Innovations in Disease Modeling 2024

Alice Soragni, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and a member of the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. Her laboratory develops tumor organoid models to investigate the biology of rare tumors and to perform screenings for precision medicine applications.

Passley Hargrove-Grimes, a program officer in NCATS' Office of Special Initiatives, leads the NIH-wide Tissue Chip for Drug Screening program. As a liaison between investigators, NIH staff, and external stakeholders, she manages over 20 teams in initiatives like Tissue Chips for Disease Modeling and Efficacy Testing. Guided by Dr. Danilo A. Tagle, her work translates NIH-funded research into transformative tissue-chip technology, addressing challenges in drug development. Joining NIH in 2012 through The George Washington University Partnership Program, Passley conducted research at NEI, focusing on mouse models for retinal degenerative diseases. Her research highlighted the role of endocytic and autophagic pathways in photoreceptor development. After earning her doctorate in molecular medicine from The George Washington University in 2018, she continued studying retinal degenerative diseases during her postdoctoral research fellowship at NEI. Inspired by former NCATS Director Christopher P. Austin's emphasis on translating scientific discoveries, Passley dedicated her career to supporting translational science. From 2019 to 2021, she worked as a scientific program manager for the NIH Tissue Chip Program, following a role as a scientific project leader at Champions Oncology, managing preclinical drug development studies in patient-derived xenograft mouse models.

As a PhD student, Tamas developed a signalling network database, SignaLink, which filled a vital niche in the landscape of bioinformatics tools, and by now it has become one of the most used signalling network resources for human and model organism studies. It also forms the core of OmniPath, a more general human signaling network resource Tamas co-developed with the group of Julio Saez-Rodriguez. In 2014, Tamas received a special 5-year BBSRC fellowship to work in the computational biology and sequencing focused Earlham Institute and in the gut microbiome centred Quadram Institute at the Norwich Research Park. This fellowship allowed him to establish a multi-disciplinary group that combines computational and experimental approaches, including gut organoids. In 2019, he was appointed as a Tenure-track group leader at the Earlham and the Quadram Institutes, and between 2017 and 2021 he led the Systems Genomics workpackage of the Earlham Institute’s strategic programme. His group has carried out multiple projects to predict, analyse and validate host-microbe interactions in the gut, especially in relation to the regulation of autophagy by microbes and upon disease conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and cancer. He had multiple innovation and industrial partnership projects to develop new computational tools and platforms to analyse multi-omics data. End of 2021, Tamas moved to Imperial College as a Senior Lecturer, and currently leads both a research group that focuses on improving our understanding on the pathomechanisms of IBD and the NIHR Imperial BRC Organoid Facility to establish patient-specific multi-omics studies for various complex diseases.

Sasha Mendjan is a principal investigator at the Institute for Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna (IMBA), elucidating human heart development, regeneration, and disease mechanisms. Sasha was trained in genetics and biochemistry at the Ludwig Maximillian University in Munich and obtained his Ph.D. at the EMBL & University of Heidelberg, working on the chromosomal regulation of transcription. During his postdoc at the University of Cambridge, he developed a comprehensive differentiation system from human pluripotent stem cells into all major mesoderm lineages, enabling the mechanistic dissection of the underlying specification principles. Based on these insights, Sasha’s group at IMBA established the first self-organizing cardiac organoids (cardioids), mimicking the chamber-like architecture and all the embryonic compartments of the human heart. The Mendjan team is developing this platform further to understand human cardiogenesis and fetal regeneration and address one of the most significant bottlenecks in biomedical research – the lack of physiological models of the human heart to understand disease and develop new therapies.

Chong Li received his Ph.D. degree in Human Genetics and Genomics from the University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine in 2018. During his Ph.D. research in Dr. Grace Zhai’s lab, he used Drosophila as a model system to investigate mechanisms contributing to rare genetic neurological disorders and synaptic degeneration. After obtaining his Ph.D., he relocated to Austria and has been working as a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Jürgen Knoblich's lab at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His current research focuses on understanding the gene regulatory principles of human brain development and modeling brain disorders using stem cell-derived 3D brain organoids. He established the CRISPR-human organoids-single-cell RNA-seq (CHOOSE) system, a single-cell functional genomics approach to quantitatively study cell type-specific defects in neurodevelopmental disorders. He conducted pioneering research on disease-relevant screening of transcriptional and epigenetic regulators associated with autism. Through his work, he identified that certain neural progenitors, neurons, and gene regulatory networks are particularly susceptible to autism genetic perturbations. In this lecture, Dr. Li will introduce how cutting-edge single-cell genomics and high-throughput CRISPR screening in organoids can facilitate gene function and disease studies of the human brain.

Kalpana is a highly experienced industrial pharmacologist with over 25 years of experience gained from pharmaceutical, contract research and biotech laboratories. Trained initially as an in vitro pharmacologist, Kalpana specialized in designing and developing plate-based cellular assays to support automated High-Throughput Screening, Compound Profiling, and mechanism of action follow-up studies. Within Sartorius, she’s applied her extensive experience to the development and validation of cellular assays for quantitative live-cell analysis and currently leads an R&D team focused on the development of advanced cellular models for oncology.

Dr. Neelam graduated in 2019 from the CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad, India with a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences. For her Ph.D., she worked with Dr. Shasi Vardhan Kalivendi, investigating the disease modifying role of the DJ-1 protein in the pathophysiology of Parkinson’s disease. Neelam joined the Davis lab in 2020 as a postdoctoral associate. Her current research focusses on developing mitochondrial based therapeutics for neurodegenerative disorders.

Richard has been a member of Harrick Plasma's Technical Team for 6 years. He has a background in microfluidic device fabrication. Richard is currently interested in studying organ on a chip models and the use of micropatterning to drive specific cell processes.

Madeleine Garrett is a Field Application Specialist at bit.bio, Cambridge, with a Master's in Biomedical Science from Monash University. She leads the technical support team at bit.bio, where she developed regulatory documents and launched successful customer support campaigns using innovative technologies like virtual reality. Her experience extends to extensive research work, including a significant publication on mitochondrial encephalopathy in EMBO Molecular Medicine. Madeleine excels in enhancing product and technical content, having previously managed key commercial partnerships and provided essential on-site application support.