent stem cells (both embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells) give rise to specific
cell types and tissues.
In 2008, Dr Keller's team grabbed headlines with a landmark paper in the journal Nature. They had guided embryonic stem cells, with the help of proteins, to become "immature" heart progenitor cells which then gave rise to three types of heart cells. Some day these cells may help repair damaged hearts. More immediately, new drugs can now be tested on human heart cells. "It's the first time we have access to human tissues for drug testing," says Dr Keller.
His team has also generated blood, liver and insulin-producing cells from embryonic stem cells. This work is attracting interest from biotechnology companies.
A Canada Research Chair in Embryonic Stem Cell Biology, Dr Keller is also a Senior Scientist in the Division of Stem Cell and Developmental Biology at the Ontario Cancer Institute and a Professor in the Department of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto.
Born in Saskatchewan, he is enthusiastic about Toronto's working environment. "The Toronto community is special in its strength in stem cell biology and regenerative medicine research," says Dr Keller.
With over 100 published papers, five patents and numerous awards, Dr Keller is a former president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. His group of 17 postdoctoral fellows, students and technicians works in an ultra-modern lab in the Toronto Medical Discovery Tower.
April 29, 2010: Dr Gordon Keller and Dr Peter Liu of UHN receive $6,641,774 from the Government of Ontario's Global Leadership Round in Genomics and Life Sciences
© 2010 Toronto Region Research Alliance