John Trant

Background

About John Trant

Associate professor and the Inaugural Faculty of Science Research Chair of organic, bioorganic, bioanalytical and computational chemistry. We focus on using chemistry to solve biomedical problems with a focus on drug delivery, drug design for cancer, infectious disease, autoimmune disease, and traceless biocompatible nanocapsules for targeted drug delivery (think of them as smart cancer-seeking nanorobots!). Our current collaborations include synthetic and computational chemistry in the hemp industry; analytical chemistry in wine and whisky; computational chemistry to model 3-D bioscaffolds, custom synthesis of chemical biology probes and organic ligands for organometallic chemistry, and the preparation of controllable degradable electronic devices. The lab is the largest medicinal chemistry team in Canada and has fully equipped facilities for computational drug design and structural biology, synthetic organic chemistry (with a unique expertise in peptide science, but a general expertise in small molecule and supramolecular synthesis), biophysics and molecular biology (including multiple isothermal titration calorimeters, surface plasmon resonance, fluorimeters, and microscale thermophoresis), cell biology and assay development, microbiology, formulation science (pilot scale instrumentation to make the nanoparticles of our dreams), and analytical chemistry (7 HPLCs, LC-MS, GC-MS, GCs, and a full suite of materials science characterization tools for thermal, particle sizing, and mechanical property analysis). We work best where we need to use a mixture of these tools to solve problems in how to design a new drug, or to figure out how an existing drug works. Currently supervising and mentoring a team of 85 researchers while teaching courses, writing ~30 grants/year with industrial and academic partners, publishing ~15-20 papers/year, and advising industrial partners. I have applied for over 30 unique patent families in the past few years, and the Inventor-Owned policy of the University of Windsor means most of these are fully owned by our industrial partners, some by me and my company Binary Star Research Services, and some by the University depending on context, funding, and strategic goals. We are always looking for new collaborators in industry and academia: feel free to contact John with opportunities.