Jody Rosenblatt - the Division of Biosciences Athena SWAN Patricia Clarke Lecture

Jody Rosenblatt is Professor of Cell Biology in the Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine at King’s College who has recently moved her lab from the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah. During her Ph.D. at the University of California, San Francisco with Dr. Timothy Mitchison, she studied actin filament turnover and as a post-doc at the MRC-LMCB at University College London, she discovered epithelial cell extrusion, a process that eliminates dying cells without forming any gaps. Her lab studies how epithelia maintain constant cell numbers through cell death and cell division and have found that mechanical forces control each process; when cells become too crowded, they extrude some cells that later die and when cells are too sparse stretch activates cells to rapidly divide. Surprisingly, both opposing processes require the same stretch-activated calcium channel, Piezo1, depending on the force encountered. Extrusion is critical for regulating epithelial cell number, as they find that aggressive metastatic cancers result from defective extrusion signaling. Here, we show how the pathological crowding associated with an asthma attack causes so much extrusion, that it destroys that airway barrier causing the ensuing inflammation and the airway remodelling that causes subsequent infections. By blocking the extrusion pathway, we now may have a better approach to prevent all these symptoms. 

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Click here to join the Biosciences Athena SWAN Patricia Clarke lecture

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The UCL Division of Biosciences Athena SWAN Patricia Clarke lecture series is held in honour of Patricia Clarke, FRS - a distinguished Professor of Microbial Biochemistry at UCL and a tireless advocate for advancing women’s careers in science.