This was a real team work effort and one of the best experiences ever. HSC depletion and Rspo3 ko in HSCs produce nearly identical phenotypes, affecting liver size, zonation, regeneration, injury, metabolism and cancer. Wow! We teamed up with the Augustin lab at DKFZ Germany, who had started similar experiments on Rspo3 - identical findings on their end. Congrats to Atsushi and Yoshi - but also a big thanks to everyone else in the lab who helped (also our previous lab members who started several key aspects) and all our external collaborators.
Atsushi is one of five postdocs in the US to receive this prestigious award.
Congrats Atsushi - your hard work has paid off!
Together with Tom Luedde and Kirsten Sadler-Edepli, Robert organized this inagurual conference. The focus of this meeting not only lies in the best science and speakers, but bringing student, postdocs, new and established PIs together with time for scientific discussions& collaborations and community building - all in a beautiful environment. We had nearly 100 participants from all over the world and are looking forward to welcoming you for the second conference in 2025.
Link:
https://www.aegeanconferences.org/src/App/conferences/view/167
Next conference planned for 2025.
Silvia now runs her own lab in Barcelona. The ERC grant is well deserved and one of the most prestigious awards in Europe.
Yoshi's paper shows that both YAP, TAZ or both are upregulated in >90% of human HCCs. The paper describes the cholesterol pathway as a key regulator of TAZ in HCC and demonstrates the essential role of TAZ but not YAP in HCC. Yoshi used elegant CRISPRi approaches to inhibit different TEADs and show a key role for TEAD2 and TEAD4 in driving HCC growth (high expression of TEAD2 and TEAD4 is also associated with decrease survival in patients). Finally, Yoshi focused on therapeutic inhibition of the TAZ/TEAD pathway - using statins upstream of TAZ (reducing cholesterol-induced TAZ activation) and TEAD inhibitor VT104 (downstream of TAZ). Thanks to Kirk Wangensteen and Dingzi for fantastic collaboration and looking forward to continue working on this exciting research area.
Pubmed link:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36894036/
Free access to the pdf:
Coming soon.
Aveline's paper shows protective functions of the quiescent HSC population via HGF (enriched in qHSC) and tumor-promoting functions of activated HSC via type I collagen. The balance from quiesent HSC (cytokine and growth factor expressing = cyHSC) to activated myofibroblastic HSC (myHSC) is shifted progressively with disease progression and an impalance is associated with higher risk for HCC in patients. Our paper is one of the first to show a protective function for HSC and my provide novel approaches for HCC prevention (with did not see a role for HSC in HCC progression).
Free access to the pdf:
Pubmed link:
This UO1 (MPI with Michael Karin and Andrew Lowy, both UCSD; collaborations with Nick Arpaia at Columbia) studies pancreatic cancer stroma, with a focus on how collagen degradation and sensing by specific receptors affects tumor cells and immune responses in PDAC and PDAC liver metastasis.
This paper describes P2Y14 and its ligand as a novel DAMP-DAMP receptor system that directly links hepatocyte death to hepatic stellate cell activation.
Oscar recently graduated from College College in New York City. He will start as lab technician in the Schwabe lab. Oscar's long-term goals are to attend medical school or obtain a PhD in the biomedical field.
Amal recently defended her PhD in Pharmacology at the University of Arkansas and is starting in our lab to study protective functions of hepatic stellate cells in the liver.
NCI grant "Tumor-promoting and tumor-suppressive roles of hepatic stellate cell subpopulations in NASH-HCC." will investigate yet unknown roles of hepatic stellate cells in NASH-induced hepatocellular carcinoma. Thanks to all lab members, and Aveline in particular, for contributing the data and science underlying this grant!
Sonakshi's paper on HSC and liver metastasis made it on the JCI cover
Qiuyan Sun will join our lab for her PhD - welcome!
Ajay's co-first author on "A molecular single-cell lung atlas of lethal COVID-19" published in Nature
The NIDDK grant "Protective and fibrosis-independent functions of hepatic stellate cells" will investigate the poorly understood protective functions of HSC .
Congrats Yoshi!
Silvia receives an ERC grant to start her own group in Barcelona - wonderful news!
Aveline does it again!
Super news - great job Aveline!
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