Tag Archives: Orlando J. Rojas

Two new Canada Excellence Research Chairs (CERC) at the University of British Columbia (Canada) bring bioproducts and precision medicine skills

This is very fresh news. One of these chairs has not yet been listed (at the time of this writing) as a member of the institute that he will be leading. Here’s the big picture news from an
April 17, 2019 University of British Columbia (UBC) news release, Note: Links have been removed,

Two internationally recognized researchers join the University of British Columbia as Canada Excellence Research Chairs, bringing international talent in the fields of forest bioproducts and precision cancer drug design.

Orlando Rojas has accepted the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Forest Bioproducts, while Sriram Subramaniam will hold the Gobind Khorana Canada Excellence Research Chair in Precision Cancer Drug Design—named after late Nobel Prize-winning UBC biochemistry professor Har Gobind Khorana.

“We are delighted to welcome Dr. Rojas and Dr. Subramaniam to UBC,” said UBC President and Vice-Chancellor, Professor Santa J. Ono. “Thanks to the CERC program and the generous support of our partners, including VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation, we have an opportunity to continue to build on UBC’s reputation as a global leader in these vitally important research fields.”

The Canada Excellence Research Chairs (CERC) program was established by the federal government in 2008 to attract top research talent from abroad to Canada. UBC will receive up to $10 million over seven years to support each chair and their research teams. In addition, a philanthropic gift of $18 million made to VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation will support cancer drug design that will be carried out by Subramaniam in close partnership with UBC and the Vancouver Prostate Centre at VGH.

“VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation is honoured to announce an $18 million gift from Aqueduct Foundation on behalf of an anonymous donor that will increase capacity for discovering and testing new life-saving cancer treatments right here in B.C. This funding will specifically support the design of precise, targeted and cost-effective drugs for cancer in work led by Dr. Sriram Subramaniam in close partnership with UBC and the Vancouver Prostate Centre at VGH and other research centres,” says Barbara Grantham, president and CEO of VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation.

Bioproducts

The April 17, 2019 UBC news release, goes on to describe the two new chairs,

Breaking new ground in forest bioproducts

Orlando Rojas comes to UBC from Aalto University [Finland], where he directs with VTT, the Technical Research Centre of Finland, a scientific cluster to advance the Finnish materials bio-economy. A recipient of the Anselme Payen Award—one of the highest international recognitions in the area of cellulose and renewable materials—and an elected member of the American Chemical Society and the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, Rojas is recognized as a worldwide leader in the area of nanocelluloses.

“I’m thrilled to join an already stellar team of researchers at UBC’s BioProducts Institute,” said Rojas. “My research is aimed at uncovering solutions that can be found in nature to fulfill our material needs by using sustainably, readily available bio-resources. I hope to break new grounds to create positive societal impacts and to better our quality of life.”

As the CERC in Forest Bioproducts, Rojas will establish a world-class research program in genomics, synthetic biology, materials science and engineering. Together with his team and by applying cutting-edge nano- and biotechnologies, he will discover new strategies to isolate and transform biomass components—non-fossil organic materials derived from plants (including wood)—as well as side-streams and residuals from forestry and agriculture, oils and biomolecules. The work will lead to the generation of new bio-based precursors and advanced materials critical to the future bioeconomy. Rojas will be the scientific director of the UBC BioProducts Institute, synergizing a distinguished group of professors and researchers across campus who will conduct multi- and cross-disciplinary research that will position UBC at the forefront in the area.

As climate change continues to be the greatest threat to our world, the need to transition toward a more sustainable bio-based circular economy is critical. Rojas’ research is vital in understanding the role of forest and other plant-based resources in facilitating the transition to renewable materials and bioproducts.

As I noted earlier, Rojas has yet to be added to the UBC BioProducts Institute roster but I did find a listing of his published papers on Google Scholar and noted a number of them are focused on nanocellulose with at least one study on cellulose nanocrystals (CNC),

  • Cellulose nanocrystals: chemistry, self-assembly, and applications [by] Y Habibi, LA Lucia, OJ Rojas Chemical reviews 110 (6), 3479-3500

The University of British Columbia was the site for much of the early work in Canada and internationally on cellulose nanocrystals. After the provincial government lost interest in supporting it, the researchers at FPInnovations (I think it was a university spin-off organization) moved their main headquarters (leaving a smaller group in British Columbia) to the province of Québec where they receive significant support . In turn, FPInnovations spun-off a company, CelluForce which produces CNC from forest products.This news about Roja’s appointment would seem to make for an interesting development in Canada’s nanocellulose story.

Precision medicine with cryo-electron microscopy

Now for the second CERC appointment, from the April 17, 2019 UBC news release,

Putting Canada at the forefront of precision medicine

Sriram Subramaniam is recognized as a global leader in the emerging field of cryo-electron microscopy, or cryo-EM, a technology that has sparked a revolution in imaging of protein complexes. Subramaniam and his team demonstrated that proteins and protein-bound drugs could be visualized at atomic resolution with cryo-EM, paving the way for this technology to be used in accelerating drug discovery.

Subramaniam comes to UBC’s faculty of medicine from the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) where he led a research team that made seminal advances in molecular and cellular imaging using electron microscopy, including work on advancing vaccine design for viruses such as HIV. Subramaniam is also founding director of the National Cryo-EM Program at NCI, NIH.

As the Gobind Khorana Canada Excellence Research Chair in Precision Cancer Drug Design, Subramaniam will establish and direct a laboratory located at UBC, aimed at bringing about transformative discoveries in cancer, neuroscience and infectious disease. Subramaniam is appointed both in the department of urologic sciences and in biochemistry and molecular biology at UBC, and is linked to the precision cancer drug design program at the Vancouver Prostate Centre at VGH.

