Alexander  Baker

Research Interests: 

The Baker Research Group focuses on chemical, gene engineering and synthetic biology tools to expand the repertoire of non-canonical amino acids available for protein synthesis applications in: 

• Biomaterials: adhesives, hydrogels
  
• Therapeutic proteins: anti-cancer, anti-bacterial
  
• Enzymatic activity: engineered function
  

Please contact if you are interested in any of these topics and would like to discuss further.

Selected Awards and Honours

• NSERC Post-Doctoral Fellowship
  
• MITACS Accelerate
  
• University of Toronto Engineering Grads to Watch
• University of Toronto Chemical Engineering Exhibition Research Poster 1st Place Health
  
• Walter C. Sumner Memorial Fellowship
  
• University of Toronto Chemical Engineering Student Life Catalyst Award
  
• NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship-Doctoral
  
• NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship-Master’s
  

Selected Publications

• Baker, A.E.G.; Bahlmann, L.C.; Xue, C.; Lu, Y.H.; Cruickshank, J.; Cescon, D.W.; Shoichet, M.S. (2021) Chemically and mechanically defined hyaluronan hydrogels emulate the extracellular matrix for unbiased in vivo and in vitro organoid formation and drug testing in cancer. Materials Today. 56, 96-113
• Baker, A.E.G.; Cui, H.; Ballios, B.G.; Ing, S.; Yan, P.; Wolfer, J.; Wright, T.; Dang, M.; Gan, N.Y.; Cooke, M.J.; Ortín-Martínez, A.; Wallace, V.A.; van der Kooy, D.; Devenyi, R.; Shoichet, M.S. (2021) Stable oxime-crosslinked hyaluronan-based hydrogel as a biomimetic vitreous substitute. Biomaterials 271 120750.
• Baker, A.E.G.; Bahlmann, L.C.; Tam, R.Y.; Liu, J.C.; Ganesh, A.N.; Mitrousis, N.; Marcellus, R.; Spears, M.; Bartlett, J. M. S.; Cescon, D. W.; Bader, G.D.; Shoichet, M.S. (2019) Benchmarking to the Gold Standard: Hyaluronan-oxime Hydrogels Recapitulate Xenograft Models for In Vitro Breast Cancer Spheroid Culture. Adv Mater. 31, 1901166.
• Baker, A.E.G.; Tam, R.Y.; Shoichet, M.S. (2017) Independently Tuning the Biochemical and Mechanical Properties of 3D Hyaluronan-based Hydrogels with Oxime and Diels-Alder Chemistry to Culture Breast Cancer Spheroids. Biomacromolecules. 18 (12), 4373-4384.