Stem Cells in Drug Discovery Keynote Speakers

Christine Mummery Professor and Chair of Developmental Biology, Leiden University Medical Centre Christine Mummery is Chair of Anatomy and Embryology and Professor of Developmental Biology at Leiden University Medical Center. Her research concerns cardiovascular development and disease models based on human pluripotent stem cells. Immediate interests are on developing biophysical techniques for characterization and functional analysis of cardiovascular cells from hPSC. In 2015 she became guest professor at the Technical University of Twente to develop organ-on-chip models. Dr. Mummery is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Science, on the board of the Netherlands Medical Research Council and holds a European Research Council Advanced Grant to study cardiac development and disease in humans based on stem cell models. She wrote a lay-guide on stem cells “Stem Cell: Scientific Facts and Fiction” (Elsevier 2014) and is Editor-in-Chief of Stem Cell Reports, the journal of the International Society of Stem Cell Research. She is also on the editorial boards of Cell Stem Cell, Cardiovascular Research and Stem Cells.
Ludovic Vallier Professor, University Of Cambridge Ludovic Vallier is jointly based at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. His laboratory studies the basic mechanisms controlling differentiation of human pluripotent cells into pancreas, lung, gut and liver cells. His overall objective is not only to investigate molecular mechanisms of differentiation but also to generate cell types for clinical studies and for cell based therapy. Ludovic Vallier is Professor for Regenerative Medicine affiliated to the Department of Surgery Cambridge University. He is also a Senior Group Leader jointly based at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, and director of the Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre hIPSCs core facility. His group has developed a strong expertise on human embryonic stem cells and human induced pluripotent stem cells by discovering key mechanisms controlling their differentiation and pluripotency. These mechanisms include the importance of TGFbeta signaling in maintaining the pluripotent state of hESCs and also the molecular mechanisms by which cell cycle controls cell fate decisions. His laboratory studies the basic mechanisms controlling differentiation of pluripotent cells into endoderm progenitors from which the pancreas, lung, gut and liver originate. The overall objective of is to define the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms controlling the specification of the endoderm germ layer and also its subsequent differentiation into pancreatic and hepatic progenitors. For that, he uses hESCs and hIPSCs as in vitro model of development. His group has developed a strong expertise in the production of these different cell types using hPSCs. In parallele, he is acquired the expertise to perform functional studies involving gain and loss of function using genetic modification of hPSCs. His group at the Sanger Institute uses this basic knowledge and the resulting model systems to perform functional studies on genes involved in early development of the pancreas and liver. These functional studies are performed on a large cohort of hIPSC lines and combined with genome-wide analyses such as RNA-sequencing and ChIP-Sequencing. This approach enables us to uncover the transcriptional networks and the genetic mechanisms controlling early pancreatic development. Furthermore, we are using genetic modifications to correct or to impose genetic variants in different background to determine their influence on cellular phenotype especially on the capacity of pancreatic progenitors to generate endocrine cells.