Ming Wai Lau Centre for Reparative Medicine

Sijie Chen Lab has developed a new fluorescent mechanosensitive probe. This probe simultaneously labeled the plasma membrane and mitochondria of the living HeLa cells. By fluorescence lifetime imaging, membrane tension changes in both organelles under different conditions can be visualized. This expands the research tool available for mechanobiological studies.

Ning Xu Landén has been granted DKK 4.2 million by the LEO foundation for research on wound healing. Ning Xu and her team seeks to identify the “master” regulators of inflammation-to-proliferation transition in order to improve and accelerate wound healing and thus minimize the risk of development of chronic wounds.

Francois Lallemend has been awarded SEK 32 million over five years for his project about proprioceptive control of motor action sequences. His project is one of the four research projects coordinated from Karolinska Institutet which have been awarded project grants by Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (KAW).

Fredrik Lanner and Simon Elsässer joined forces to identify the function of Polycomb Repressor Complex 2 (PRC2) as an epigenetic barrier in maintaining the separation of embryonic and extraembryonic lineages. In this study, the two laboratories elucidate how distinct cell types are established during early human development, which increase our understanding of human development and early pregnancy, and provide an avenue to study disease condition in cellular models.

A team led by Gonçalo Castelo-Branco with researchers from Karolinska Institutet and Stockholm University found that oligodendrocytes, a cell type in the central nervous system known to be targeted in multiple sclerosis (MS), arise in brain during human development much earlier than mainly thought. The findings could be relevant for developing regenerative-based therapies for MS.