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SUMMARY:Mechanobiological Regulation of Normal and Tumor Stem Cells in the
  Brain - joint IBI & ISREC seminar
DTSTART:20130625T090000
DTEND:20130625T100000
DTSTAMP:20260916T043954Z
UID:48fa4ed672eea60d2c11f369b4ee504f742e1f401c0bd32f4c1bb49f
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Prof. Sanjay Kumar\, University of California\, Berkeley\nBio:
  Sanjay Kumar\, M.D.\, Ph.D.\, was appointed Assistant Professor of Bioeng
 ineering at UC Berkeley in 2005 and was promoted to Associate Professor wi
 th tenure in 2011.   He is also a Faculty Scientist in the Physical Bios
 ciences Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.  Dr. Kumar and
  his research group have been fortunate to receive a number of honors\, in
 cluding the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (
 PECASE)\, The NIH Director's New Innovator Award\, The Arnold and Mabel Be
 ckman Young Investigator Award\, the NSF CAREER Award\, and the Hellman Fa
 mily Faculty Fund Award. Dr. Kumar has also received awards by student vot
 e for Excellence in Graduate Advising (UCSF/UC Berkeley Joint Graduate Gro
 up in Bioengineering) and Outstanding Teaching (Bioengineering Honor Socie
 ty) and has served as a Presidential Chair Teaching Fellow.  Work in his 
 laboratory has been sponsored by grants and fellowships from NIH\, NSF\, D
 OD\, AHA\, CRCC\, LBNL\, The Beckman Foundation\, the DOE Molecular Foundr
 y and the University of California.\nDr. Kumar earned a B.S. in chemical e
 ngineering (1996) from the University of Minnesota\, where he studied lipi
 d self-assembly in the laboratory of Matt Tirrell. He then moved on to Joh
 ns Hopkins University\, where he earned an M.D. (2003) and a Ph.D. in mole
 cular biophysics (2003) as a fellow of the NIH Medical Scientist Training 
 Program. During the graduate portion of his training\, he investigated the
  structure and energetics of neuronal intermediate filaments in the labora
 tories of Jan Hoh of the School of Medicine and Mike Paulaitis of the Depa
 rtment of Chemical Engineering. From 2003-2005\, he served as an NIH resea
 rch fellow with Don Ingber at Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medic
 al School\, where he examined the nanoscale mechanics and dynamics of cyto
 skeletal structures in living cells and developed nanomagnetic technologie
 s to control receptor-mediated signaling.\nIt is now widely appreciated th
 at the structure\, dimensionality\, and stiffness of the microenvironment 
 can play important roles in regulating the self-renewal and differentiatio
 n of stem cells.  However\, the molecular mechanisms that underlie these 
 effects and their significance in vivo remain significantly less clear.  
 Here I will discuss our recent efforts to understand and dissect the contr
 ibutions of physical microenvironmental signals to normal and tumor stem c
 ell biology in the central nervous system.  First\, we have shown that ex
 tracellular matrix (ECM) stiffness strongly instructs lineage commitment i
 n hippocampal adult neural stem cells\, and that these signals are process
 ed through the small GTPases RhoA and Cdc42 during a critical time window 
 following ECM adhesion.  Lentiviral injection studies reveal that activat
 ion of RhoA also substantially suppresses neurogenesis in vivo.  Second\,
  we have investigated connections between mechanosensing\, invasion\, and 
 tumorigenesis in primary patient-derived human glioblastoma tumor initiati
 ng cells.  We find that the adhesion and motility of these cells are surp
 risingly insensitive to ECM stiffness but can be rendered sensitive to thi
 s cue through pharmacologic or genetic induction of contractility.  This 
 intervention has the additional effect of severely restricting three-dimen
 sional invasion in vitro and significantly extending survival and limiting
  diffuse infiltration in a mouse orthotopic xenograft model.  These studi
 es highlight the importance of the physical microenvironment in controllin
 g normal and tumor stem cell behavior and support the notion that the unde
 rlying signaling systems may offer valuable molecular targets.
LOCATION:SV 1717A http://plan.epfl.ch/?reset_session&room=sv1717a
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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