January 22, 2025. A collaboration led by Kazunori Hoshino lab in UConn Storrs, Kshitiz lab at CCAM tested how human endometrial cells change their mechanics in anticipation of decidualization. A recent paper published in Advanced Materials Technologies describes how cells become stiffer, but amazingly, when cells from placenta interact with them, they reverse this stiffening.

January 21, 2025. Dr. Ji Yu is part of the team that recently published PNAS paper on how CFTR impacts monocyte adhesion. Mutations in CFTR contribute to inflammatory pathogenesis of cystic fibrosis. The study utilized super-resolution microscopy to show that the mutations caused defects in integrin clustering but not their activations.

January 20, 2025. Dr. Eran Agmon, in collaboration with the Allen Institute for Cell Science, published a manuscript in the journal microPublication on “Comparing simulations of actin filament compression reveals tradeoff between computational cost and capturing supertwist”.

January 4, 2025. Kshitiz lab has been drawing parallels between MFI to cancer (which are your own cells transformed) and the non-cancer cells of your body. The paper published in Cells & Development shows how the placental cells reverse the mother’s defenses and let themselves be invaded by the fetal cells. Specifically, the maternal cells lay down a lot of matrix, but the wily placental cells signal to them to reverse these defenses.

December 14-18, 2024. CCAM faculty attended the American Society of Cell Biology Annual Meeting 2024 in San Diego. Michael Blinov and Margaret Johnson (John Hopkins University) led the session on Biophysical Modeling of the Cell on December 14th. On December 15th, Leslie Loew, Ann Cowan, Stephan Hoops (U Virginia) taught COPASI and VCell tutorials during the workshop on
Mathematical Modeling for Cell Biology.