Maria Cristina Garrone
Academic and Work Experience Prior to Sept 2020 Programme Start
I completed my undergraduate degree at King’s College London, graduating with a BSc Biochemistry degree. As part of my bachelor’s degree, I joined Rocio Sancho’s lab for a summer research placement to work on the development of iPSC-derived pancreas organoid cell lines to investigate the role of pro-endocrine transcription factors regulating pancreas differentiation. For my final year thesis, I joined the Knight lab to study the role of the histone methyltransferase Ezh2 in tissue repair and organogenesis using a zebrafish in vivo model.
PhD Programme- Year 1- MRes and Project Rotations
During my first year of the Wellcome Trust ‘Advanced Therapies and Regenerative Medicine’ Four-Year PhD Programme I experienced different aspects of stem cell research. For my first rotation, I joined Dr. Eugene Makeyev’s Lab to investigate how long noncoding RNAs contribute to the maintenance of pluripotency and to the differentiation of pluripotent stem cells into neurons. In my second rotation, I was supervised by Prof. Francesca Spagnoli, I studied the mechanism driving direct lineage reprogramming of hepatocytes into pancreatic cells and its application in cell-replacement therapies. Lastly, in my third rotation in Dr. Rocio Sancho’s lab I focused on dissecting the heterogeneity of iPSC-derived pancreas organoids to better elucidate the differentiation potential of each population. Overall, the rotations taught me how to work with different cell lines, imaging tools and molecular biology assays and allowed me to develop skills in bioinformatics which I had no previous experience with.
PhD Programme- Years 2 to 4- Doctoral Studies
For my thesis project I will be supervised by Dr Rocio Sancho and Dr Alan Hodgkinson. This project focuses on modelling Congenital Hyperinsulinism (CHI), a rare monogenic disorder that leads to recurrent hypoglycaemia in new-borns due to endocrine β-cell dysfunction. By recapitulating this disorder in vitro using patient derived induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSCs), I will investigate the effects of specific genetic variants during pancreas development, β-cell maturation and function.
