Speakers and organizing committee

An Zwijsen

An Zwijsen is VIB group leader in the Department of Molecular and Developmental Genetics (VIB11) and in the Center for Human Genetics of the University of Leuven. She received her PhD in 1995 at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. She was an EMBO and ESF post-doctoral fellow in the group of Christine Mummery (Hubrecht Laboratory, Utrecht, The Netherlands). She joined Danny Huylebroeck in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology (Celgen) (VIB, University of Leuven, Belgium) in mid-1997. In 2007, she established the Laboratory of Developmental Signaling. Her research focuses on Smad-mediated TGFb/BMP signaling in the mouse embryo. An Zwijsen has a long-standing interest in gastrulation, angiogenesis, and amnion development and stem cells.

An Zwijsen's lab webpage

Caroline Hill

Caroline Hill is a senior scientist at Cancer Research UK London Research Institute. She studied for her PhD in the laboratory of Jean Thomas at the University of Cambridge, UK. After receiving her PhD in 1989 she carried out postdoctoral studies in the same lab before moving in 1991 to Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London, UK to work on the regulation of c-fos gene expression by growth factors with Richard Treisman. In 1995 she set up her own lab at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, London, UK and moved to Cancer Research UK London Research Institute in 1998. Her research focuses on signalling by TGF-b superfamily members in early vertebrate development and cancer.

Caroline Hill's lab webpage

Christine Mummery

Christine Mummery studied Physics and has a PhD in Biophysics from the University of London. She received a postdoctoral fellowship from the Royal Society (UK) for research at the Hubrecht Institute where she became group leader and in 2002, Professor of Developmental Biology. Her research concerned mouse development and differentiation of mouse and human embryonic stem cells. She pioneered studies differentiating and characterizing cardiomyocytes from human embryonic stem cells and was among the first to inject them in mouse heart and assess their effect on myocardial infarction. In 2008 she was appointed chair of the Department of Anatomy and Embryology, Leiden University Medical Centre. Here she continues research on heart development and the differentiation of pluripotent human cells into the cardiac and vascular lineages. Immediate interest of her lab is on using stem cell derived cardiomyocytes and vascular cells as disease models, for drug discovery and future cardiac repair. In 2007, she spent sabbatical leave as a joint Harvard Stem Cell Institute/Radcliffe fellow. She presently serves on Ethical Councils of the Netherlands Academy of Science and Ministry of Health, providing specialized advice on human embryos and stem cell research. She is a member of several Scientific Advisory Boards and has written a popular book on stem cells. Christine Mummery is also editor/ editorial board member of Stem Cell Research, Cell Stem Cells, Stem Cells and Differentiation, elected member of the board of ISSCR and president elect of the International Society of Differentiation.

Eileen M Shore

Eileen M Shore, PhD is an Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in the Departments of Orthopaedic Surgery and Genetics, and the Co-Director of the Center for Research in FOP and Related Disorders. She is Scientific Advisor to the International Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (FOP) Association and the Progressive Osseous Heteroplasia (POH) Association. She is the current President of the Advances in Mineral Metabolism (AIMM) Board of Directors and the organizer of the AIMM/ASBMR John Haddad Young Investigator annual meeting. Dr. Shore was awarded her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania (Cell and Molecular Biology) which was followed by post-doctoral training in cell biology at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. She applies her experience in molecular biology and genetics to her research interests in cell differentiation and development and their roles in human genetic disease, primarily FOP and POH. Dr. Shore’s work led to the discovery of the mutated genes in both conditions. She currently investigates the cellular targets and molecular pathways involved in induction of bone formation with the goal of developing treatments for these and other more common bone disorders.

Eileen M Shore's lab webpage

Elizabeth Robertson FRS

Liz Robertson received her B.A. (Hons) in Zoology from the University of Oxford in 1978, and Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1982.  She was a post-doc in the Department of Genetics at Cambridge from 1982 to 1988, where she worked on characterization of embryonic stem cells, showing they could reliably colonize the germ line of chimeric mice. Liz was an Assistant and then Associate Professor at Columbia University Medical School, New York from 1988 to 1992. In 1992 she was recruited to Harvard University as the Herchel Smith Professor of Molecular Genetics.  In 2004 she returned to the UK and is currently a Wellcome Trust Principal Fellow and Professor of Developmental Biology at the University of Oxford. Liz's research has primarily focussed on the roles that TGFb signalling pathways play in regulating axis formation and organogenesis in the developing mouse embryo.

