On October 12^th, 2023 at 4.00 pm Prof. Paul Bourgine, Associate Professor at the University of Lund, will give a seminar on "Bone and blood: a mesenchymal connection" in DEIB Conference Room.

Bone is a complex Organ offering structural and mechanical support of our body, but also consisting in our principal hematopoietic center. The formation of Bone involves distinct stages, including cartilage, bone and bone marrow tissue establishment. During this seminar, we will discuss how tissue engineering and developmental biology can be combined in order to achieve the formation of human mini-bones. The approach can be exploited for the design of customized bone grafts supporting regeneration. In addition, we will describe how the human mini-bone technology can be used as a modelling platform for bone-developing cancers. Independently of the applications, we will highlight the pivotal role of Human mesenchymal stem cells in orchestrating tissue formation, hematopoietic support but also cancer development.

Paul studied Biotechnology at the Ecole Superieure de Biotechnologie de Strasbourg where he obtained his engineering diploma in 2010 after a stay at the Ragon Institute of Harvard, MIT and MGH (Boston, USA). Paul subsequently moved to Switzerland and received his Ph.D in Cell Biology from the University of Basel in 2013. After a three years post-doc at the Biosystem department of the ETH-Zürich, he opened his lab in 2018 at the faculty of medicine in Lund. Paul currently holds an associate professor position at the University of Lund, where he leads the Cell, Tissue & Organ engineering laboratory (www.bourginelab.com). As principal investigator, he has received prestigious national (Swedish Research foundation starting grant) and international support (ERC Starting grant, ERC Proof-of-Concept), and published in highly ranked journals including Science Translational Medicine, Advanced Materials, PNAS, Cell Stem Cell, Advanced Functional Materials, Trends in Biotechnology, Blood. His research aims at studying Bone as an organ system, understanding from a fundamental perspective how its constitutive tissues (bone, cartilage, marrow) form, interact and regenerate.