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OCTOBER - DECEMBER 2020

Have a Great Holiday Period and Happy New Year 2021!

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  • New Publication: Godbout, E., Son, D.O. (co first-authors), Hume, S., Boo, S., Sarrazy, V., Clément, S., Kapus, A., Wehrle-Haller, B., Bruckner-Tuderman, L., Has, C., and Hinz, B. (2020) Kindlin-2 Controls Mechanical Activation of Cardiac Myofibroblasts. Cells 17;9(12):2702.

  • New Publication: Auler, M., Bergmeier, V., Bengestrate, L., Georgieva, V., Frie, C., Eckes, B., Hinz, B., and Brachvogel, B. (2020): miR-127-3p is an epigenetic activator of myofibroblast senescence situated within the miRNA enriched Dlk1-Dio3 imprinted domain on mouse chromosome 12. Journal of Investigative Dermatology.

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  • Congrats to our collaborators from Phenomic AI ride a wave of success! For a recent press release on their work to discover therapies targeted against cancer associated fibroblasts (myofibroblasts, basically), click here. 

  • Congrats to Donna Son and alumni Elena Godbout for their shared co-authorship on the legendary kindlin-2 paper, accepted by “Cells”. Generations of Hinz lab members have seen and/or suffered on this study – Elena conceived, Stellar nurtured, and Donna completed!

  • Congrats to Ronen Schuster for having been recruited by Phenomic AI starting December 1, 2020. At the same time, we say farewell knowing that you will be a regular visitor of the lab.

  • A belated farewell and congrats to Pardis Pakshir for her official start with Ripple Therapeutics in September. These are two Mitacs success stories of Accelerate fellowships turning into full-time employments.

  • Welcome to Michael (Li) Diao who will start as LTRR post-doc in December. Michael comes with a 2019 PhD from the lab of Marc Jeschke at the Sunnybrook Hospital Burn Centre but has a history as Attending Surgeon at the Center of Burn and Plastic Surgery, You’anmen Hospital, Beijing).

  • Congrats to LTRR visiting alumni Markus Auler for his paper accepted by the JID. Now we know how and why myofibroblasts get old.

JULY - SEPTEMBER 2020

  • New Publication: Worrell, J.C., Walsh, S.M., Fabre, A., Kane, R., Hinz, B., Keane, M.P. (2020): CXCR3A regulates pulmonary fibroblast phenotype and lung injury response. American Journal of Physiology-Cell Physiology.

  • New Publication: Sindhu, K.R.*, Bansode, N., Remy, M., Morel, C., Bareille, R., Hagedorn, M., Hinz, B., Barthélémy, P., Chassande, O., and Boiziau, C. (2020): Proangiogenic supramolecular gels through biodegradation. Acta Biomaterialia S1742-7061(20): 30472-4.

  • New Publication: Pakshir, P., Noskovicova, N., Lodyga, M., Son, D.O., Schuster, R., Goodwin, A., Karvonen, H., and Hinz, B. (2020): The myofibroblast at a glance. Journal of Cell Science 133(13): jcs227900

  • Welcome back to Toronto, Boris! After an unusual and prematurely terminated sabbatical year, Boris is back in town. Thanks a lot to Fabio Rossi and his team at UBC for the kind reception in Vancouver. If only we had more opportunities to meet physically.

  • Congrats to Maya Ezzo for receiving the Jaro Sodek Memorial Award from the Faculty of Dentistry.

  • Congrats to LTRR alumni Sindhu Kr for publishing her implant coating work in Acta Biomaterialia.

  • Congrats to Maya Ezzo for winning an Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS)!

  • Welcome Eric Chu! Eric is coming with a bachelor degree from McMaster University and will work as a Laboratory Assistant in the LTRR.

APRIL - JUNE 2020

  • The moment we have all been waiting for: The Faculty of Dentistry research labs will reopen on Thursday July 2! Phase 1, here we come.

