Meet Dr. Illimar Altosaar...
PhD UBC 1975
BSc McGill University 1970
Currently teaches BCH4172 Topics in Biotechnology
and
awarded Professor of the Year (2007-2008) - University of Ottawa
Science Students Association
NATO Research Fellow 1975-77 Imperial College of Science, Technology & Medicine, London
Multiple Sclerosis Society Scholar 1977-78, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto
Visiting Professorships 1984-85 Molecular Genetics Dept., University of Cambridge
SANOFI Elf Bio-Recherche, Toulouse, France 1986-87
Institut National Recherche Agronomique Paris-Grignon 1992-93
Nestlé Plant Research Center, Tours (Lausanne) 1999-2000
The ethos Food is the First Medicine
has been the focus of my
research efforts since I first began working in cereal genetics in
1966 at the Quebec Provincial Seed Farm, Macdonald College Campus,
Faculty of Agriculture, McGill University, Montreal. A protein
chemist by training, I have studied the gene regulation of protein
synthesis in rice, oats, legumes and oilseeds. I started
pioneering the Seed as Pill
concept back in 1991. As a potential
vaccine production process, our lab was the first to direct the
synthesis of human Hepatitis B Virus core particle protein as a
vaccine in carrots and human CytoMegaloVirus glycoprotein gB in a
tissue-specific manner. The maize ubiquitin as well as rice
glutelin promoters have yielded high rates of expression of
foreign candidate proteins, including human insulin-like growth
factor (IGF-1), the cytokine granulocyte-macrophage colony
stimulating factor (GM-CSF), hCMV gB, and several Hepatitis Virus
vaccine candidates. In parallel efforts to increase the world’s
food supply, we continue to supply useful agronomic gene
transformation cassettes to crop molecular breeding programs
around the world for research purposes. Our plant codon optimized
Bacillus thuringiensis sequences for cry 1Ab, 1C and cry1Ac have
been deployed in more than thirty-five crop species in over 55
countries.
