News

The inaugural meeting has been a great success! For more information please click this link:

https://isrbio.org/Vienna

The ISRB is happy to announce its 2023 Award Winners.  The 2023 awards will be presented at the Inaugural ISRB meeting in Vienna, Austria September 3-6, 2023. 

Recipients will receive medals and will give an award lecture on Day 2 of the meeting. 

The Lifetime Achievement Award, for lasting and impactful scientific contributions that have shaped regenerative biology research, is awarded to:

Kiyokazu Agata, PhD

National Institute for Basic Biology, Japan

Dr. Agata first became interested in tissue regeneration studying lens regeneration as an undergraduate in the 1970’s, and he has been a leader in investigation of regeneration in planarian flatworms for the past three decades. He is recognized for establishing fundamental methodologies in this system, and among other findings his group has identified molecular mechanisms underlying control of brain regeneration and of whole-animal polarity during regeneration. His discoveries, including how positional information is organized and how signaling gradients may act to impart positional values, broadly relate to stem cell and regenerative biology across species. He has made great efforts to advance the field of regenerative biology, and its applied sister field of regenerative medicine, and he has a long history in representation of academic societies and organization of international activities. He has been a dedicated advisor to junior scientists throughout his career, and his mentoring record includes oversight of 33 PhD theses.

The Rising Star Award, for early career researchers charting new directions and making novel scientific contributions in regenerative biology research is awarded to:

Anjali Kusumbe, PhD

University of Oxford

Dr. Kusumbe received her PhD after training with Sharmilla Bapat at National Centre for Cell Science in Pune, India, to study cancer stem cell properties during tumor development. As a postdoctoral fellow with Ralf Adams at Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine, she led multiple high-profile studies that identified regulatory effects of vascular tissue on key progenitors of bone and blood. An exciting recent study from her own lab, which she has run at Oxford since 2017, demonstrated the presence of lymphatic vessels in bone, and it described mechanisms by which these cells can control bone and hematopoietic tissue regeneration. Dr. Kusumbe has received many prestigious early career awards, and her innovative program is changing the way we think about bone aging, disease, and regeneration

The ISRB Rising Star and Lifetime Achievement awards were presented at the EMBO Workshop meeting "The molecular and cellular basis of regeneration and tissue repair" September 27, 2022 in Barcelona, Spain. 

ISRB Lifetime Achievement Award Winner, Jeremy Brockes, Ph.D.

ISRB Rising Star Award Winner, Mayssa Mokalled, Ph.D.

ISRB Rising Star Award Winner, Purushothama Tata, Ph.D.

ISRB is expanding its webinar offerings to include three monthly webinars from the following regions:

Zone 1: East and South Asia Committee (Webinar will be the first week of every month)

Zone 2: Europe, West Asia, Africa Committee (Webinar will be the second week of every month)

Zone 3: The Americas Committee (Webinar will be the third week of every month)

Details forthcoming. Please check back with us in the coming weeks for additional details.  We hope you can join us!

The ISRB is happy to announce its 2022 Award Winners. The 2022 awards will be presented at the EMBO Workshop“The molecular and cellular basis for tissue regeneration and repair” September 26-30, Barcelona, Spain.

Recipients will receive medals and will give an award lecture on Day 2 of the meeting.

The Lifetime Achievement Award, for lasting and impactful scientific contributions that have shaped regenerative biology research, is awarded to:

Jeremy Brockes, PhD, FRS
University College London

Dr. Brockes investigated salamander limb regeneration over a period spanning three decades and is recognized for his many groundbreaking contributions to regenerative biology. A few of these discoveries include mechanisms underlying cellular plasticity in the blastema, the determination of positional identity, and the molecular basis for nerve dependence during regeneration. He has shaped ideas within our field on the aforementioned areas and notably on the topic of regeneration as an evolutionary variable, introducing the notion that regeneration may involve a degree of local evolution. Dr. Brockes made pioneering contributions in other fields as well, including the discovery of glial growth factor. He has an outstanding record of sustained mentorship of his trainees, resulting in many successful PIs in developmental and regenerative biology, and he is recognized for his mentorship of scientists outside of his own lab who would go on to prominence. Finally, Dr. Brockes has had a strong commitment to teaching, doing so voluntarily for several decades, and becoming a favourite among UCL undergrads.

The Rising Star Award, for early career researchers charting new directions and making novel scientific contributions in regenerative biology research, is awarded to:

Mayssa Mokalled, PhD
Assistant Professor of Developmental Biology
Washington University School of Medicine

Dr. Mokalled had a highly productive graduate career training with Eric Olson at University of Texas, Southwestern in the topic of transcriptional regulation during mammalian development and regeneration. As a postdoctoral fellow with Ken Poss at Duke University, she initiated studies of spinal cord regeneration in zebrafish, finding in a major paper that production of connective tissue growth factor at the injury site is essential for glial bridging and spinal cord regeneration in zebrafish. Dr. Mokalled has run her own lab at Washington University for 5 years. One of her key early studies demonstrated that epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) of glial progenitors is an important stage in spinal cord regeneration. Using high-throughput CRISPR-Cas9 mutagenesis and transcriptome comparisons between zebrafish and mice, her group identified an EMT-related gene regulatory network that underlies glial bridging and functional regeneration. Dr. Mokalled's cross-species program is making strong inroads into countering the molecular burdens of spinal cord injury.

