Fantastic surprise to have Reinhard Fässler visit Lund to talk about kindlins, integrins and mitosis.

Big first for our lab on Friday as Wesley became its first PhD graduate. Congrats Wesley and a big thanks to an amazing committee including @bengoult.bsky.social (opponent), @sciezgin.bsky.social , Gunilla Westergren-Thorsson, Catharina Hagerling and Daniel Engelbertsen.

🚨🚨🚨Come and join us at the Wallenberg Center for Molecular Medicine- tenure track positions in broad areas of 1)basic research and 2)advanced therapy in regenerative medicine.
🚨Deadline Feb 10th. DM me if you have any questions
lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/...
lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

Mechanistically, using antibodies, inhibitors etc, Kabilan found that this process of in-situ stiffening induced ECM remodelling and invasion of normal mammary acini was driven by beta1 integrin-FAK-Piezo1 pathway with Piezo1 specifically being downstream of integrin activation and signalling.

Kabilan then followed the process of in-situ stiffening induced changes in acini morphology and ECM properties over time and found interesting and "dynamic" changes in relative ECM enrichment which coincided with different stages of growth and the onset of invasion

Interestingly, he found several differences in basement membrane and ECM(Fibronectin) enrichment and organisation between acini embedded in in-situ stiffened gels compared to acini formed from single MCF10A cells embedded in stiff gels from Day 1 (see below)