Adult Tissue Regeneration: Balancing Lateral inhibition and Cellular plasticity
Name of applicant
Ditte Skovaa Andersen
Title
Associate Professor
Institution
University of Copenhagen
Amount
DKK 6,910,913
Year
2024
Type of grant
Semper Ardens: Accelerate
What?
In adult tissues, cells communicate with their neighbors to ensure a balanced distribution of stem cells and specialized cells. After injury, this balance is temporarily disrupted to allow stem cells to move and multiply for proper healing. Crucially, normal patterns must be restored afterward to prevent uncontrolled stem cell divisions and the risk of tumors.
Why?
How stem cells communicate with neighboring cells to increase their flexibility during tissue repair, and how they shift back to a resting, or quiescent, state after healing, are not well understood. A major reason for this knowledge gap is the technical difficulty of tracking stem cell behavior and dynamics in adult tissues during these transitions.
How?
My team has developed a framework for tracking stem cell behavior in the gut using live imaging. In combination with mathematical modelling, I aim to build a comprehensive model that acounts for stem cells’ ability to adapt, change fate, and respond to their environment during tissue repair. This model will provide deeper insights into how tissues repair and return to balanced states after injury.