Our partners and collaborators

Dr Jufen Liu, Peking University, China

Jufen uses population-based surveillance data, case-control studies and large prospective cohort studies in China to identify genetic and teratogenic risk factors for congenital malformations.

 

Dr Shiladitya Banerjee, Carnegie Mellon, USA

Shila is a physicist whose group has developed computational models of wound healing. We are currently collaborating to study similarities (and differences) between wound closure and neural tube closure.

 

Prof Nicola Elvassore, University of Padova, Italy

We are collaborating with Nicola’s lab to develop embryo tissue-level force sensors.

 

Dr Silvia Todros, University of Padova, Italy
Silvia’s group focuses on the mechanics of biological tissues and computational biomechanics. We are currently collaborating to quantify the closure forces exerted by embryonic tissues during the process of neural tube closure via computational modelling of live-imaged sequences.

 

Prof Andrew Copp, UCL GOS ICH, London

Andy and Nick (below) are world-leading experts in neural tube biology whose groups are co-located at the Institute of Child Health. Work Andy published in 1991 arguably established the importance of biomechanics in mouse neural tube closure. He showed that inserting a human eyelash into tissues under the closing neural tube could straighten the tail and promote closure in a specific mouse model of spina bifida. We have co-authored several papers on skeletal as well as neural tube biology.

 

Prof Nicholas Green, UCL GOS ICH, London

Nick is a long-standing local collaborator with whose group we have published several papers. Most recently, we collaborated on a mechanistic study testing the importance of surface ectoderm (future skin) biomechanics in closure of the neural tube.

 

Dr Paula Alexandre, UCL GOS ICH, London

Paula’s group focuses on the formation of neurons, which comes after neural tube closure. We have collaborated to study the synchronicity of cell shape change with division and the spatial regulation of neuron differentiation.

 

Dr Isabel Orriss, Royal Veterinary College, London

Our groups are collaborating to study the roles of planar cell polarity signalling in the formation and maintenance of the skeleton. This builds on our previous publication showing that mutations in genes involved in this pathway which increase the risk of spina bifida independently impoverish bone structure.