Robert Wright

I completed pharmacy training at the University of Alberta in 2016 followed by hospital pharmacy residency at UBC. I worked as a pharmacist at Vancouver General Hospital for a couple of years before completing my Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) at the University of Alberta in 2020. Since that time I have worked as a lung transplant pharmacist with the BC Lung Transplant Program where I became intimately familiar with the shortcomings of conventional anti-rejection drugs, specifically the ongoing risk of rejection despite optimal medication use, as well as risk of life altering toxicity including infection, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.

I joined the lab of Dr. Megan Levings in 2023 to study alternative approaches to anti-rejection therapy. Overall the aim of my research is to identify strategies to minimize the need for conventional anti-rejection drug therapies. We hope harness the power of regulatory T cells (Tregs) in combination with genetic engineering strategies to develop a cell-based therapy that can reliably protect transplanted organs from rejection with the many toxicities associated with current approaches.