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What's new in the Hinzlab?

Old News

Keep up with what's happening in the lab! Here we highlight any significant events that have been going on from conferences, to publications, to new staff!

  • New Publication: Fountain, A. Mansat, M., Soffiaturo, S., Lackraj, T., Gimenez, M.C., Moussaoui, S., Ezzo, M., Soffiaturo, S., Urdaneta, E., Verdawala, M., Fung, K., Lancaster, C., Somerville, E., Hinz, B., Terebiznik, M.R., Botelho, R.J. (2025): Depletion of endomembrane reservoirs drives phagocytic appetite exhaustion in macrophages. J Cell Sci. 

  • News from Algonquin Park: The Meese report that they thoroughly enjoyed the company of the Hinz Lab! Thanks everyone for joining the endurance test of two days camping and canoeing in the "wilderness" of Algonquin Park. 

  • Welcome to Prasad Palani Velu, who will visit the lab from November 4 – 14. Prasad is a clinician-scientist based at the University of Edinburgh Institute for Regeneration and Repair. He completed his PhD in Neil Henderson’s lab, investigating pulmonary fibrosis using single-cell transcriptomics. 

  • Congratulations to Fereshteh Younesi for successfully defending her PhD thesis, discovering novel epigenetic players that regulate the mechanical memory of mesenchymal stromal cells. Thanks to the examination committee members Drs. Joel Boerckel (UPenn), Penney Gilbert (UofT, BME), and Craig Simmons (UofT, MIE, Dentistry). Also, thanks to Dr. Sowmya Viswanathan and Mohit Kapoor for all the advice and help over the years as Fereshteh’s advisory committee.

  • And welcome to Fereshteh Younesi, PhD, to start a post-doc in the Hinz Lab – if only for a short time ;). 

  • Welcome to Jannik Herold. Jannik is international visiting student from the University of Reutlingen to join on September 02. Jannik will work with Xinying and stay for 6 months, until February 25, 2026.

  • Congrats to alumni Maya Ezzo for her co-authorship on a manuscript just accepted by the Journal of Cell Science from Roberto Botelho’s group.

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JULY - SEPTEMBER 2025
APRIL - JUNE 2025
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  • Welcome and - at the same time - Farewell to Erik Witte. Erik joined for a 2-week internship to get the basics of laboratory work and start a career as a successful scientist – or hate it.

  • Farewell to Kyle Lam. After wrapping up some unfinished business from his Master project, he is now released into the harsh outside world. Good luck out there, and know you will always have a shelter and shoulders to cry on in the Hinz lab.
    Congrats to Neha Dinesh for receiving the American Society for Matrix Biology Founders Award for exceptional achievement in ECM research during her doctoral studies, which she performed with Dr. Reinhardt at McGill.

  • Welcome, Dr. Neha Dinesh, who joined us as a postdoctoral fellow by the end of May. Neha is coming with a PhD from the lab of Dr. Dieter Reinhardt at McGill University. Neha will bring her invaluable expertise on matrix biology in health and disease and continue Raquel’s project on the split personalities of the myofibroblast. 

  • Congrats to Kyle Lam for successfully defending his Master thesis on soft and stiff extracellular vesicles. The examination committee was impressed and gave a rarely seen ‘exceptional’ rating for the defense and thesis. Well done, Kyle!

  • Congrats, Elham Karimizadeh, for having been selected to present her work in a talk at the Symposium for Inflammation and its Consequences in Various Organ Systems.

  • Congrats to Michael Diao for having been selected to present a talk at the Meeting of the Wound Healing Society in Grapevine, TX. Taking the bull by the horns!

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JANUARY - MARCH 2025

  • New Publication: Rieder, F., Nagy, L.E., Maher, T., Distler, J.H.W., Kramann, R., Hinz, B., and Prunotto, M. (2025): Fibrosis: cross-organ biology and pathways to development of innovative drugs. Nature Reviews Drug Discovery (e-pub ahead of print) [PDF]​​

  • New Publication: Huang, S.*, Ng, N., Vaez, M., Hinz, B., Iona, L., Bozec, L. (2025): Collagen hybridizing peptides promote collagen fibril growth in vitro. ACS Applied Bio Materials 8(3): 2003-2014 [PDF]​

  • New Publication: Aubert, A., Goeres, J., Liu, A., Kao, M., Richardson, K.C., Jung, K., Hinz, B., Crawford, R.I., and Granville, D.J. (2025): Potential implications of granzyme B in keloids and hypertrophic scars through extracellular matrix remodeling and latent TGF-b activation. Frontiers in Immunology 15: 1484462 [PDF]​

  • New Publication: Hinz, B. (2025): Commentary: HIF-1 un-LOX mechanical mechanisms in psoriasis. Journal of Investigative Dermatology [PDF]

  • Farewell to Kazuki Nakayama. Hope you are having a good time and the only thing that is stressed are your tendon cells.

  • Congrats to the lab, well Boris, for another review being accepted, this time in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. Still could not beat Fereshteh’s Impact Factor high score but getting close with an IF of 112.28. But as we all know, the impact matters not the impact factor.

  • Congrats to Sophia Huang from Laurent Bozec’s group. Her paper with Boris’ modest contribution has just been accepted in for publication in ACS Applied Biomaterials.

  • Congrats Michael Diao for having his abstract submitted to the Wound Healing Society Meeting in May accepted for a short talk.

  • Welcome Alison Xie! Alison comes with a BSc from Western University and has supported the lab of Dr. Karina Carneiro over the past year. She will continue to do so but also spend and equivalent of 3d/week in our lab to provide general support.

  • Farewell Lorena Immler, star undergraduate from Reutlingen University. Thanks for all your contributions to the endeavors of the Hinz lab and all the best for your future career – bright and shiny it will be. Thanks also to Elham for your first-class coaching on the project!

  • Farewell Rachel Low and thanks a lot for all the great work. Hope you had a good time sniffing into technician work at the Hinz lab. All the best for your future endeavors in Sowmya Visvanathan's lab across campus!

  • Thanks everyone who joined the cross-country skiing trip organized by the Faculty of Dentistry. I can say with confidence that all who could not go really missed something.

  • Congrats to the Hinz lab for two more papers published! One collaboration with David Granville’s team at UBC – check it out, it’s on TGF-β1 activation. And one commentary written by Boris on an article published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology (JID) – check out the commentary and original papers, it’s on matrix stiffness.

  • Welcome to Usha Kabilan! Usha comes with a MSc in Biochemistry. But not directly. She has experience as a technical writer at Perkin Elmer and as a technician in several company settings, most recently with a Startup located in the Faculty of Dentistry.

  • Welcome to Kazuki Nakayama! Kazuki is a MSc course student in the lab of Dr. Takanori Kokubun at the Saitama Prefectural University, Japan. Kazuki is studying the mechanobiology of tendon fibroblasts (tenocytes) and aims to gain experience in our assays during a 3-months visit in the Hinzlab.

  • HAPPY NEW YEAR 2025! Too soon? Still hung-over?
    Check out our latest News from last year here:     Hinzlab News 2024.

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