  • Click HERE and check out this interview with Boris Hinz on COVID-19 and possible implications for fibrosis.

  • Congrats to the Hinz Lab and honorary lab member Amanda Goodwin for a publication accepted by the Journal of Cell Science providing a glance on the current state of myofibroblast biology. Publication information will be provided in the next news section - embargo, you know....

  • Congratulations to Fereshteh Younesi for having been awarded with a Mary H. Beatty Fellowship from the University of Toronto School of Graduate Studies as part of the OGS competition. She was one of 22 international students across all UofT receiving this highly competitive award.

  • Congrats to Boris Hinz for becoming Academic Editor-in-Chief of the journal Wound Repair and Regeneration (WRR). The WRR is the official journal of the Wound healing Society (WHS), the European Tissue Repair Society (ETRS), and the Australasian Wound and Tissue Repair Society (AWTRS).

  • Congrats again to Boris Hinz for more honor and possibly even more work after accepting a call to serve on the Editorial board of the journal Experimental Dermatology. Experimental Dermatology is the official Journal of the European Immuno-dermatology Society and the Australian Hair and Wool Research Society.

  • Congrats to Monika Lodyga for moving up! Monika has been offered and accepted a position as Flow Cytometry Facility manger at St. Michael’s Hospital. Unfortunately, ‘moving up’ means ‘moving out’ for our lab. Monika was with us for more than 7 years and instrumental for the lab’s functioning.

  • Farewell Monika, thanks a million for the great time and all the wonderful things you did. You will be dearly missed at all possible levels, management, scientifically, personally, spiritually; you create a word and add ‘ally’.

  • While saying goodbye to Monika, we welcome Ziv Roth as a new senior post-doc to the lab. Ziv is post-doc in the lab of Sergio Grinstein at SickKids and will take over one of Monika's numerous high-level projects.

  • By July 1, the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering (IBBME) will be changing its name to Institute of Biomedical Engineering (BME) at the University of Toronto. 

JANUARY - MARCH 2020

  • New Publication: Ireland, R.G., Kibschull, M., Audet, J., Ezzo, M.; Hinz, B., Lye, S.J., and Simmons, C. (2020): Combinatorial extracellular matrix microarray identifies novel bioengineered substrates for xeno-free culture of human pluripotent stem cells. Biomaterials.

  • The Corona virus hitting pretty much every aspect of human life in Canada and around the world is certainly the biggest news this issue. There were obvious effects on lab routine during the month of March like shutting down all operations and working from home. There are and will be ripple effects of the crisis. For instance, our international visitors Magda and Raquel had to cancel their travel plans to join our lab. 

  • Congratulations to Maya Ezzo for her co-authorship on a publication from Craig Simmons' lab in Biomaterials.

  • Congratulations to Magdalena Plotczyk for having been awarded a UK-Canada Globalink Doctoral Exchange Scheme Award. Magda comes from the lab of Claire Higgins (Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London) and was planned to join us from 22.06.2020-11.09.2020. Delayed until further notice - ultimately cancelled.

  • Thank-you to Jennifer Guo (Ronen) and Melanie Kiebalo (Monika) for representing our lab so well at the annual Faculty of Dentistry Research day.

  • Congratulations to Melanie Kiebalo for winning Undergraduate 1st Prize - Poster competition at Research Day!

  • Congratulations to Gertraud Eylert (honorary Hinz lab member) on her co-first author publication in Biofabrication which contains work from her MSc project: Cheng RY, Eylert G, Gariepy JM, He S, Ahmad H, Gao Y, Priore S, Hakimi N, Jeschke MG, Günther A. Handheld instrument for wound-conformal delivery of skin precursor sheets improves healing in full-thickness burns. Biofabrication. 2020 Feb 3;12(2):025002.

  • Farewell to Charlotte Geck, hopefully Toronto has made a mark in your scientific heart, we all know that you will be back.

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