Faculty

Locksley E. McGann Professor Dept of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology University of Alberta 3rd Floor, Canadian Blood Services Centre Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, T6G 2R8 Phone: (780) 431-8764 Associate Dean Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research University of Alberta 2-46 Killam Centre Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2N2 Phone: (780) 492-5920 Email: locksley.mcgann@ualberta.ca Web: http://myprofile.cos.com/mcgannl97

Research Interests

Tissue transplantation is increasingly being used as an effective, and cost-effective, intervention for a wide variety of clinical conditions. Viable tissues are required for most grafts, such as corneas for restoration of vision, skin in the treatment of burn patients, the islets of Langerhans for the treatment of diabetes, heart valves, and blood vessels. Although cells in suspension can generally be cryopreserved with high recovery of viability and function, long term storage in liquid nitrogen is currently available for only a limited range of tissues, and the functional recovery of these tissues may be compromised by the process of cryopreservation. Cryopreservation of organs is still in the experimental phase. At present I am trying to extend the current understanding of the responses of tissues at low temperatures by monitoring cell-to-cell and cell-to-substrate interactions in several model and real tissue systems. The primary outcomes expected from my work are a better understanding of tissue systems at low temperatures, and direct application of these development to the cryopreservation of tissues currently used in transplantation.

Graduate Students

Richelle Prickett

Lisa Ross-Rodriguez

Dr. McGann also supervises graduate students in Surgery and in Chemical and Materials Engineering.

Publications

Click on the Web link above for a list of publications and additional information.