And:

Purushothama Tata, PhD
Assistant Professor of Cell Biology
Duke University School of Medicine

Dr. Tata received his PhD from University of Ulm for work with Drs. Sirbu and Kuhn on developmental signaling. His first major achievement, as a postdoc with Jay Rajagopal at Massachusetts General Hospital, was to demonstrate that fully differentiated airway epithelial cells can convert into functional stem cells after injury. Soon after starting his own lab at Duke University in 2016, he showed that stem cells of submucosal glands can behave as a reparative population to resurface denuded airways. In the alveolar gas exchange region of the lung, he discovered that the differentiation of cuboidal Type 2 stem cells into large, flat Type I cells involves a novel p53-expressing transitional cell state. These transitional cells produce profibrotic factors, implicating their abnormal persistence in tissue fibrosis, including lethal pulmonary fibrosis. Dr. Tata also solved a longstanding practical problem by identifying culture condition for propagating Type 2 cell stem cells, opening avenues for translational studies, including Sars-Cov-2 infection. Mostly recently, he has identified new cell types and lineage relationships specific to the primate and human distal lung, providing yet another new perspective on human lung biology. Dr. Tata’s innovative work on the lung has broad relevance to other organ systems and to the field of regenerative biology at large. 

ISRB Regeneration Around the World 2022

Our webinar series has now been launched. These are free events open to all. We will run them with different time zones to be as geographically inclusive as possible. We have set up a calendar, subscribe here if you want the webinars to appear in your calendar. There is both google and iCal formats below.

Google calendar:

https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0?cid=Y18xMnYyZTN2c2tyNW1tamIxcWNqOG5lczJtOEBncm91cC5jYWxlbmRhci5nb29nbGUuY29t

iCal (Mac calendar)

https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/c_12v2e3vskr5mmjb1qcj8nes2m8%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

ISRB Meeting Final Schedule

Day 1 – April 8, 2021 (all times are US East Coast time)

9:00      Welcome and Introduction of ISRB: Ken Poss, Duke University, USA, President ISRB (10 min)

9:10      Invited Speaker: Tatiana Sandoval Guzman, Center for Regenerative Therapies, Germany (20 min)

Post-embryonic development and regeneration of the appendicular skeleton 

in Ambystoma mexicanum

9:30      Miguel Salinas Saavedra, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland (15 min)

Mechanisms of cellular reprogramming in cnidarian whole body regeneration.

9:45      Hadil El-Sammak, Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research, Germany (15 min)

Vegfc signaling promotes coronary revascularization during cardiac regeneration in zebrafish

10:00    Keynote Speaker: Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado, Stowers Institute, USA (40 min)

  Regeneration: a conceptual leap in our understanding of biology

10:40    Duygu Ozpolat, Marine Biological Labratory, USA (15 min)

                        Germ cell regeneration in Annelids

10:55    Olivia Justynski, Yale, USA (15 min)

                        Cellular contributions to skin wound repair.

11:10    Invited Speaker: Andrea Wills, University of Washington, USA (20 min)

Chromatin accessibility and single-cell transcriptomics reveal new regulators of regeneration

in natural progenitors.

11:30    Faculty-mentored break-out discussions 

           
           
Day 2 – April 9, 2021 (all times are US East Coast time) 

9:00      Welcome & vision: Elly Tanaka, Institute of Molecular Pathology, Austria President-elect ISRB (10 min)

9:10      Invited Speaker: Chen-Hui Chen, Academia Sinica, Taiwan (20 min)

What can zebrafish tailfins tell us about complex tissue regeneration?

9:30      Bruno Guillotin, New York University, USA (15 min)

Checkpoints in cellular programming during root regeneration: a single cell resolution

9:45      Anna Czarkwiani, Center for Regenerative Therapies, Germany (15 min)

De novo thymus regeneration in a vertebrate, the axolotl

10:00    Invited Speaker: Michalis Averof, Institute of Functional Genomics of Lyon, France (20 min)

How faithful is regeneration?

10:20    Tisha Bohr, Cornell University, USA (15 min)

Planarian stem cells sense the identity of the missing pharynx to launch

it’s targeted regeneration

10:35    Melanie Worley, University of California, Berkely, USA (15 min)

Transcriptional program that is necessary for regeneration but dispensable for development

Drosophila 

10:50    Keynote Speaker: Freda Miller, University of British Columbia (40 min)

Regeneration at Your Fingertips: Molecular Mechanisms underlying Mammalian

Regeneration

11:30 Presentation of the Society, Ken Poss, President ISRB, and Elly Tanaka ISRB President Elect/Open

Society Discussion

Dear Colleagues,

Warm wishes! We would like to draw your attention to a new society being launched this year to promote science for tissue regeneration, the International Society for Regenerative Biology (ISRB). Its core mission is to provide new opportunities for interactions, discoveries, and recognition for scientists at all stages who are interested in regenerative biology.

The formal launch will be at a virtual meeting from 2pm to 5pm UK time this April 8 and 9. This concise meeting will serve as a membership launch and chance to see great talks on regeneration. Fees to join are low.

Please take a moment and look at the website, isrbio.org, which links to the April meeting website( https://sites.google.com/view/isrb-2021/home ). We also describe the ISRB in an Editorial published in Development  (https://dev.biologists.org/content/148/3/dev199474?etoc). I hope many of you will consider joining the ISRB and encourage your trainees to join and participate. 

It would be fantastic to see you and your lab members there in April!

Sincerely,

Ken Poss, Duke University

Elly Tanaka, Research Institute of Molecular Pathology, Vienna

Sabine Eming, University of Cologne

Henry Roehl, University of Sheffield

Please join us at @ISRB on twitter for regenerative biology news, images and more.