Innovations in Disease Modeling 2023

I am originally from Athens Greece, where I also completed my undergraduate degree in Biology at the University of Athens, with a thesis on using neural networks for the prediction of protein subcellular location. I then moved to the EMBL in Heidelberg, where under the supervision of Rob Russell I did a PhD (2009) on structural bioinformatics predicting peptide binding on protein structures. My postdoc was done under the supervision of Tony Pawson and Fritz Roth where I worked on a diverse array of projects from Rho signalling, proteomics, phosphoproteomics to yeast genetics. Since 2017 I am a group leader at the EMBL-EBI and my group focuses on the study of the principles underpinning context specific cell signalling responses in humans, mainly using network-based approaches.

Dr. Zhu is a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Washington School of Medicine, and an Associate Professor in the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center. Dr. Zhu studies the tissue-based immune response to HSV infection in human skin and genital mucosa, focusing on intricate interactions between HSV and local immune responses. Early on she developed novel laboratory tools to detect how immune cells behave in genital tissues during the active and latent phases of herpes infection. These pivotal studies led to the plausible explanation on how local inflammation by chronic HSV reactivation increases HIV acquisition, as well as the discovery of tissue resident memory CD8+ T cells accumulating at sites of virus release and performing immune surveillance and rapid clearance. Currently, her team has bioengineered a 3-D vascularized, biomimetic ‘Skin-on-Chip’ device that is capable of immune-cell and drug perfusion, as an alternative platform for deciphering complex and dynamic host pathophysiology to HSV infection and for preclinical evaluation of antiviral drug efficacy in humans.

Joseph C. Wu, MD, PhD is Director of Stanford Cardiovascular Institute and Simon H. Stertzer, MD, Professor of Medicine and Radiology at Stanford University. Dr. Wu received his MD from Yale University and PhD (Molecular & Medical Pharmacology) at UCLA. He is board certified in cardiovascular medicine. His lab works on cardiovascular genomics and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). The main goals are to (i) understand basic disease mechanisms, (ii) accelerate drug discovery via “clinical trial in a dish” concept, and (iii) implement precision medicine for patients. Dr. Wu has published >500 manuscripts with H-index of 116 on Google scholar. He is listed as top 1% of highly cited researchers by Web of Science for past 5 years (2018-2022). Dr. Wu is an elected member of American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), American Association of Physicians (AAP), Academia Sinica, National Academy of Inventors (NAI), and National Academy of Medicine (NAM).

Yexuan Deng is a postdoctoral fellow in the Herold laboratory, Blood Cells and Blood Cancer division at WEHI. She was working as a visiting PhD candidate at WEHI and obtained her PhD from Nanjing University in China. Her work utilizes multiple CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing systems to achieve depletion or activation of specific genes in eukaryotic cells, which has been published in Immunity, Nature Communications, etc. Yexuan characterised the CRISPR activation mouse model (referred as dCas9a-SAM), which showed high efficiency in activating gene expression in the haematopoietic system. She used this system to develop a mouse model of double hit lymphoma by inducing pro-survival protein BCL-2 expression in Eμ-Myc transgenic, dCas9a-SAM knock-in haematopoietic stem and progenitor cells.

Peter Kropp earned his PhD in Molecular Physiology and Biophysics at Vanderbilt University with a focus on the gene regulatory networks governing pancreas development. He followed this with a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health in the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. His postdoctoral work was focused on modelling rare mitochondrial diseases in the nematode C. elegans. Peter recently transitioned to a tenure-track position at Kenyon College where he continues to expand on his postdoctoral work with C. elegans and mitochondrial dysfunction.

Xi Lu is a senior scientist for cell and gene therapy at Bio-Techne. He oversees development for multiple stem cell and immune therapy products including media and matrices. Xi’s post-doctoral research works at Uppsala University and also UTH Health Science Center at Houston focused on biomaterials for tissue regeneration including bone and nerve. Xi received his Ph.D in Biomedical Engineering from Washington University in St Louis where he developed microfluidic devices for investigating axonal degeneration. He holds a B.S. in Biomedical engineering from Georgia Tech.

Tahmina Naqvi is an Advanced Research Associate for cell and gene therapy at Bio-Techne. She is responsible for the development of organoid workflow solutions. Prior to joining Bio-Techne she worked as a Research Scientist at University of Minnesota, ISurTec, LLC, Surmodics, Inc and Prolexys Pharmaceuticals in Utah. She has been a project leader for numerous projects including synthetic matrices for mammalian cells, ECIS and microfluidic devices, high throughput drug screening assays, biomaterials for bone tissue regeneration and human stem cell differentiation pathways. She holds a MS in Biology from University of Karachi, Pakistan.

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.