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Speaker: April Rose Foster, Senior Staff Scientist, Haniffa Group, Wellcome Sanger Institute, UK
April is a Senior Staff Scientist in the Haniffa Group working on understanding human skin during development and disease. Her focus is using multiomic approaches at scale to understand skin in these contexts and developing complex skin organoid models to investigate developmental processes and for disease modelling in comparison to human tissue.
Recent publications
Steele et al 2024, Nature Immunology. A single-cell and spatial genomics atlas of human skin fibroblasts reveals shared disease-related fibroblast subtypes across tissues https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-025-02267-8
Gopee, Winheim, Olabi et al 2024, Nature. A prenatal skin atlas reveals immune regulation of human skin morphogenesis https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08002-x
Websites
https://haniffalab.com/ https://www.sanger.ac.uk/group/haniffa-group/
https://www.sanger.ac.uk/programme/cellular-genetics/
Blogs
https://sangerinstitute.blog/2024/05/01/giving-science-a-new-skin/
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The hair-bearing skin organoid (SkO) is a complex 3D-model that faithfully recapitulates human skin and the key appendage structures. The SkO model develops over a 130-day differentiation protocol mimicking the key milestones seen in skin development in vivo. Therefore, this model opens new opportunities for conducting developmental and translational research in skin. However, one limitation is the lack of immune cells present. Here we present a co-culture system of SkO with macrophages to provide a foundation for investigating how macrophages influence skin development. We have generated single-cell RNAseq (scRNAseq) and spatial transcriptomics data to thoroughly characterise human skin cell populations across life-span. We utilised these datasets to compare the dynamic tempo of iPSC-derived SkO differentiation. SkO scRNAseq analysis revealed a paucity of endothelial cell heterogeneity compared to the diversity observed in prenatal skin which we suggest could be explained by the lack of immune cells present in SkOs. To investigate the functional importance of macrophages in vasculature formation, we generated 3D co-cultures of SkOs with macrophages derived from the same iPSC line. We investigated this by applying wholemount immunofluorescence of the SkO and macrophages co-culture using the endothelial cell marker CD31. This demonstrated that the presence of macrophages strikingly enhanced vascular network remodelling. In summary, we demonstrate a vital role of macrophages in skin morphogenesis, especially in the process of angiogenesis and vascular network organisation. In addition, we present the SkO co-culture model as an excellent complex model for investigating cell-cell interactions, and disease modelling for translational research in regenerative medicine and beyond.
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28 January 2026, 10:30 - 11:30 hrs
Location: route 924, George Padberg room, Entrance East, building J. M352.03.124
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No registration required.
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Ellen van den Bogaard, Dermatology (Radboudumc)
Huiqing (Jo) Zhou, Molecular developmental biology (RIMLS)/Human genetics (Radboudumc)
