November 26
We had the honor to host
Dr. André Dias, from UPF, who was talking about
‘Exploring the signaling-dependent modularity of the human gastrula in the bioengineering of 3D stem cell-based embryo models’.
Short Bio
I have long been fascinated by how pluripotent cells organize to form an organism’s body plan. This curiosity led me to pursue a PhD with Moisés Mallo (IGC, Portugal), where we uncovered an EMT module at the core of body axis formation in mammals. Orchestrated by Snai1 and Tgfbr1, this mechanism is required for the emergence of tail progenitors and provides a new framework for understanding the development of neural and mesodermal tail tissues. For my postdoc, I focused on the mechanisms triggering body plan formation. Supported by an EMBO fellowship, I joined Alfonso Martinez Arias’ lab (UPF, Spain) and, using a 3D stem cell model of gastrulation (‘gastruloids’), we identified critical signalling-dependent modularity in the mouse gastrula. These modules, controlled by Nodal and Wnt signalling, guide the formation of anterior and posterior body structures, respectively. In this talk, I will deconstruct the gastruloid system, highlight its advantages over other models, and explain how it can be used to address key questions in developmental biology and biomedical research. In particular, I will present our efforts to decode the molecular principles of human gastrulation and how this knowledge can be applied to engineer specific human body structures in vitro.