Chemical separation techniques and their wide-ranging applications

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Our research program is aimed at developing advanced technologies that are highly relevant to the environmental and social economic challenges facing Canadians. We also aim at applying the technologies developed in our group for biomedical research and improving the health and wellbeing of Canadians. The first project is related to Energy and environment. The advancement in chemical separation techniques is a crucial factor in the development of chemical and biological sciences. The wide ranging technologies developed in this area are essential for many of the research and industry activities in Canada and around the world. One of the major concerns for Canadians is the environmental impact of the oil sands bitumen recovery in Northern Alberta. Because of the complexity of oil sands acids, the toxic by-products of the bitumen recovery process, there are still no regulations regarding to the limit of these compounds released to the environment. We will develop reliable analytical methods to identify representative species and quantify the amount that are indicative of the total amount of toxic compounds released to the environment, thereby providing critical information needed by regulatory agencies to implement policies that will protect the environment while allow reasonable industrial activities. Intelligent artificial neural networks will also be established to monitor the health of rivers and water tables in the vicinity of the oil production activities. Based on our research on controlling ion migration under the influence of electric field and pressure, as well as others' work on capacitive deionization methods, we will create a new generation of water decontamination systems that has much larger throughput and the capability of cleaning up tailing pounds for oil sands processed waters. As the same time, generate pure hydrogen gas to be easily collected and used as clean energy fuel. The second project is to develop new analytical platforms to help advancing the frontiers of biomedical research. Monoclonal antibody (mab) protein therapeutics is an important class of drugs that are becoming increasingly more prominent in combating human diseases. The top 5 mabs alone have generated over $38 billion sales in 2012. However it is difficult to control the manufacturing process and identify problems in the quality and manufacturing procedures of these biologics. We will use our patented flow-through micro vial technology to combine isoelectric focusing technology, the most powerful protein separation method and tandem mass spectrometry, the most information rich detection technology, to develop analytical tools that can identify problems and pinpoint their origins in the manufacturing process in a timely fashion to help pharmaceutical industry in their quality control, and avoid costly delays and recalls. We will also use various analytical technologies to study the mechanism of cell protection in the context of ischemia reperfusion injury during cardio pulmonary bypass surgeries, and help to develop safe procedures in the operating rooms to improve patient safety. These studies include the elucidation of the fine structures of the glycans that are often attached to the proteins for activation or other functional modifications, developing practical instrument for timely determination of therapeutics in patient blood during surgery, and biomarker monitoring for diagnosis and prognosis of cancer progression.