Liz Robertson's lab webpage

Elaine Dzierzak

Elaine Dzierzak studied biology at the University of Illlinois (BSc) and received her PhD in Biology from Yale University. She did her postdoctoral training at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and was the first to demonstrate the expression of a retrovirally transduced therapeutic gene in hematopoietic cells after bone marrow stem cell transplantation. As a Staff Scientist at the National Institute for Medical Research (London), she changed the long-held textbook dogma of the yolk sac origins of the adult hematopoietic system, showing that adult-type hematopoietic stem cells are generated from the embryonic aorta. In 1996 she moved her research group to Erasmus Medical Center (Rotterdam), Dept. of Cell Biology where she is a Professor of Developmental Biology and also Director of the recently established Erasmus MC Stem Cell Institute. She is co-director of the new Netherlands Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Her most recent findings demonstrate that hematopoietic stem cells arise from embryonic vascular endothelial cells, are induced by developmental growth factors and mechanical stimulation at the onset of embryonic circulation, and can be harvested from human placentas normally discarded at birth. Elaine now aims to identify the molecules involved in the endothelial to hematopoietic transdifferentiation event and to generate patient-specific hematopoietic stem cells for clinical cell replacement therapies to treat blood-related genetic diseases and leukemias.

Enrique Gómez Barrena

Enrique Gómez-Barrena is Orthopaedic Surgeon, Professor and Chair, at the Faculty of Medicine of the University Autónoma of Madrid, Spain (www.uam.es), and the Hospital “Fundación Jimenez Díaz” (www.fjd.es). He obtained his MD at the University of Zaragoza, Spain (1987), his PhD at the University Autónoma of Madrid (1992), and completed his residency program in Orthopaedic Surgery at La Paz Hospital, Madrid, Spain (1992) followed by an Orthopaedic research fellowship at the Hospital for Special Surgery, New York, USA (1994). Since 2000, he parallels clinical and experimental reconstructive orthopaedic surgery and research in the biomaterials field, with particular interest in orthobiologics and bioceramics. He is involved in EU-funded clinical trials on the therapeutic efficacy of biomaterials with MSCs in various clinical targets.

Hari Reddi

A. Hari Reddi is a Professor and Director of Center for Tissue Regeneration and Repair at the University of California, Davis. He is the founder of the International Conferences on BMPs, starting 1994 while Hari was working at Johns Hopkins University. His current major focus is on the regeneration of articular cartilage based on morphogenetic signals, stem cells and scaffolds. He has been continuously working on BMPs for over 40 years at the University of Chicago, the NIH, Johns Hopkins University, and now at the University of California.

Herb Lin

Herbert Y Lin is an Associate Professor in Medicine and a practicing nephrologist at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital, Division of Nephrology, Program in Membrane Biology, and Center for Systems Biology in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. His research interest focuses on the TGF-b/BMP signaling pathway in the kidney and in iron homeostasis. Dr. Lin obtained his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Whitehead Institute in 1993, and his MD degree from Harvard Medical School in 1995 from the combined Harvard/MIT Division of Health Science and Technology program. He worked briefly as a post-doctoral research fellow at the Hubrecht Laboratory in the Netherlands. Dr. Lin then completed his Internship, Residency and Clinical Fellowship in Nephrology at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Herbert Lin’s lab webpage

Irma Thesleff

Irma Thesleff is Professor and Research Director of the Developmental Biology Program at the Institute of Biotechnology of the University of Helsinki since 1996. She was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Pediatric Dentistry and Orthodontics at the Institute of Dentistry, University of Helsinki in 1990-1996. She received her PhD in 1975 from the University of Helsinki, on work on the etiology of cleft lip and palate, supervised by Lauri Saxén. She was postdoctoral scientist at National Institute of Dental Research in Bethesda, USA 1978-79. Her research interest since 1976 has been the mechanisms of tissue interactions regulating organ development, in particular teeth other ectodermal organs.

