Our Team

Dr. Gordon Keller is the Director of the McEwen Stem Cell Institute (formerly the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine), a Senior Scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and a Professor in the Department of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto. Dr. Keller is the premier researcher in the application of developmental biology-guided principles to the differentiation of pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) into therapeutically relevant cells, such as cardiomyocytes, hematopoietic cells and liver cells. Using developmentally guided approaches, his lab has successfully generated most of the cell types of the human heart and the human blood cell system from human pluripotent stem cells. His current research efforts are focused on translating these advances to the development of new cell therapies to treat cardiovascular and hematological diseases.

Dr. Keller earned his PhD in Immunology at the University of Alberta in 1979 and completed a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Ontario Cancer Institute in Toronto in 1983. Following his post-doctoral studies, he became a Member of the Basel Institute for Immunology in Switzerland where he worked for five years, then moved to Vienna, Austria where he accepted the post of Visiting Scientist at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology. In 1990, Dr. Keller moved to the United States, working initially at the National Jewish Centre for Immunology and Respiratory Medicine in Denver, Colorado and then in the Department of Gene and Cell Medicine at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York where he was appointed Director of the Black Family Stem Cell Institute. He returned to Canada in 2006 to assume the position of Director of the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine (now the McEwen Stem Cell Institute) at the University Health Network in Toronto.

Dr. Keller is also a founding Board member of the International Society of Stem Cell Research. In December 2016, Keller was named scientific co-founder of BlueRock Therapeutics, a biotechnology company that is developing pluripotent stem cell-based therapies to treat heart failure and Parkinson's disease. Dr. Keller received the Ogawa-Yamanaka Stem Cell prize in 2019 for his research on the differentiation of pluripotent stem cells and was a co-recipient of the 2021 Scientific Grand Prize from the Lefoulon-Delalande Foundation at the Institut de France for his contributions to our understanding of human cardiovascular development.

Learn more about Dr. Gordon Keller's work on UHN's Behind the Breakthrough podcast.

Notable Achievements

• UHN Inventor of the Year, 2017
• Ogawa-Yamanaka Award, Gladstone Institute, November 2019
• Bloom Burton Award, November 2020
• Scientific Grand Prize, Institut de France, Lefoulon-Delalande, June 2021

Dr. Michael Laflamme is a Senior Scientist at the McEwen Stem Cell Institute (formerly the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine) at the University Health Network (UHN), where he also holds the Robert McEwen Chair in Cardiac Regenerative Medicine and the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine. His research program is aimed at developing novel cell therapies to regenerate injured hearts.

After obtaining an undergraduate degree in Physics at Georgetown University in 1991, Dr. Laflamme completed the Medical Scientist (MD/PhD) Training Program at Emory University in 1999. His PhD studies were focused on the regulation of calcium homeostasis by beta-adrenergic signalling in adult ventricular cardiomyocytes. After residency in Anatomic Pathology and subspecialty training in cardiovascular pathology at the University of Washington Medical Center, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Charles Murry investigating the role of exogenous and endogenous stem cells in myocardial repair. After his postdoctoral studies, he joined the faculty at the University of Washington, where he remained prior to relocating to UHN in 2015.

His independent research career has been largely focused on the development of cell therapies based on human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs), and his laboratory has made a number of important contributions in this area including 1) widely-used protocols to guide the differentiation of hPSCs into cardiomyocytes and specialized cardiac subtypes, 2) the first proof-of-concept study showing that the transplantation of hPSC-derived cardiomyocytes (hPSC-CMs) can "remuscularize" scar tissue and improve left ventricular contractile function in rodent models of myocardial infarction (MI), and 3) the first direct demonstration that hPSC-CM grafts can electrically couple with host myocardium following transplantation in injured hearts. Among other active projects, his team has ongoing efforts to promote the scaled manufacturing of mature hPSC-CMs, improve the electrical function of hPSC-CMs post-transplantation, and test their efficacy in small- and large-animal models of post-MI heart failure.

Dr. Laflamme has been the recipient of several honours, including the Society for Cardiovascular Pathology Young Investigator Award, the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy Outstanding New Investigator Award, and the UHN Inventor of the Year. In addition to his position at the McEwen Stem Cell Institute, Dr. Laflamme is a Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine & Pathobiology at the University of Toronto and a Staff Pathologist in the UHN Laboratory Medicine Program, practicing diagnostic cardiovascular and autopsy pathology. He is also a scientific co-founding investigator of BlueRock Therapeutics.

