KEYNOTE SPEAKER

E. Dale Abel, M.D., Ph.D.

William S. Adams Distinguished Professor of Medicine
Chair and Executive Medical Director
Department of Medicine
David Geffen School of Medicine and UCLA Health

E. Dale Abel, MD, PhD., is the William S. Adams Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Chair and Executive Medical Director of the Department of Medicine in the David Geffen School of Medicine and UCLA Health. He was formerly a Professor of Medicine, Biochemistry and Biomedical Engineering, Chair of the Department of Medicine and Director of the Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center at the University of Iowa where he held the John B. Stokes III Chair in Diabetes Research and the François M. Abboud Chair in Internal Medicine.

Dr. Abel has had a distinguished career in endocrine and metabolism research. His pioneering work on glucose transport and mitochondrial metabolism in the heart guides his current research interests: molecular mechanisms responsible for cardiovascular complications of diabetes. His laboratory has provided important insights into the contribution of mitochondrial dysfunction and aberrant insulin signaling, to heart failure risk in diabetes. Recent work has focused on mitochondrial mechanisms that mediate inter-organ crosstalk that may influence the pathophysiology of insulin resistance and mitochondrial pathways linking metabolism with increased risk for atherothrombosis.

Dr. Abel’s research program has been continually funded by the National Institutes of Health since 1995, and by the American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association, and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Dr. Abel is the recipient of numerous awards for scholarship and mentorship. Most recently, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). He is an elected member of the American Association of Physicians (AAP), the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), National Academy of Medicine (NAM), and the American Clinical and Climatological Association (ACCA). Dr. Abel is a past President of the Endocrine Society and is currently President of the Association of Professors of Medicine (APM).

PLENARY SPEAKERS

Elmar Jaeckel, MD
 
Dr. Elmar Jaeckel is a trained gastroenterologist/hepatologist as well as endocrinologist/diabetologist and transplantation specialist. He is Medical Director of the Liver Transplant Program at the UHN Ajmera Transplant Centre, and Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto.  Since 2003, he has been leading the research group on immune tolerance and metabolic inflammation at the Hannover Medical School. The group is focusing to establish tissue-specific tolerance in autoimmunity, transplantation and metabolic inflammation.

Since 2010 he has been the medical attending of the liver transplant program at the Hannover Medical School (MHH), one of the largest liver transplant programs within the Eurotransplant region.  Dr. Jaeckel has published numerous articles on viral hepatitis, autoimmune liver disease, autoimmune diabetes and transplantation tolerance. He developed tissue-specific regulatory T cell therapies for local tolerance induction. He has numerous patents on tolerance inducing therapies and is co-founder of Quell Therapeutics aiming to develop clinical therapies for tolerance induction with regulatory T cells.

Tianru Jin, PhD, M. Med, Professor
 
Dr. Tianru Jin is a Professor of physiology at the University of Toronto and a Scientist at TGHRI.  His research interests include understanding cell type specific gene transcription, mechanisms underlying the production and function and the incretin hormone GLP-1, and role of Wnt signaling pathway in metabolic homeostasis.  Dr. Jin’s team has been making contributions on understanding metabolic functions of peptide hormones and neurotransmitters (such as GLP-1, FGF21 and GABA), Wnt signaling cascade, and dietary polyphenol intervention, with transgenic mouse models and other tools. 

Tereza Martinu, MD, Assistant Professor
 
Dr. Tereza Martinu is a lung transplant respirologist and Clinician-Scientist with the Toronto Lung Transplant Program at the Ajmera Transplant Centre.  She is an Assistant Professor of Respirology in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto and a Scientist at the TGHRI.  Dr. Martinu research focuses on mechanisms of chronic lung allograft dysfunction (CLAD).  She studies the role of Th17, IL-17, and other related cells and molecules, as well as epithelial injury in the development of airway and lung parenchymal fibrosis in animal models of lung transplantation.  Dr. Martinu also runs several translational human studies that assess CLAD mechanistic pathways in research samples obtained from lung transplant patients.

Valeria E. Rac, MD, PhD, Associate Professor
 
Dr. Valeria Rac is a Scientist and Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Lead with the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research (TRCHR), Peter Munk Cardiac Centre at the TGHRI. She is also an Associate Professor at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME), University of Toronto and a Scientist at the TGHRI.

Dr. Rac’s expertise is in HTA, evaluation and health services research. Her program is focused on program and network evaluations and complex interventions in chronic disease management, working closely with patients and their family members, community partners, innovators, researchers and government/policy-makers. Using a variety of evaluative approaches to assess our healthcare system, Dr. Rac and her team provide rapid, timely feedback to all involved stakeholders that contribute to the establishment of a learning healthcare system. They generate rigorous evidence and provide decision support to implement the innovative, system-disruptive technologies that empower patients, deliver the best outcomes, and create high-performing, cost-effective healthcare systems.

Sara S Nunes Vasconcelos, PhD, Associate Professor

Dr. Sara Nunes Vasconcelos, PhD is a Scientist at the University Health Network in the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute and the John Kiston McIvor Endowed Chair in Diabetes Research​.  She holds an Associate Professor appointment at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and a cross-appointment at the Department of Laboratory Medicine & Pathobiology at the University of Toronto. Her translational research program aims to develop regenerative medicine strategies and to use bioengineering approaches to study cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. Her lab has developed new vascularization techniques to support functional tissues for organ regeneration and is pioneering the work to create mature, functional vessels in 3D engineered tissues. Her work on human cardiac tissues-on-a-dish has opened a new area of research in human pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocyte maturation and drug testing. 

Dmitry Rozenberg, MD, PhD, FRCPC, Assistant Professor
 
Dr. Dmitry Rozenberg is a respirologist at the Toronto Lung Transplant Program.  He is the recipient of the Sandra Faire & Ivan Fecan Professorship in Rehabilitation Medicine. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto and a Scientist at the TGHRI. Dr. Rozenberg’s research aims to understand the impact of skeletal muscle dysfunction on daily physical function, quality of life, frailty, health-care use, and survival before and after lung transplantation. Dr. Rozenberg is applying novel imaging techniques and non-invasive measures to quantify muscle mass, strength and physical function to gain a greater understanding of the muscular impairments experienced by these patients and their response to rehabilitation. As a respirologist with training in Kinesiology, Dr. Rozenberg is looking to translate his clinical expertise and passion for exercise training to improve health outcomes in people with lung disease and across the multi-organ transplant program.

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