Irma Thesleff's lab webpage

Jody Haigh

Jody Haigh is a VIB group leader (since 2004) in the Department for Molecular Biomedical Research and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Molecular Biology at the University of Ghent, Belgium.  He completed his PhD training at the IMP (University of Vienna, Austria) in the lab of Erwin F. Wagner (1999) followed by postdoctoral training (2004) at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute (Toronto, Canada) in Andras Nagy’s lab.  Jody has had a long standing interest in VEGF signaling and its role in organ development and disease processes.  His group continues to use and develop novel mouse ES and recently iPS based technologies for their studies on tissue remodeling and repair.

Jody Haigh's university lab webpage
Jody Haigh's VIB lab webpage

John Wozney

John Wozney is currently an assistant vice-president in the Tissue Repair Research Unit with responsibility for the novel BMP protein and local carrier development activities.  He received both his PhD degree in biochemistry from Harvard University and subsequently was a post-doctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After joining the biotechnology company Genetics Institute (acquired by Wyeth and subsequently Pfizer), John conducted research leading to the identification by molecular cloning of the BMP family of proteins.  He then led the efforts to identify one of these molecules, BMP-2, and an appropriate local delivery system, to be developed as a bone-inductive therapeutic.  This innovative product is now marketed worldwide as INFUSE^Ò and InductOs^™, which has found widespread use in orthopedics.

Kohei Miyazono

Kohei Miyazono is Professor of the Department of Molecular Pathology, Graduate School of Medicine at University of Tokyo since 2000. He received his MD degree at the University of Tokyo in 1981, and DMS at the same university in 1988. He moved to Dr. Carl-Henrik Heldin's lab in Uppsala, Sweden in 1985. After going back to Japan between 1988-1990, he moved to Sweden again, and became assistant and associate member at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Uppsala, Sweden between 1990 and 1995. He then became the Chief of the Department of Biochemistry, the Cancer Institute of Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research in 1995. During the past 15 years, his laboratory has studied the signaling mechanisms of TGF-b and bone morphogenetic proteins.

Kohei Miyazono's lab webpage

Konrad Basler

Konrad Basler got his training and interest in the role of cell–cell interactions during development through mentors and collaborators such as Ernst Hafen, Tom Jessell and Gary Struhl. The goal of his laboratory at the Institute of Molecular Biology, University of Zürich, is to understand how members of the Hedgehog, WNT, transforming growth factor- (TGFB) and tumour necrosis factor (TNF) families of signalling proteins function to control growth and patterning during animal development.

Konrad Basler's lab webpage

Kuber Sampath

Malcolm Moos

Malcolm Moos Jr., MD, PhD, majored in Biological Sciences at Stanford University. He obtained his MD and PhD at the University of Minnesota. He completed residency training in Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, with a fellowship in Clinical Chemistry, at the same institution. Malcolm then came to FDA/CBER to continue his work in the area of cyclic nucleotide-mediated signal transduction, and became an expert in protein microsequencing, separation techniques, and protein analytical biochemistry. When he began independent investigations as a Medical Officer, he changed fields to support regulatory decisions in the emerging area of cellular therapy. His current research interest is to define how evaluating the status of major cell signaling pathways (BMP, Wnt, etc.) can be used to characterize cell-based products more accurately and to improve product design.

Peter ten Dijke

Peter ten Dijke received his PhD degree in 1991 from Wageningen University, The Netherlands based on his research on the identification of the third isoform of TGFβ performed at Oncogene Science, Inc., New York, USA. He did his postgraduate studies with Kohei Miyazono and Carl-Henrik Heldin at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR), Uppsala, Sweden. In 1994, he became group leader at LICR and in 1999 he moved to the Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In 2005 he moved to the Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands, and is currently a professor of molecular cell biology at Leiden University. His laboratory studies the molecular mechanisms by which TGFβ family members elicit their cellular effects via (co)receptors and intracellular SMAD effectors, and how subverted TGF family signaling is involved in cancer, vascular and bone diseases

Peter ten Dijke's lab webpage

Petra Knaus

Petra Knaus is a biochemist and cell biologist with a PhD in molecular neurobiology. She has started her research on TGFβ signal transduction as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Harvey Lodish’s lab at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research (Cambridge, MA, USA). As an independent group leader in the Department of Walter Sebald at the Biocenter (Würzburg, Germany) Petra Knaus started her research on BMP receptor signalling. Since 2004 she is full professor at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. With her research team she is studying the molecular mechanism of BMP and TGFβ signal transduction. Finetuning and dynamic signaling events under physiological and pathophysiological conditions are in the focus of these studies.

