Biography - Dr. Christopher McMaster
Dr. Christopher McMaster is a Professor and former Head of the Department of Pharmacology and Director of the Cheminformatics Drug Discovery. Previous to this, he held a Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Biosignalling (the study of how messages are conveyed into cells by the interaction of a signal or a chemical messenger with a receptor incorporated into the cell membrane), and was the Assistant Dean for Graduate and Post-doctoral Studies in the Faculty of Medicine at Dalhousie University.
As a researcher, he is a recognized leader in genetics, biochemistry, and cell biology. His research is broad in interest, ranging from basic biochemistry and cell biology, to genomics to determine causal genes for human genetic diseases and drugs for their treatment, to ethical and policy considerations as the field of human genomics becomes increasingly applied to clinical diagnosis and care. He has held operating grants from CIHR and NSERC for the entirely of his research career, and has led large research consortia including acting as Principal Investigator (PI) on a Genome Canada Large-Scale Applied Research project, co-PI on a large Canada Foundation for Innovation grant, and as PI on a large-scale Atlantic Innovation Fund project. He has identified a potential therapy, currently in Phase 2 trials, for congenital sideroblastic anemia, a disease which occurs when the bone marrow fails to produce a sufficient number of healthy red blood cells. He is also developing treatments for a muscular dystrophy and for familial exudative vitreoretinopathy, a hereditary disorder that can cause vision loss.
Dr. McMaster completed his B.Sc. in microbiology and Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of Manitoba, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at Duke University Medical Centre.
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