Tissue Development and Evolution

Last Friday, we were honored to participate in 2025 UniStem Day, celebrating 10 years at Lund University. This well recognized initiative allows students from high school level to spend a day at Stem Cell Center, participating in different activities, such as lectures on various topics imparted by several PIs or practical workshops, where they can learn how it is to work in a research laboratory.

This year, same as last year, the students enjoyed a talk about “Chicken Embryo as Research Model for Stem Cells” with Sofie Mohlin, where out future researchers were able to learn the importance of embryonic models in the study of different types of cancer.

Then, we were happy to host for second year in a row a workshop entitled “A chick embryo to study child cancer – Let’s look inside chicken eggs!” were the students listened to a brief presentation on the topic, to learn what we do in the lab and how to work with chick embryos. The workshop was hosted by our wonderful team Emma Haxen (PhD student), Anja Zethraeus (Master student) and Marina Mazariegos (lab engineer).

The students opened several eggs, incubated for different periods of time to get embryos at different stages, and they could see the embryos under the microscope. The most brave ones even dared to take them out of the egg for further inspection!

We had a great time also discussing several aspects of our work with the new generations, who were really curious and willing to know more about our work. That’s always very encouraging!

This week we’ve had a very exciting event: Bee’s thesis defense! After all her hard work, finally this day came and we were able to share it with her. She presented her work “Tracing chemical alteration in cancer cells and tissues”, defended through the Department of Experimental Medical Science, Faculty of Medicine, Lund University. Her presentation reflected her dedication to the project, successfully published in several competitive journals.

As the opponent for the discussion, we had the pleasure of having Klervia Jaouen, coming from the Géosciences Environnement (CNRS) in Toulouse, France. We enjoyed a very dynamic debate between Klervia and Bee, where we could learn more in depth from Bee’s work.

After a short round of questions from the committee members and their following deliberation, they were happy to announce the positive result of the defense, as we all expected. Congratulation, Bee!!!

Afterwards, it was a pleasure to celebrate the occasion, having some food and drinks to toast Bee and congratulate her once again!

We are so proud of you, Bee!! And looking forward to see what you’re able to do in the future!

This week we’ve had a very exciting event going on in the lab: our dear Auraya has nailed her thesis!!

This Swedish tradition takes place before the doctoral thesis defense, so that the public have the opportunity to read the thesis in advance and be able to ask questions at the event. Emulating Martin Luther, Auraya nailed her work to a wood, as many have done before.

This is the final step to get ready to defend her work “Tracing Chemical Alteration in Cancer Cells and Tissues”, which will take place the 25th of February, with Klervia Jaouen as the opponent and Kazi Uddin as chair of the defense.

We are sure Auraya will perform brilliantly in her defense!

Last Friday, Arthur successfully defended his half time review of his PhD thesis entitled “Roads to increased heritable variation in animal and cancer species”, thesis that is taking place under the supervision of Emma Hammarlund, in the Department of Experimental Medicine (EMV).

The reviewers were Helena Persson from Lund University and Kasper Karlsson from Karolinska Institutet.

Congratulations, Arthur!

Our Master student Anja Zethraeus participated in the 1st Complex Cellular Systems Workshop organized by LTH as a cross-faculties workshop focused on Complex Cellular Systems including organoids, organs-on-a-chip, cells-on-chip, tissue engineering, and advanced in vitro models.

Anja presented her work “Neuroblastoma cell plasticity – understanding growth factor influence through microfluidic gradients”, talking about the use of a microfluidic gradient generator for cell regionalization is useful in our study of neuroblastoma.

The workshop was a great place to open discussions, exchange ideas and experiences, and tackle real-world problems together, fostering new collaborations and insights. Although many participants were working on different organs and research questions, it was really useful to see how everybody faced similar challenges where peer discussions could offer valuable insights.

Congrats Anja on a great communication!

At our last TiDE meeting Arthur presented how you can use e.g. Snakemake for structuring the running of scripts, making it easier, quicker and more reproducible. Especially important to keep everything organized the more complex structure you have or if you share it with someone else.

On September 30th and October 1st, we enjoyed of the annual Stem Center Retreat in Båstad, where we were able to attend to interesting talks from different organizations and core units from the center, as well as from some principal investigators. Emma gave a talk entitled “Origins of the multicellularity and the traces it leaves behind” in the PI Talks session, which was very well received by the audience. Sofie explained all the work they are doing in the Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity (DEI) Committee and illustrated us with their updates and future actions, together with Nick Leigh.

Another important event was the nomination of Elina’s first author recently published paper “MOXD1 is a lineage-specific gene and a tumor suppressor in neuroblastoma” for the Article of the Year Award. Really exciting and such an honor to be among the three finalists! So proud of her!

Several members of our group contributed to the poster session, sharing the projects we are working on and getting very interesting feedback from other participants.

Also, we could join some really stimulating workshops regarding many different topics such as sustainability, work – life balance and scientific narrative. Besides being able to enjoy the great installations of the hotel and the spa, having a wonderful time with other members of the center.

See you next year!!

On the 22nd of August, Stina successfully carried out her half time review of her PhD thesis titled “The embryonic origin(s) of childhood cancer”. Congratulations to Stina!

Reviewers were Helena Linge and Sandeep Gopal.

We continued with our tradition to organize prediction competitions for major sporting tournaments and Paula took first place in predicting the UEFA Men’s European Football Championship 2024! Congratulations to Paula! 

Perrine passed on the magnificent trophy as last year’s winner of the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023.

On April 29th, we organised a workshop on what the concept of Night science is, with theory and practical exercises. We were joined by Kasper Karlsson and his group from Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, and of course our facilitator Eva Sophia Myers. It was a rewarding day where we got to know new people, scrutinise our projects and learn how to think about our science from a bigger perspective and how we can come up with ideas that goes beyond the everyday science.