His research is supported by a philanthropic gift of $18 million made to VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation. He will work in close partnership with the Vancouver Prostate Centre at VGH.

“We would not be able to undertake this path aimed at leveraging advances in imaging technology to improve patient outcomes if it weren’t for the generous support of the donor, the Canadian government, and VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation,” said Subramaniam. “I am proud to be part of a team of outstanding researchers here in Vancouver, and working together to harness the true potential of cryo-EM to accelerate drug design. Our work has the potential to establish VGH, UBC and Canada at the forefront of the emerging era of precision medicine.”

I was not able to find much in the way of additional information about Subramaniam—other than this (from the High Resolution Electron Microscopy Lab Members webpage),

Sriram Subramaniam received his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Stanford University and completed postdoctoral training in the Departments of Chemistry and Biology at M.I.T. [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] He is chief of the Biophysics Section in the Laboratory of Cell Biology at the Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute. He holds a visiting faculty appointment at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Welcome to both Orlando J. Rohas and Sriram Subramaniam!

Wood’s natural nanotechnology

“Wood’s natural nanotechnology: is an unusual term and it comes at the end of this February 7, 2018 University of Maryland (US) news release about a technique which will make wood stronger than titanium alloy,

Engineers at the University of Maryland in College Park have found a way to make wood more than ten times times stronger and tougher than before, creating a natural substance that is stronger than titanium alloy.

“This new way to treat wood makes it twelve times stronger than natural wood and ten times tougher,” said Liangbing Hu, the leader of the team that did the research, to be published on Thursday [February 7, 2018] in the journal Nature. “This could be a competitor to steel or even titanium alloys, it is so strong and durable. It’s also comparable to carbon fiber, but much less expensive.” Hu is an associate professor of materials science and engineering and a member of the Maryland Energy Innovation Institute.

“It is both strong and tough, which is a combination not usually found in nature,” said Teng Li, the co-leader of the team and the Samuel P. Langley associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland. His team measured the dense wood’s mechanical properties.  “It is as strong as steel, but six times lighter. It takes 10 times more energy to fracture than natural wood. It can even be bent and molded at the beginning of the process.”

The team’s process begins by removing the wood’s lignin, the part of the wood that makes it both rigid and brown in color. Then it is compressed under mild heat, at about 150 F. This causes the cellulose fibers to become very tightly packed. Any defects like holes or knots are crushed together.  The treatment process was extended a little further with a coat of paint.

The scientists found that the wood’s fibers are pressed together so tightly that they can form strong hydrogen bonds, like a crowd of people who can’t budge – who are also holding hands. The compression makes the wood five times thinner than its original size.

The team also tested the material by shooting a bullet-like projectile at it. Unlike natural wood, which was blown straight through, the fully treated wood actually stopped the projectile partway through.

“Soft woods like pine or balsa, which grow fast and are more environmentally friendly, could replace slower-growing but denser woods like teak, in furniture or buildings,” Hu said.

“The paper provides a highly promising route to the design of light weight high performance structural materials, with tremendous potential for a broad range of applications where high strength, large toughness and superior ballistic resistance are desired, “ said Dr. Huajian Gao, a professor at Brown University, who was not involved in the study. “It is particularly exciting to note that the method is versatile for various species of wood and fairly easy to implement.”

“This kind of wood could be used in cars, airplanes, buildings – any application where steel is used,” Hu said.

“The two-step process reported in this paper achieves exceptionally high strength, much beyond what [is] reported in the literature,” said Dr. Zhigang Suo, a professor of mechanics and materials at Harvard University, also not involved with the study. “Given the abundance of wood, as well as other cellulose-rich plants, this paper inspires imagination.”

“The most outstanding observation, in my view, is the existence of a limiting concentration of lignin, the glue between wood cells, to maximize the mechanical performance of the densified wood. Too little or too much removal lower the strength compared to a maximum value achieved at intermediate or partial lignin removal. This reveals the subtle balance between hydrogen bonding and the adhesion imparted by such polyphenolic compound. Moreover, of outstanding interest, is the fact that that wood densification leads to both, increased strength and toughness, two properties that usually offset each other,” said Orlando J. Rojas, a professor at Aalto University in Finland.

Hu’s research has explored the capacities of wood’s natural nanotechnology [emphasis mine]. They previously made a range of emerging technologies out of nanocellulose related materials: (1) super clear paper for replacing plastic; (2) photonic paper for improving solar cell efficiency by 30%; (3) a battery and a supercapacitor out of wood; (4) a battery from a leaf; (5) transparent wood for energy efficient buildings; (6) solar water desalination for drinking and specifically filtering out toxic dyes. These wood-based emerging technologies are being commercialized through a UMD spinoff company, Inventwood LLC.

At a guess, “wood’s natural nanotechnology” refers to the properties of wood and other forms of cellulose at the nanoscale.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Processing bulk natural wood into a high-performance structural material by Jianwei Song, Chaoji Chen, Shuze Zhu, Mingwei Zhu, Jiaqi Dai, Upamanyu Ray, Yiju Li, Yudi Kuang, Yongfeng Li, Nelson Quispe, Yonggang Yao, Amy Gong, Ulrich H. Leiste, Hugh A. Bruck, J. Y. Zhu, Azhar Vellore, Heng Li, Marilyn L. Minus, Zheng Jia, Ashlie Martini, Teng Li, & Liangbing Hu. Nature volume 554, pages 224–228 (08 February 2018) doi:10.1038/nature25476 Published online: 07 February 2018

This paper is behind a paywall.

h/t Feb. 7, 2018 news item on Nanowerk and, finally, you can find out more about the wood-based emerging technologies being commcercialized by the University of Maryland here on the Inventwood website.