Molly Shoichet always wanted to be a doctor - until she made her first polymer.
"I thought that was the coolest thing," says Shoichet of her first encounter with polymers - large molecules made of smaller repeating units found in materials ranging from proteins to plastics - during an undergraduate chemistry lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Inspired to advance medicine from the lab bench instead of the bedside, Shoichet deferred medical school to test out graduate studies - and never looked back. She earned a PhD in polymer science and engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and then worked at a Boston biotech firm. In 1995, she landed a faculty position the University of Toronto, where she believed she could expand her scope and impact.
She was right. Thirty years later, Shoichet - a University Professor and Pamela and Paul Austin Chair in Precision and Regenerative Medicine in the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry in U of T's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering - has founded multiple startups, won dozens of awards, held several prestigious leadership roles and made numerous breakthroughs. She works on everything from spinal cord injuries, blindness and post-operative pain to stroke and cancer.
A cell and tissue engineer, Shoichet is still fascinated with polymers - these days her focus is on hydrogels, which are polymer chains that can absorb relatively large amounts of water. These squishy, soft substances resemble the tissues of the body and can be formulated to slowly release medications, impact stem cells and access hard-to-reach locations such as the retina and brain.
"Like FedEx, we work on the packaging to get the therapeutics where they need to be and when they need to be there," she says from her office in U of T's Donnelly Centre for Cellular & Biomolecular Research.
For example, she has a longstanding stroke collaboration with Cindi Morshead, professor and co-chair of the division of anatomy in the department of surgery at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine. They work together to solve a key problem: more than 85 per cent of stroke patients don't get to the hospital on time to get emergency, clot-busting treatment, leaving them with few options beyond rehabilitation to recover. So, Shoichet and her team designed an enzyme that can pass through the stroke injury scar and into the brain to promote repair. The approach underpins Chase Biotherapeutics , which aims to further this promising new treatment approach.
She's also been researching the retina and blindness for the last 16 years via collaborations with Toronto Western Hospital's Valerie Wallace, a professor in the department of ophthalmology and vision sciences at Temerty Medicine, and with Derek van der Kooy, professor in the department of molecular genetics. Some of their resulting discoveries are now behind Synakis , a spin-off company that is fine-tuning treatments for retinal detachment, glaucoma and macular degeneration using a hyaluronic-based hydrogel.
With yet another spinoff company, Shoichet's hydrogel-based drug delivery system allows surgeons to inject pain medications directly at the incision site, with the gel releasing the drugs locally over a two-week period. The technology being commercialized by AmacaThera would potentially eliminate the need to prescribe powerful - and potentially addictive - opioids to post-op patients.
Never content with just one mode of research, Shoichet also uses hydrogels to study how cancer cells invade - a huge question unto itself.
"I'm attracted to these big problems," says Shoichet, adding that she's endlessly curious and enjoys working with collaborators to learn the nuances of thorny health problems - a process that spans years. "I think I have a certain amount of comfort with discomfort."
The scientific community has taken note of Shoichet's omnipresence. She has been inducted into all three of Canada's national academies: the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Engineering. An Officer of the Order of Canada and the Order of Ontario, she is also a fellow of the Royal Society in the U.K. and the National Academy of Engineering in the U.S. She has been recognized with the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal - the highest award in Canada for science and engineering - and the National Research Council's Killam Prize in Engineering, among many other awards.
Her leadership work is similarly high profile. She briefly served as Ontario's chief scientist, the only person to ever hold the role, and co-launched knowledge translation web site Research2Reality . At U of T, she is scientific director of both PRiME Next-Generation Precision Medicine , a U of T institutional strategic initiative , and Biomanufacturing Hub Network (BioHubNet), which develops training programs for the biomanufacturing industry.
Shoichet's commitment to supporting the next generation of researchers is evidenced by the lab coats emblazoned with the names of PhD graduates that hang from the pillars of her lab - a tradition reminiscent of a hockey team that hangs its star players' jerseys from the rafters.
Daniela Isaacs-Bernal, a recent PhD grad who immediately got a job as a research engineer at ophthalmic drug-delivery startup Ripple Therapeutics , says Shoichet encourages her students to mine the literature so they understand what's already been done. That way they build on past knowledge instead of repeating avoidable mistakes in their research.
She says Shoichet also emphasizes communication and collaboration, asking students to give regular updates on their work during lab meetings - a process Isaacs-Bernal initially found stressful. "Now, working in industry, one of the things I value most is the way she taught us to synthesize complex ideas into something other people can understand," she says.
As Shoichet heads into her fourth decade at U of T, she makes time for life, too - going to the ballet, dog walking, hiking and trying open-water swimming. But not surprisingly, she has no plans to slow down anytime soon.
"If we in academia don't go after the hardest challenges, nobody else will."
