CRAFT held the 2021 installment of its annual research symposium at the end of August. Despite being at the tail end of the summer vacation, more than 230 people from Canada, the US and Germany virtually attended the event.

This year’s symposium featured keynotes provided by researchers from around the globe, including Matthias Lütolf (Switzerland), Jason Burdick (USA) and Yoon-Kyoung Cho (Republic of Korea). Claudia dos Santos (Toronto, Canada) gave the Clinical Translation Keynote, in which she described her joint project with the Bio-Analytical MicroNano Devices (BioAMND) team at the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) Medical Devices Research Centre. The project aims to develop and translate new point-of-care diagnostic and prognostic tests for COVID-19 that can be performed in a hospital’s intensive care unit.

The NRC was pleased to co-host the symposium with the NSERC Training Program in Organ-on-a-Chip Engineering and Entrepreneurship (TOeP). Roman Szumski, NRC’s Life Sciences Vice-President, and Teodor Veres, CRAFT co-Director and NRC BioAMND R&D Director, jointly provided the symposium’s opening remarks. Jean-Francois Houle, NRC Vice-President of the Pandemic Response Challenge Program (PRCP), chaired a session that featured some of the joint NRC-University of Toronto (U of T) research projects funded by the PRCP. Also, the BioAMND researchers shared their exciting work with attendees through multiple presentations.

Several sessions were organized for the benefit of trainees such as a fireside chat with Sushant Singh, a graduate student at U of T and Daniela Marino, the CEO and co-founder of Cutiss AG, an award-winning biotech company developing customized human skin grafts as new treatment for severe burns. Daniela, a former graduate student and postdoctoral fellow, shared her experiences and advice for starting a company while in academia (your supervisor might think you’re crazy, but don’t let that stop you). In addition, Lily Takeuchi and Sina Kheiri, both U of T graduate students, organized a trainee networking event attended by over 40 trainees and 12 VIP guests from industry, NRC and academia, including keynote speakers Jason Burdick and Yoon-Kyoung Cho.

The main attraction of the symposium, as always, was the 45+ presentations given by trainees and researchers about their research projects related to microfluidic-powered diagnostic devices and biofabrication approaches, as well as new organ-on-chip models—even some used to study the effect of the COVID-19 virus on human tissues. Those who gave the best presentations were rewarded with a variety of prizes, including CRAFT merchandise, credits to help pay for professional development resources, and Nespresso coffee machines. A full list of award recipients is provided below.

CRAFT’s co-Directors, Axel Guenther and Teodor Veres, congratulated all prize winners for their amazing work and thanked all those who helped organize the symposium, especially the trainees who volunteered for the symposium organizing committee.

We look forward to seeing all attendees again at the next CRAFT symposium in August 2022.

CRAFT Virtual Symposium 2021 Award Winners

CRAFT People’s Choice Award

1st: Wuyang Gao, PhD candidate, Guenther Lab, U of T

2nd: Intesar Zalloum, PhD candidate, Tsai Lab, Ryerson University

3rd: Evan Amalfitano, PhD candidate, Pardee Lab, U of T

TOeP Trainee Presentations

1st: Karl Wagner, PhD candidate, Radisic Lab, U of T

2nd: Kayla Soon, MASc candidate, Vasconcelos Lab, U of T

3rd: Zhengkun Chen, PhD candidate, Kumacheva Lab, U of T

Business Pitches

1st: Scott Campbell – POoCHS: Polymers for organ-on-chip Healthcare Solutions by PolyVerte

2nd: Katrina Vizely – Bioellypse: A novel scar quantifying organoid

3rd: Safwat Khan, Omar Mourad, Kayla Soon – Vasculochip: for the new generation of vascular medicine

4th: Zhengkun Chen, Sina Kheiri – Artificial Intelligence Microfluidic Platform for Anticancer Drug (AIMPAD)

Poster Session 1

1st: Alisa Ugodnikov, PhD candidate, Simmons Lab, UofT

2nd: Shyan Thompson, MASc candidate, Hwang Lab, Ryerson University

3rd: Jeremy Newton, PhD candidate, Young Lab, U of T

Poster Session 2

1st: Shirley Chung, MASc candidate, Santerre Lab, U of T

2nd: Chuan Liu, PhD candidate, Radisic Lab, UofT

3rd: Benjamin Lai, PhD candidate, Radisic Lab, UofT

Microfluidics Art Competition

1st: Confocal microscopy image of a vascularized tissue in the Biowire II system. In this image, GFP-HUVEC (green) was stained with VE-cadherin (yellow) and DAPI (blue). Image submitted by Rick Lu.

2nd: Pseudo-coloured SEM image of a carbon black particle deposited on ciliated epithelial cells cultured in an organ-on-a-chip system. In this image, the particle is coloured grey, cilia are coloured orange, and epithelial cells are coloured green. Photo submitted by Siwan Park.

3rd: SEM image revealing the 3D-printed microstructure of a microfluidic system which has been applied to early cancer diagnosis and cell enrichment for immunotherapy. Image submitted by Zongjie Wang.