The 2024 Spring Term Cardiac Function Seminar series talks will be back on Thursday 7th March 2024.
We will be welcoming Dr Ryuichi Fukuda, King’s College London.
Talk Title: TCF3 induces cardiomyocyte dedifferentiation
Talk Time: 12:30 – 13:30 UK time
Location: Hybrid Meeting (Hybrid – online Via Teams and Meeting room 427/428 4th Floor ICTEM, Hammersmith Campus, Du Cane Road W12 0NN)
Please note the seminar organizers and the Head of Section would like to request that attendees will in the majority of cases be physically present in the seminar room and a participation via Teams shall be the exception
Short Bio: Ryuichi completed a PhD at Tokyo University of Science in 2009, studying T-cell leukaemia. He joined Didier Stainier’s lab at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, where he studied the roles of signalling pathways, metabolism and mechanical forces in cardiomyocyte differentiation, proliferation and regeneration. In 2022 he moved King’s to start his group studying cardiac differentiation and proliferation.
Short Summary: Terminally differentiated mammalian cardiomyocytes lose their ability to proliferate, which is highly relevant to the inability to repair cardiac injury. In contrast to adult mammals, adult zebrafish and neonatal mouse hearts regenerate following injury, in which cardiomyocyte dedifferentiation is essential prior to their proliferation. Although cardiomyocyte proliferation has been extensively investigated, much less is known about a mechanism regulating dedifferentiation. We found that exogenous expression of TCF3 induces cardiomyocyte dedifferentiation and stimulates cardiomyocyte proliferation. In an adult mouse myocardial infarction model, TCF3 gene delivery improves cardiac function. We performed transcriptomic analyses and ChIP-Seq and identified that the Hippo signalling pathway is a major target of TCF3. Loss of Yap1 and Wwtr1 impaired TCF3-mediated dedifferentiation and proliferation in cardiomyocytes. Together, our results provide novel mechanisms regulating cardiomyocyte dedifferentiation and proliferation, and identify a potential therapeutic target for cardiac injury.
If you are joining online and you have not yet signed up to join the Cardiac Function Seminar Team group in order to participate in the seminar online please register via the linked tab or here which will provide access to the Team.
Please do this ahead of time of the talk.
The Cardiac Function Seminar Team
(Prof. Thomas Brand, Natasha Richmond)
