Chemical separation techniques and their wide-ranging applications

我们的研究项目旨在开发与加拿大面临的环境和社会经济挑战高度相关的先进技术。我们还致力于将我们小组开发的技术应用于生物医学研究，并改善加拿大人的健康和福祉。第一个项目与能源和环境有关。化学分离技术的进步是化学和生物科学发展的重要因素。该领域开发的广泛技术对加拿大和世界各地的许多研究和工业活动至关重要。加拿大人最关心的问题之一是阿尔伯塔省北部油砂沥青开采对环境的影响。由于油砂酸（沥青回收过程中的有毒副产品）的复杂性，目前还没有关于这些化合物释放到环境中的限制的法规。我们将开发可靠的分析方法，以确定有代表性的物种，并量化释放到环境中的有毒化合物总量，从而为监管机构提供所需的关键信息，以实施既能保护环境又能允许合理工业活动的政策。还将建立智能人工神经网络，以监测石油生产活动附近河流和地下水位的健康状况。根据我们在电场和压力影响下控制离子迁移的研究，以及其他人在电容去离子方法方面的工作，我们将创造新一代的水净化系统，该系统具有更大的吞吐量和清理油砂处理水尾矿的能力。同时，产生的纯氢气便于收集和作为清洁能源燃料使用。第二个项目是开发新的分析平台，以帮助推进生物医学研究的前沿。单克隆抗体（mab）蛋白治疗药物是一类重要的药物，在对抗人类疾病方面越来越突出。2012年，仅排名前5位的单克隆抗体就创造了超过380亿美元的销售额。然而，很难控制这些生物制剂的生产过程和识别质量和生产过程中的问题。我们将利用我们的专利流动微瓶技术，结合等电聚焦技术，最强大的蛋白质分离方法和串联质谱，信息最丰富的检测技术，开发分析工具，可以及时识别问题并确定其制造过程中的根源，帮助制药行业进行质量控制，避免昂贵的延误和召回。我们还将利用各种分析技术，研究在心肺旁路手术中缺血再灌注损伤情况下细胞保护的机制，帮助制定手术室的安全操作规程，提高患者的安全性。这些研究包括阐明通常附着在蛋白质上用于激活或其他功能修饰的聚糖的精细结构，开发用于手术期间患者血液中治疗药物及时测定的实用仪器，以及用于癌症进展诊断和预后的生物标志物监测。

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.