The Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences
AAPS UT-Student Chapter presents
Theresa Mary Allen, Ph.D., FRCS
Professor Emeritus
University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB
Co-Founder and Strategic Advisor
Centre for Drug Research and Development
Vancouver, BC
“Development of Liposomal Nanoparticles for Anticancer Applications”
Monday, May 5, 2014 – 4:00PM
College of Pharmacy Bldg., Room 102
Bio
Theresa Allen is a Professor Emeritus of Pharmacology and an adjunct professor of Oncology at the University of Alberta. She has been active in the drug-delivery field for over 30 years, and has made important contributions to the development of long-circulating liposomes and ligand-targeted nanomedicines for anticancer drugs and gene medicines. She has an H-index of 61, and 235 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters and is an inventor on several patents. The product Doxil, the first anticancer nanomedicine approved in the world, came out of pioneering research in her laboratory at the University of Alberta. She has also been active in the area of new drugs from natural product, which has resulted in two drugs proceeding into Phase II clinical trials. Her recent work in developing ligand-targeted therapeutics for small molecule therapeutics and gene medicines is at the leading edge of this exciting new field and the methods she developed are widely used throughout the field.
Dr. Allen has been active throughout her career in mentoring graduate students, summer students, and technologists. Her former graduate students occupy senior positions in academia and industry throughout the world. She has also been a popular classroom teacher in courses in Pharmacology and Pharmacy
Dr. Allen is a founding member and strategic advisor of the Centre for Drug Research & Development (www.cdrd.ca), which is a novel hybrid organization devoted to advancing promising medical discoveries from academia to a commercially attractive stage. The Centre for Drug Research and Development (CDRD) evolved from the recognition by the Founders of the pressing need to improve the translation of medical discoveries made in the universities and teaching hospitals into new drugs and technologies that result in economic and health benefits for Canada. CDRD takes a unified, coherent approach to identifying, advancing, and commercializing innovative life science discoveries via a unique structure that connects scientists, health care providers, and industry.
She is a member of a number of editorial boards in the field of drug delivery and drug targeting, and is active on national and international grant panels and advisory boards, including the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, the European Commission, the Austrian Space Agency, the Federal Drug Agency, USA and the Canadian Cancer Society. She is frequently an invited speaker at national and international conferences, at universities and at biotechnology companies and at major pharmaceutical companies. Her prominence in the field is attested to by the number of national and international awards that she has received, listed below.
HONORS AND AWARDS: Governor General’s award for highest average graduation from high school; Gold Key award for highest average B.Sc. in Biochemistry; Fisheries Research Board of Canada grant for 5 years for Ph.D. in oceanography; Defence Research Board of Canada grant for one year for post-doctoral research in Neurochemistry; Killam Professor, U. of Alberta, 1995-96; McCalla Research Professor, U. of Alberta, 1998-99; finalist ASTech Award for Leadership in Alberta Technology, 1999; Cygnus Award (Controlled Release Society) for excellence in guiding graduate student research; Novartis award 2000 (Pharmacological Society of Canada) for significant contributions to the advancement and extension of knowledge in Pharmacology; winner ASTech Award for Leadership in Alberta Technology, 2001; winner Alec Bangham International Award for contributions to liposome research, 2002; winner Leadership Award from the Canadian Society for Pharmaceutical Sciences, 2004; elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, 2005. Elected to the College of Fellow of the Controlled Release Society, 2012