The Cancer Research UK Convergence Science Centre brings you:
Future Leaders – giving a platform to our PhD students to present their research, and share their experience of navigating between disciplines and finding their scientific identity as convergence researchers.
23rd November 15.00-16.00
Please join us for an online seminar on Thursday 23rd November, from 15.00-16.00 where you will hear a talk from:
Dr Amanda Foust – Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London
“Voltage imaging reveals the dynamic electrical signatures of human breast cancer cells”
Although cancer cells feature depolarized resting membrane voltage (Vm) known to factor directly in their pathophysiology, relatively little is known about their Vm dynamics. Our high-throughput, cellular-resolution Vm imaging platform revealed that Vm fluctuates in several breast cancer cell lines compared to non-tumorigenic MCF-10A cells. The Vm of MDA-MB-231 cells exhibited spontaneous, transient hyperpolarizations suppressed by voltage-gated sodium channel and calcium-activated potassium channel inhibitors. The Vm of MCF-10A cells was comparatively static, but fluctuations increased following treatment with transforming growth factor-β1. Our Vm imaging platform provides a high throughput, cellular resolution characterization of heterogeneous cancer cell electrical phenotypes.
Amanda Foust leads the Optical Neurophysiology Laboratory and is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London. She holds a BSci in Computational Neuroscience from Washington State University, and MPhil and PhD degrees in Neuroscience from Yale University. An expert in neuronal voltage imaging, Amanda recently completed a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship and is an Associate Editor for SPIE Neurophotonics. The aim of her research programme is to engineer bridges between optical technologies and physiologists to acquire ground-breaking data on how cells communicate electrically.
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Professor Victoria Sanz-Moreno – Division of Breast Cancer Research, Institute of Cancer Research
“Organelles take centre stage: secretory, nuclear and mitochondrial dynamics in metastatic cancer cells”
Abstract TBC
Victoria Sanz-Moreno received a degree in chemistry and later in biochemistry (University of Oviedo, Spain) followed by a PhD in chemical sciences studying Ras-MAPK signalling (University of Cantabria). In 2011, Victoria started her independent group and received a CRUK Career Development Fellowship at King’s College London to study transcriptional programs driving metastasis. In 2015, she was highly commended as CRUK Communications and Brand Ambassador. In 2017, she was awarded the BSCB Women in Cell Biology Early Career Award Medal and she received a CRUK Senior Fellowship to study the role of Rho kinase in cancer progression and therapy responses. In September 2023, Victoria’s lab moved to the Breast Cancer Now Toby Robins Research Centre at The Institute of Cancer Research. Her lab is interested in deciphering how metastatic cancer cells interact with their microenvironment while evading anti-cancer therapies while the ultimate goal is to find anti-metastasis therapies.
Registration
To receive information about how to access this event please email icr-imperial-convergence.centre@imperial.ac.uk
Please note: This webinar is exclusively available only to colleagues across the Institute of Cancer Research, Imperial College London, the Royal Marsden Hospital and Imperial College Healthcare.