Genomics Lite: Genomic cartography - Navigating with a human cell atlas
Our guest speakers for our April Genomics Lite were Dr. Laure Gambardella and Dr. Chloe Admane, Senior Staff Scientist and Visiting Scientist respectively, at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, exploring the world of stem cells.
In this Genomics Lite session, Laure and Chloe first introduce us to the world of stem cells, what they are, their potential in the body and research as well as taking us on a journey on how far stem cell research has come over the last few decades. To round off the session they explored how they can use a map of human skin cells to draw hypotheses as well as touched upon how they actually go about building these skin models in the lab.
About our speakers:
Dr. Laure Gambardella, Senior Staff Scientist, Wellcome Sanger Institute
Laure is a Senior Staff Scientist in the Cellular Genetics programme at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. She works in the group of Prof Muzz Haniffa which is part of the Human Cell Atlas (HCA), the global consortium mapping every cell type of the human body in a 3-dimensional Atlas. Her expertise lies in Developmental Biology. She develops in vitro models of human tissues using pluripotent stem cells and the information delivered by the HCA about the active genes expressed by the different cell types. At the Sanger Institute Laure leads a team growing hair-bearing skin organoids in a dish. Before that she worked for seven years at growing human heart cell types for cardiac regeneration.
Dr. Chloe Admane, Visiting Scientist, Wellcome Sanger Institute
Chloe Admane is a Staff PhD student at Newcastle University and a visiting scientist in the Cellular Genetics programme at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. She is part of Prof Muzlifah Haniffa’s group, and her work contributes to the global Human Cell Atlas initiative. Her research mainly focuses on understanding the role of macrophages during human fetal skin development using hair-bearing skin organoids derived from stem cells that closely resembles human biology. Prior to joining the Haniffa lab, Chloe worked on deciphering the role of dendritic cells and resident T cells in HIV infection. She holds a M.Sc in immunology and a Doctorate of Pharmacy where she specialised in drug discovery.