Ted Lakowski, PhD

Dr. Ted Lakowski is a professor and the director of the pharmaceutical analysis laboratory at the College of Pharmacy, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Manitoba. He joined the College of Pharmacy in 2012.

Dr. Lakowski's laboratory is involved in drug discovery targeting epigenetic processes and studying the influence of drugs on gene expression processes using LC-MS/MS. The laboratory studies the influences of disease states and novel drugs on the patterns of epigenetic modifications in cultured cells, in vitro, and animals using LC-MS/MS metabolomic approaches.

His laboratory developed the first validated LC-MS/MS method to quantify multiple histone modifications in cultured cells treated with histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors, showing that HDAC inhibitors change the expression of many genes including decreasing expression of histone lysine demethylases. His lab also showed that a new class of anti-cancer drugs, DOT1L inhibitors act throughout the genome causing changes in, unassociated histone modifications, and the expression of many histone modifying enzymes. His lab discovered acetylated lysine residues on myelin basic protein and their potential involvement in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis.

The laboratory has funding for measuring the activity and inhibition of epigenetic enzymes. Dr. Lakowski’s lab is also developing methods to measure multiple modifications to DNA and developing methods to make epigenetic enzyme inhibitors gene specific. In collaboration with others the lab is involved in a project measuring metabolites of amantadine as a biomarker for the progression of glioblastoma.

Education

• Doctor of Philosophy in Pharmaceutical Chemistry at University of British Columbia (UBC), specializing in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) structural biology
• Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy (B.Sc. (Pharm)) from the University of British Columbia (UBC) (pre-doctoral education)

Postdoctoral training

• Bioanalytical liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) and enzymology at the University of British Columbia (UBC)
• High-content and high-throughput drug screening at the Centre for Drug Research and Development (CDRD)