On behalf of the Molecular Cardiology Program under the direction of Dr. Ian Dixon, we are very pleased to announce the exciting publishing news of their paper, “SKI activates the Hippo pathway via LIMD1 to inhibit cardiac fibroblast activation”. The paper lists Dr. Natalie Landry as the first author and features no fewer than four summer students who have worked and produced data in Dixon’s lab, as well as senior PI’s Drs. Kardami and Duhamel. The work is published this month in Basic Research in Cardiology, a top basic cardiovascular research journal with an impact factor of 11.98.
In other news from the Dixon lab this month, Dr. Natalie Landry also appeared as a first-author within a book chapter on preserving the quiescent fibroblast phenotype by reducing biomechanical stress (eg, Young’s Modulus, elasticity in tension of a solid material) input to primary mouse fibroblasts using silicone substrates to emulate “heart soft” conditions. This is important because normal cell culture practice involves plating of these fibroblast cells on polystyrene or other plastics, or collagen-coated plastic – all, extremely stiff substrates – and leads to rapid activation of fibroblasts to myofibroblasts, and thus prohibits the study of the basal quiescent phenotype. The new method will allow for accurate measurement of physiological responsiveness of the basal cell state, which has not been well documented to date. The book is entitled Myofibroblasts – Methods and Protocols (Springer) and is edited by Boris Hinz, a world expert out of U of Toronto and David Lagares of Harvard Medical School, as a tribute to the discoverer of myofibroblasts, Dr. Giulio Gabbiani (University of Geneva, Switzerland). Dr Gabbiani also provides a great perspective chapter within the book.
Finally, Dr. Dixon’s group published their findings on a selected compendium of factors that activate and deactivate cardiac fibroblasts, including their finding that PDGF Receptor a is upregulated in activated in senescent cardiac myofibroblasts residing in the infarct scar in chronic post-myocardial infarction. This work features the efforts of Dr. Rebeca Camargo and Besher Abual’anaz – graduate students in the lab, who provided the data and writing input respectively, and is published in Wound Repair and Regeneration.
Congratulations to all!