The 2025 NRC H.L. Holmes Award for Postdoctoral Studies was presented to Dr. Dayag Sheykhkarimli for his innovative and promising work that could be used to deliver chemotherapy directly to cancerous cells.
Over 2 years, the $200,000 award will allow Dr. Sheykhkarimli to pursue his work on mapping tissue specificity for all available proteins coating the outer layers of human viruses and track their destination within the body.
Dr. Sheykhkarimli will undertake this research at the University of British Columbia's School of Biomedical Engineering (SBME), where he has been a postdoctoral research fellow since April 2024 in the lab of Dr. Nozomu Yachie, professor at SBME and Canada Research Chair in Synthetic Biology.
Dr. Sheykhkarimli has also developed collaborations with an interdisciplinary panel of pioneers in the field. While spearheading the project, he will benefit from the resources and expertise of Dr. Daniel Schramek and Dr. Mikko Taipale from the University of Toronto, Dr. Ali Erturk from Helmholtz Munich, Dr. Etsuo Susaki (PhD, MD) from Juntendo University and Dr. Hiroki Ueda from the University of Tokyo, among others.
Dr. Sheykhkarimli completed his PhD in molecular genetics under the supervision of Dr. Frederick Roth, during which time he developed technology to map interactions among millions of protein pairs, including between viral and human proteins. He also completed a BSc (double major in molecular genetics and biotechnology) at the University of Toronto and has received multiple awards and fellowships, including the Sony Research Award and a MITACS fellowship at Osaka University's Premium Research Institute for Human Metaverse Medicine (PRIMe) to develop genetic barcodes to map brain connectivity.
A scalable approach to targeted delivery
Delivering drugs directly to target tissues—while minimizing harm to healthy cells—has long been a challenge in medical science. Viruses offer a natural blueprint for such precision because they've evolved to excel at tissue selectivity. Until now, however, testing each virus against every tissue has been too complex, expensive and labour-intensive to realize the full potential of virus-inspired therapies.
Dr. Sheykhkarimli's work aims to address this issue using a new tool called GHOST (genetic circuit for highly scalable pseudovirus production), which was developed in Yachie's lab to generate large pools of viral variants. Dr. Sheykhkarimli is adapting GHOST to produce virus-inspired particles coated with different proteins, each tagged with a unique genetic barcode. By introducing these particles into mice and then scanning for the barcodes within various organs, he can rapidly chart their whole-body routes.
The research could have important applications in a range of areas, from chemotherapy and RNA-based vaccine delivery to gene therapy.