Biomedicine Seminar

It is possible to sign-up for a free sandwich at https://events.au.dk/biomedicineseminarmarch2022 - before Monday 28 February.

Abstract

Skeletal muscle strength and regenerative capacity progressively decline with aging, due to functional impairment of muscle stem cells, the driving force in skeletal muscle repair and regeneration. However, the mechanisms responsible for age-associated muscle stem cell dysfunction remain elusive. A major barrier in addressing this challenge, has been the increased functional heterogeneity of the muscle stem cell population, which renders standard bulk analysis ineffective, and the lack of tools to resolve it, underscoring the need for single-cell studies. 

Here we capitalize on single-cell mass cytometry (CyTOF), a transformative technology that allows the discovery of rare subsets within complex cell populations, to resolve functionally and molecularly distinct muscle stem cells subsets that arise with aging, and capture stem cell fate decisions in vivo. We discover novel cell surface markers that define a myogenic progression in vivo and identify previously unrecognized muscle stem cell subsets that underlie age-associated muscle stem cell dysfunction. These findings uncover a key signaling pathway that is dysregulated in aged muscle stem cells and can be effectively targeted in vivo to improve muscle regenerative capacity and muscle strength. Critically, we have identified a potential therapeutic strategy to ameliorate the function of muscle stem cells in aged individuals, with broad implications for adult stem cells in other tissues.

Biography

Ermelinda Porpiglia is a tenure-track Assistant Professor at Aarhus University. Her research interest is to understand how aging impairs tissue regeneration. At Stanford University, she pioneered the application of a novel technology, single-cell mass cytometry (CyTOF), to skeletal muscle, to identify rare stem cell populations that accumulate during aging and understand how they affect muscle regeneration.

Her current research focuses on understanding how unique interactions between immune cells and muscle stem cells orchestrate muscle regeneration and on identifying the cellular interactions and signaling pathways that go awry during aging. Her long-term research goal is to develop therapeutic strategies to modulate the immune system in order to boost muscle tissue repair and function in aged individuals. 

Dr. Porpiglia’s work has been published in top scientific journals, including Nature Medicine and Nature Cell Biology. She received international awards for her research and leadership. She holds a BS/MS degree in Medical Biotechnology from the University of Bologna Medical School, Italy, and a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences from the University of Massachusetts Medical School, USA. Dr. Porpiglia completed her postdoctoral training at Stanford University in 2016 and was promoted to Instructor, a non-tenure track Faculty position, at Stanford School of Medicine.

Zoom: https://aarhusuniversity.zoom.us/j/68958177363

The talk is 45 minutes followed by 15 minutes of discussion, for a total of 1 hr.

Biomedicine seminar organizing committee
Mikkel Vendelbo
Line Reinert
Søren Egedal Degn 
Martin Kristian Thomsen