Lancaster speaking at "Ahead of the Curve: Women Scientists at the LMB" symposium at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in November 2022
Lancaster speaking at "Ahead of the Curve: Women Scientists at the LMB" symposium at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in November 2022

Madeline Lancaster is an American developmental biologist studying neurological development and diseases of the brain. Lancaster is a group leader at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK.

Education

Lancaster was an undergraduate student at Occidental College in Los Angeles from 2000 to 2004 where she studied biochemistry. She then went on to complete a PhD with Joseph Gleeson at the University of California, San Diego in 2010.

Career and research

Lancaster conducted her post-doctoral work in the lab of Jürgen Knoblich at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna, Austria. This work was supported by fellowships from EMBO, the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation and Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions. During this time Lancaster worked on developing the technology of cerebral organoids.[1]

In 2015 Lancaster joined the Cell Biology division at the LMB, where she currently leads a research group studying the biological processes of human brain evolution.[2] The lab uses the cerebral organoid system to study how genes impact on brain development in a range of species.[3] Recent findings of the Lancaster lab have revealed a key difference in early neuroepithelial behavior in human compared with other apes that leads to an expansion in the founder stem cell pool and thus expansion of cerebral cortical neuron production.[4] Her research also focuses on neurological disorders e.g. microencephaly and macroencephaly.

In addition to using organoids to uncover new biological insight, Lancaster has also improved and developed new organoid methods. These include cerebral organoids with improved reproducibility,[5] long-term culture using a specialized air-liquid interface to enable functional maturation,[6] the development of new ways of imaging organoids with electron cryo-tomography,[7] and the establishment of organoids that produce cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and model a selective brain barrier.[8] These new methods were used to investigate infection by SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19, revealing infection primarily of the CSF-producing tissue that led to barrier breakdown.[9] Later post-mortem studies confirmed susceptibility of this tissue to the SARS-CoV-2 virus in human COVID-19 patients.[10]

Awards and honours

Lancaster was awarded the Eppendorf Award for Young Investigators in 2014.[11] The following year Lancaster gave a TED talk entitled 'Growing mini brains to discover what makes us human'.[12][13] Lancaster was named a Cell Scientist to watch by the Journal of Cell Science in 2017.[14] In 2019, Lancaster was named an EMBO Young Investigator [15] and in 2021 she received the ISSCR Dr. Susan Lim Award for Outstanding Young Investigator [16] and was named a Vallee Scholar.[17] Lancaster was also named the 2022 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the UK Life Sciences Laureate [18] and was elected as an EMBO member in 2022.[19]

References

  1. ↑ Lancaster, Madeline; Renner, Magdalena; Martin, Carol-Anne; Wenzel, Daniel; Bicknell, Louise; Hurles, Matthew; Homfray, Tessa; Jackson, Andrew; Knoblich, Juergen (2013). "Cerebral organoids model human brain development and microcephaly". Nature. 501 (7467): 373–379. Bibcode:2013Natur.501..373L. doi:10.1038/nature12517. PMC 3817409. PMID 23995685.
  2. ↑ "Lancaster Lab". MRC-LMB.
  3. ↑ "The genius who grows tiny brains in a lab". BBC. Sep 2016.
  4. ↑ Benito-Kwiecinski, Silvia; Giandomenico, Stefano; Sutcliffe, Magdalena; Riis, Erlend; Freire-Pritchett, Paula; Kelava, Iva; Wunderlich, Stephanie; Martin, Ulrich; McDole, Kate; Lancaster, Madeline (2021). "An early cell shape transition drives evolutionary expansion of the human forebrain". Cell. 184 (8): 2084–2102. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.02.050. PMC 8054913. PMID 33765444.
  5. ↑ Lancaster, Madeline; Corsini, Nina; Wolfinger, Simone; Gustafson, E Hilary; Phillips, Alex; Burkard, Thomas; Otani, Tomoki; Livesey, Frederick; Knoblich, Juergen (2017). "Guided self-organization and cortical plate formation in human brain organoids". Nat Biotechnol. 35 (7): 659–666. doi:10.1038/nbt.3906. PMC 5824977. PMID 28562594.
  6. ↑ Giandomenico, Stefano; Mierau, Susanna; Gibbons, George; Wenger, Lea; Masullo, Laura; Sit, Timothy; Sutcliffe, Magdalena; Boulanger, Jerome; Tripodi, Marco; Derivery, Emmanuel; Paulsen, Ole; Lakatos, Andras; Lancaster, Madeline (2019). "Cerebral organoids at the air-liquid interface generate diverse nerve tracts with functional output". Nat Neurosci. 22 (4): 669–679. doi:10.1038/s41593-019-0350-2. PMC 6436729. PMID 30886407.
  7. ↑ Hoffmann, Patrick; Giandomenico, Stefano; Ganeva, Iva; Wozny, Michael; Sutcliffe, Magdalena; Lancaster, Madeline; Kukulski, Wanda (2021). "Electron cryo-tomography reveals the subcellular architecture of growing axons in human brain organoids". eLife. 10: e70269. doi:10.7554/eLife.70269. PMC 8547956. PMID 34698018.
  8. ↑ Pellegrini, Laura; Bonfio, Claudia; Chadwick, Jessica; Begum, Farida; Skehel, Mark; Lancaster, Madeline (2020). "Human CNS barrier-forming organoids with cerebrospinal fluid production". Science. 369 (6500): 5626. doi:10.1126/science.aaz5626. PMC 8547956. PMID 32527923.
  9. ↑ Pellegrini, Laura; Albecka, Anna; Mallery, Donna; Kellner, Max; Paul, David; Carter, Andrew; James, Leo; Lancaster, Madeline (2020). "SARS-CoV-2 infects the brain choroid plexus and disrupts the blood-CSF barrier in human brain organoids". Cell Stem Cell. 27 (6): 951–961. doi:10.1016/j.stem.2020.10.001. PMC 7553118. PMID 33113348.
  10. ↑ Fuchs, Vidmante; Kutza, Michael; Wischnewski, Sven; Deigendesch, Nikolaus; Lutz, Luc; Kulsvehagen, Laila; Ricken, Gerda; Kappos, Ludwig; Tzankov, Alexander; Hametner, Simon; Frank, Stephan; Schirmer, Lucas; Probstel, Anne-Katrin (2021). "Presence of SARS-CoV-2 transcripts in the choroid plexus of MS and non-MS patients with COVID-19". Neurol Neuroimmunol Neuroinflamm. 8 (2): e957. doi:10.1212/NXI.0000000000000957. PMC 7862096. PMID 33504636.
  11. ↑ "Eppendorf Award for Young European Investigators". Eppendorf Corporate.
  12. ↑ "Growing mini brains to discover what makes us human | Madeline Lancaster | TEDxCERN". YouTube.
  13. ↑ "How one scientist is growing miniature brains in her lab". Ideas.Ted.com. Jan 2016.
  14. ↑ "Cell scientist to watch – Madeline Lancaster". Journal of Cell Science. 130: 11–13. 2017. doi:10.1242/jcs.199984.
  15. ↑ "2019 EMBO Young Investigators". EMBO. 13 November 2019.
  16. ↑ "ISSCR Award recipients 2021". ISSCR.
  17. ↑ "Madeline Lancaster Vallee Scholar". Vallee Foundation.
  18. ↑ "Madeline Lancaster Blavatnik Awards for Young Scienctists UK". Blavatnik awards.
  19. ↑ "Madeline Lancaster EMBO profile". EMBO.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.