After many months of persuasion, Lucas published his semi-automated quantification tool that he developed over 3 years of quantification of thousands of sc-islets and pancreatic sections. His tool is now available both in GitHUB and as a manuscript (currently as…
Can Sex Difference shape glucose regulation? by Shayla Sharmine This week’s journal club focuses on a study from Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications (2025) exploring the protective role of estrogen in glucose regulation. To explore the impact of sex difference,…
High fructose diet in early life is bad by Ulrik Larsen Inspired by a lab member constantly theorizing about HNF1A and the brain, I came across a study on how early-life high fructose exposure affects brain development, focusing on microglia…
by Lucas Unger Yang et al. demonstrate that HHEX is a lineage-restricting transcription factor essential for pancreas specification from foregut progenitors. Through CRISPR-Cas9 loss-of-function screening combined with hiPSC differentiation and single-cell multiomics, the study reveals that deletion of HHEX diverts…
Wishing good luck to Ulrik having his midway evaluation today! Thesis Title: “Mouse-ing around with islet cells: unveiling the tissue repair puzzle” Examining committee Internal examiner 1: Prof. Bjørn Tore Gjertsen Internal examiner 2: Dr. Heidrun Vethe Supervisors Simona Chera,…
by Fatemeh Rahmatabadi This study by Hirosawa et al. investigates the effect of the p38 MAPK inhibitor SB202190 on acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells. While p38 signaling is typically associated with stress responses and growth inhibition, treatment of AML cell…
Camille Belliard, currently pursuing an engineering degree in biotechnology at ENSTBB (Bordeaux INP) started a 4-months summer internship in our lab (June-September 2025). She will work with Lucas and Agnes on reprogramming T1D patient fibroblasts into iPSC and their differentiation…
by Thomas Aga Legøy In traditional toxicology, the focus has been on evaluating the adverse effects of individual chemicals and establishing safe exposure levels. However, there is a growing recognition that real-world exposures involve complex mixtures of chemicals, which may…
by Kaykobad Hossain Carcinomas are the most prevalent form of cancer, which is characterized by malignancies of epithelial tissues. Bladder cancer, one of the costliest cancers to treat, is ideal to investigate epithelial morphogenesis at early stages of tumorigenesis due…
Something positive about Norwegian winter? Cold memories control whole-body thermoregulatory responses by Ulrik Larsen Exposure to cold induces long-lasting changes in physiology that persist beyond the cold period itself. This study investigates the cellular and molecular mechanisms of this phenomenon,…
by Lucas Unger This study explores the development of a potential universal antivenom by combining monoclonal antibodies with a small-molecule inhibitor. By isolating antibodies from a hyperimmune human donor with extensive venom exposure (Tim Friede, who injected himself over 800…
Shayla Sharmine and I had the opportunity to write an editorial about recent work published in Acta Physiologica on the role of Decorin on pancreatic islets. Shayla did a really great job on generating a nice figure summarising the published…
by Fatemeh Rahmatabadi This article by Sosa et al. explores the biology of disseminated tumor cells (DTCs), which are central to cancer relapses and metastasis. DTCs can spread early during tumor development—even from non-invasive lesions—and persist in distant organs such…