Marc Grynpas

Biography

Marc Grynpas, PhD is a professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology and a member of the Institute for Biomaterial and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto. He is also a Senior Scientist at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute of Sinai Health System and the Director of the Bone and Mineral research Group at the University of Toronto. Dr. Grynpas graduated from the Free University of Brussels with an undergraduate degree in Physics. At the University of London, he completed his PhD in Crystallography and Biophysics on the structure of bone. After a post-doctoral fellowship at Queen Mary College (University of London) on the relation between bone structure and bone mechanical properties, he joined the laboratory of Professor Melvin Glimcher at the Children’s Hospital in Boston, which is part of the Harvard Medical School. There he worked on the nature of bone mineral and showed that amorphous calcium phosphate was not a precursor of the poorly crystalline and highly substituted apatite structure of bone mineral. The research in his Toronto laboratory is focused on: the nature of bone mineral, animal models of osteoporosis and osteoarthritis, the effects of drugs and trace elements on bone quality and the determinants of bone fragility and bone fatigue. In addition Dr. Grynpas is part of a research group investigating tissue engineering of skeletal tissues. Most recently, Dr. Grynpas and his group have shown that vertebrate mineralization is controlled by the enzymatic formation and degradation of polyphosphates. He has supervised many Ph.D students, M.Sc Students, Post-Doctoral Fellows and 4th year undergraduate thesis. Marc Grynpas, PhD is a professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology and a member of the Institute for Biomaterial and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto. He is also a Senior Scientist at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute of Sinai Health System and the Director of the Bone and Mineral research Group at the University of Toronto. Dr. Grynpas graduated from the Free University of Brussels with an undergraduate degree in Physics. At the University of London, he completed his PhD in Crystallography and Biophysics on the structure of bone. After a post-doctoral fellowship at Queen Mary College (University of London) on the relation between bone structure and bone mechanical properties, he joined the laboratory of Professor Melvin Glimcher at the Children’s Hospital in Boston, which is part of the Harvard Medical School. There he worked on the nature of bone mineral and showed that amorphous calcium phosphate was not a precursor of the poorly crystalline and highly substituted apatite structure of bone mineral. The research in his Toronto laboratory is focused on: the nature of bone mineral, animal models of osteoporosis and osteoarthritis, the effects of drugs and trace elements on bone quality and the determinants of bone fragility and bone fatigue. In addition Dr. Grynpas is part of a research group investigating tissue engineering of skeletal tissues. Most recently, Dr. Grynpas and his group have shown that vertebrate mineralization is controlled by the enzymatic formation and degradation of polyphosphates. He has supervised many Ph.D students, M.Sc Students, Post-Doctoral Fellows and 4th year undergraduate thesis.

Research Interest

Dr. Grynpas laboratory research is focused on: the nature of bone mineral, animal models of osteoporosis and osteoarthritis, the effects of drugs and trace elements on bone quality, the determinants of bone fragility and bone fatigue. He is also part of a research group investigating tissue engineering of skeletal tissues.