$2.5M gift from UBC alumni to create student Engineering Design Centre

An article about Dr. Srikantha Phani’s recent research with colleagues from the Centre for Blood Research was featured In UBC reports. Dr. Phani works with Associate Professor Jayachandran Kizhakkedathu to develop a series of experiments to test new surface coatings for medical implants.

Vancouver, Canada—October 6, 2011—University of British Columbia Professor Emeritus Phil Hill has been named the 2011 recipient of the $100,000 Encana Principal Award by the Ernest C. Manning Awards Foundation. Hill was chosen for his discovery of a technology that enables diesel engines to run on clean-burning natural gas.

The high-pressure direct injection (HPDI) technology, which is being commercialized by UBC spin-off company Westport Innovations, allows diesel engines to operate on natural gas with the same power and efficiency they are known for, but reduces emissions of smog-forming nitrogen oxides and particular matter. It also reduces emissions of greenhouse gasses by up to 27 per cent.

Hill conceived of HPDI and first developed the technology in the late 1980s in his research lab at UBC’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. His research group’s work led to the founding of Vancouver-based Westport Innovations Inc. in 1995. Westport is now a publicly-traded company of over 650 employees and whose technology portfolio includes more than 200 patents, many of which stem from Hill’s original series of inventions.

The Manning Innovation Awards, which honour Canadian innovators in any sector, are selected by a distinguished independent body recruited from across Canada.

“There is a critical need for more innovation in Canada,” said David B. Mitchell, President of the Manning Foundation, in announcing its 2011 award winners. “Canadians need to create and commercialize innovations to compete in the global economy. We want to support, celebrate and draw attention to Canadian innovators and young Canadians showing potential to become future innovators, who have the imagination to innovate and the stamina to succeed.”

“As a university particularly concerned with sustainability and environmental issues, UBC is proud of this recognition of Prof. Hill’s work and of the resulting development of one of its most successful spin-off companies in Westport Innovations,” said UBC President Stephen J. Toope. “In addition to the environmental and economic impacts of his work, new generations of students and faculty at UBC now benefit from the legacy of his discoveries through multiple ongoing and productive research relationships and employment opportunities with Westport.”

Ten award winners in various categories – including young innovators – will be honoured in front of a large audience of Canadian leaders from business, academia and governments on October 14 in Edmonton.

For more information on the 2011 Manning Innovation Award recipients, please visit www.manningawards.ca.

To read more about Westport innovations, please visit www.westport.com

Vancouver, Canada—June 29, 2011—A team of engineers and scientists at the University of British Columbia has developed a device that can be implanted behind the eye for controlled and on-demand release of drugs to treat retinal damage caused by diabetes.

Diabetic retinopathy is the leading cause of vision loss among patients with diabetes. The disease is caused by the unwanted growth of capillary cells in the retina, which in its advanced stages can result in blindness.

The novel drug delivery mechanism is detailed in the current issue of Lab on a Chip, a multidisciplinary journal on innovative microfluidic and nanofluidic technologies.

The lead authors are recent PhD mechanical engineering graduate Fatemeh Nazly Pirmoradi, who completed the study for her doctoral thesis, and Mechanical Engineering Assoc. Prof. Mu Chiao, who studies nanoscience and microelectromechanical systems for biological applications.

The co-authors are Prof. Helen Burt and research scientist John Jackson at the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

“We wanted to come up with a safe and effective way to help diabetic patients safeguard their sight,” says Chiao who has a family member dealing with diabetic retinopathy.

A current treatment for diabetic retinopathy is laser therapy, which has side effects, among them laser burns or the loss of peripheral or night vision. Anti-cancer drugs are also used. But these compounds clear quickly from the bloodstream so high dosages are required, thus exposing other tissues to toxicity.

Key to UBC’s innovation is the ability to trigger the drug delivery system through an external magnetic field. The team accomplished this by sealing the reservoir of the implantable device – which is no larger than the head of a pin – with an elastic magnetic polydimethylsiloxane (silicone) membrane. A magnetic field causes the membrane to deform and discharge a specific amount of the drug, much like squeezing water out of a flexible bottle.

In a series of lab tests, the UBC researchers loaded the implantable device with the drug docetaxel and triggered the drug release at a dosage suitable for treating diabetic retinopathy. They found that the implantable device kept its integrity with negligible leakage over 35 days.

They also monitored the drug’s biological effectiveness over a given period, testing it against two types of cultured cancer cells, including those found in the prostrate. They found that they were able to achieve reliable release rates.

“The docetaxel retained its pharmacological efficacy for more than two months in the device and was able to kill off the cancer cells,” says Pirmoradi.

The UBC device offers improvements upon existing implantable devices for drug delivery, says Chiao.

“Technologies available now are either battery operated and are too large for treating the eye, or they rely on diffusion, which means drug release rates cannot be stopped once the device is implanted – a problem when patients’ conditions change.”

Pirmoradi says it will be several years before the UBC device is ready for patient use. “There’s a lot of work ahead of us in terms of biocompatibility and performance optimization.”

The team is also working to pinpoint all the possible medical applications for their device so that they can tailor the mechanical design to particular diseases.

Parisa Bastani (BASc’09, MECH) has been awarded the Commonwealth Doctoral Scholarship from the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan (CSFP), an international program in which member governments offer scholarships and fellowships to citizens of other Commonwealth countries. She is one of two recipients of the scholarship this year; candidates are selected from seventeen Commonwealth countries.

Bastani is currently studying Engineering and Public Policy jointly at Cambridge University and MIT. While attending UBC, she was the Formula SAE team leader and the Engineering Student Team Council Chair. She also participated in numerous activities such as peer mentoring and sitting on various academic and extracurricular advisory committees. Since her first year at UBC, she was consistently listed on the Dean’s Honour list and in 2009 was named a Wesbrook scholar, UBC’s most prestigious student designation. Shortly after graduating in 2009, she received UBC’s Outstanding Future Alumnus Award at the 15th annual UBC Alumni Achievement Awards Gala.

The CSFP was established at the first Commonwealth education conference in 1959 and is reviewed by education ministers at their triennial meetings – the only scholarship scheme in the world to receive such high-level recognition. For more information on CSFP, visit:

http://www.csfp-online.org