Postdoctoral Fellow
I am a Post-doctoral fellow working under the supervision of Dr. Michael Hayden and Dr. Colin Ross at the University of British Columbia in the Dept. of Medical Genetics. I am currently working on utilizing and optimizing adeno-associated virus (AAV) as safe and efficient tools for targeted delivery of genetic material for the treatment of genetic disease. My work is specifically geared towards developing a novel AAV gene therapy product for the treatment of lipoprotein lipase deficiency (LPLD), a disease that causes severely elevated blood triglycerides and life-threatening pancreatitis. This research builds on the original gene therapy product for LPLD, Glybera, developed at UBC, which became the first gene therapy treatment in the world to receive regulatory approval. Due to its extremely high price, Glybera is no longer marketed and patients are left without treatment. Using preclinical animal models of LPLD and through an active collaboration with the National Research Council of Canada, the goals of my research are to re-introduce and bring forth a novel, more efficacious and cost-effective gene therapy treatment for LPLD. My current work is supported by the National Research Council of Canada along with post-doctoral fellowships from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Michael Smith Health Research BC.