Dr. Nostro joined the McEwen Stem Cell Institute (formerly the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine) in September 2012 as Principal Investigator and currently holds the Harry Rosen Chair in Diabetes Regenerative Medicine Research. The objective of her research is to differentiate pluripotent stem cells into pancreatic cells, with the ultimate goal of generating functional insulin-producing β cells for transplantation in people living with type 1 diabetes, eliminating the need for daily insulin injections.

Dr. Nostro obtained a Laurea in Biology (BSc and MSc equivalent) from the University of Florence, Italy in 2000. As an undergraduate student, she participated in the Erasmus Exchange Program and joined Professor Chris Potten's laboratory at the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research, in Manchester, UK. Her stay in his laboratory sparked her interest in stem cell biology and her desire to pursue an academic career.

In 2000, with a Fellowship from the Italian National Research Council, she enrolled as a PhD student at The University of Manchester and under the supervision of Dr. Gerard Brady, studied blood stem cells and became an expert in gene expression profiling of these cells at the single cell level. After obtaining her PhD in 2004, she was drawn to study a new model system and applied for a postdoctoral position in the laboratory of Dr. Gordon Keller at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in NY, where she focused on understanding the earliest stages of blood cell formation using embryonic stem cells. After relocating to Toronto in 2007, she progressed to her scientific independency by initiating a project on pancreatic development.

Her group has defined critical pathways leading to the efficient generation and purification of stem cell-derived pancreatic progenitors. Since 2015, Dr. Nostro has been leading a multi-investigator team aimed at developing novel transplantation approaches for Type 1 Diabetes therapy.

Dr. Shinichiro Ogawa joined the McEwen Stem Cell Institute in 2019 as a Principal Investigator. His research program is focused on developing cell- and tissue-based replacement therapies that can provide an alternative therapy to liver transplant for patients with liver failure.

Dr. Ogawa completed his PhD at Shinshu University School of Medicine in Nagano, Japan and his MD at the Tokyo Medical University in Tokyo, Japan. He completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Gordon Keller at the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine prior to his appointment. Dr. Ogawa also holds an appointment as Professor at the Department of Surgery at Shinshu University School of Medicine in Japan.

In his research, he has developed methods to use hPSCs to generate liver progenitors (hepatoblasts), which can generate functional liver cells. He has used these progenitors to develop mature liver cells and bile duct epithelial cells, both of which have the characteristic properties of functional cells in the liver. In his work with the McEwen Stem Cell Institute, Dr. Ogawa is using hPSC-derived liver cells and organoids to assess restoration of liver function in an experimental model with the goal of developing treatments for liver failure. He is also using hPSC-derived bile duct epithelial cells to develop models to study Cystic Fibrosis Liver Disease and screen drugs for treatment.

Dr. Protze joined the McEwen Stem Cell Institute in 2018 where she is currently a Principal Investigator. Her research program is focused on human heart development and disease with the overarching goal to develop new therapies to treat cardiovascular disease.

Dr. Stephanie Protze obtained her Bachelor of Science degree in 2007 in the Molecular Biotechnology program at Dresden University of Technology (Germany). She joined the International Max Planck Research School in Dresden for her PhD studies in the laboratory of Drs. Ursula Ravens and Elly Tanaka during which time she focused on transcription factor-based direct reprogramming of fibroblasts to cardiomyocytes and their electrophysiological characterization. Dr. Protze graduated with a PhD in Cell Biology and Biomedicine from the University of Dresden in 2012 with summa cum laude. For her Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Dr. Protze trained in the laboratory of Dr. Gordon Keller at the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University Health Network in Toronto (Canada) where she specialized in human heart development and the generation of biological pacemakers from human pluripotent stem cells. These biological pacemakers have the potential to provide improved treatment over current electronic pacemaker devices in the future.

Through her research, Dr. Protze established a method for generating pacemaker cells from pluripotent stem cells. In an international collaboration with scientists from Technion, Israel, Dr. Protze provided first proof of principle that these pacemaker cells can function as biological pacemaker, the first step in developing a cell therapy approach to treat patients. Dr. Protze also spearheaded a project on the development of human atrial and ventricular cardiomyocytes from pluripotent stem cells and demonstrated for the first time that these two lineages are pre-specified by mesoderm patterning during gastrulation. In her work with the McEwen Stem Cell Institute, Dr. Protze is applying the pluripotent stem cell model system to identify the signals that govern atrioventricular node pacemaker lineage commitment with the ultimate goal to decipher a complete lineage tree of the cardiac conduction system. She is also pursuing translational research by applying the hPSC-derived cardiomyocyte subtypes for disease modeling and drug development and by further exploring the application of hPSC-derived pacemaker cells as biological pacemakers in pre-clinical animal models.