The Stem Cell Podcast

Dr. Matthias Lutolf is a Professor and Principal Investigator of the Laboratory of Stem Cell Bioengineering at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. His lab uses cutting-edge bioengineering strategies for guiding stem-cell-based development for the assembly of next-generation organoids with improved reproducibility and physiological relevance.

In this special episode of the Stem Cell Podcast, we speak with three PhD students — Nathasia Mudiwa Muwanigwa, Sarthak Sinha, and Naveed Tavakol — about their research into brain organoids, organ-on-chip systems, and regeneration in different mammals.

Dr. Miki Ebisuya is a Group Leader at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Barcelona. Her lab reconstitutes developmental mechanisms by making artificial gene circuits, and studies interspecies differences by comparing organoids of different animals.

Dr. Tom Cheung is the S H Ho Associate Professor of Life Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His lab investigates the molecular pathways that control muscle stem cell quiescence and stem cell-mediated tissue regeneration.

Dr. Ludovic Vallier is a Professor of Regenerative Medicine at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute and Director of the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Centre hiPSC core facility. His lab studies the basic mechanisms controlling differentiation of pluripotent cells into endoderm progenitors from which the pancreas, lung, gut and liver originate.

Dr. Valerie Horsley is an Associate Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, and Associate Professor of Dermatology at Yale University. Her lab studies how adult stem cells within epithelial tissues maintain tissue homeostasis, wound healing and can contribute to cancer formation.

Dr. Henner Farin is a Young Investigator in the German Cancer Consortium, and a Junior Research Group Leader at the Georg-Speyer-Haus Institute for Tumor Biology and Experimental Therapy. His group uses organoids to study cell signaling in intestinal stem cells and colorectal cancer.

Dr. Sergiu Pașca is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and the Bonnie Uytengsu and Family Director of the Stanford Brain Organogenesis Program. His team has developed methods for generating human brain organoids, and uses them to study the programs underlying brain development, assembly and dysfunction.

Dr. Martin Pera is a Principal Investigator at the Jackson Laboratories and Editor-in-Chief of the ISSCR's journal Stem Cell Reports. His lab studies the regulation of self-renewal and pluripotency, heterogeneity in pluripotent stem cell populations, and neural specification of pluripotent stem cells.

Dr. Dominique Bonnet is the Group Leader of the Hematopoietic Stem Cell Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute. Her lab is interested in the extrinsic mechanisms that regulate hematopoietic stem cells, and how they can intervene in order to eradicate the leukemic stem cell.