Robbie Wright, BScPharm, PharmD, ACPR
PhD Candidate, Department of Surgery
Clinical Associate Professor, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences
University of British Columbia
I completed pharmacy training at the University of Alberta in 2016 followed by a hospital pharmacy residency at UBC and Vancouver General Hospital (VGH). I worked as a pharmacist at VGH before completing a post-graduate 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 conventional 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 to 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.