Petra Knaus' lab webpage

Rene Verdonk

Rik Lories

Rik J Lories is associate professor and group leader of the arthritis research unit within the Laboratory for Skeletal Development and Joint Disorders, KU Leuven, Belgium. His research projects are focusing on the role of signaling pathways involved in tissue responses in chronic arthritis. He obtained his medical degree summa cum laude from the University of Leuven, Belgium in 1996. He obtained his PhD in medical sciences entitled “Bone Morphogenetic Protein signaling in chronic arthritis” in 2003. In 2003 he also became a board certified rheumatologist within the department of Rheumatology at Leuven University Hospitals. He is currently an advisory editor for Arthritis and Rheumatism and editorial board member of Arthritis Research and Therapy.

Slobodan Vukicevic

Slobodan Vukicevic, MD, PhD is full professor and head of Laboratory of Mineralized Tissues and Proteomic Center at the Center for Translational and Clinical Research, Medical School, University of Zagreb. He is the founder and CSO of the biotech company Genera. He is currently the President of the Croatian Calcified Tissue Society, an EMBO member, and fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences (WAAS). Slobodan’s research interest includes the study of molecular mechanisms of bone healing and encompasses projects on bone and cartilage morphogenetic proteins, signal transduction mechanisms in osteoblasts and kidney cells, biological regeneration of tissues (with particular interest in bone, cartilage, kidney and pancreas), and the designing and leading of clinical trials in metabolic bone diseases and joint cartilage repair.

Stefano Piccolo

Stefano Piccolo is Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Padua School of Medicine. He worked with Eddy De Robertis at HHMI-UCLA, where he unveiled how extracellular antagonism to growth factors is a key mechanism by which neural tissues is induced. Stefano Piccolo is interested in how cells integrate and transduce distinct extracellular signals to regulate cell fate in a quantitative, qualitative and combinatorial fashion. His group contributed to the fields of embryonic development, cancer growth and metastasis.

Thomas Braun

Thomas Willnow

Thomas E Willnow is a graduate in Biology from the University in Munich, where he also obtained his PhD in Biochemistry. After a post doctorate at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas (1992-1996) he joined the Max-Delbrueck-Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) as junior faculty member. Since 2001, he is Professor for Molecular Cardiovascular Research at the Charité, Medical Faculty of the University of Berlin, and head of a senior research group at the MDC. His main research interest is the functional characterization of a group of multifunctional endocytic receptors called the LDL receptor gene family. Using transgenic mouse and zebrafish models, he aims at understanding how cellular uptake of ligands such as growth factors and morphogens by these receptors regulate development and adult functions of the vertebrate organism.

Thomas Willnow’s lab webpage

Ugo Ripamonti

Ugo Ripamonti, MD, PhD, is Director of the Bone Research Laboratory of the South African Medical Research Council and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Professor Ripamonti research interests are the spontaneous induction of bone formation by macroporous calcium phosphate-based biomimetic biomaterials, the induction of bone formation by the three mammalian transforming growth factor-β isoforms and the induction of bone formation by bone morphogenetic proteins in non-human and human primates; he currently investigates the synergistic induction of bone formation in pre-clinical and clinical contexts whereby binary applications of hBMPs/OPs with relatively low doses of a mammalian TGF-β protein synergize to induce rapid and prominent osteogenesis.

Ugo Ripamonti's lab webpage

Vicki Rosen

Vishwas Paralkar

Vishwas Paralkar obtained his PhD with Hari Reddi as his mentor working on the purification and receptor characterization of BMPs.  He was a post-doctoral fellow and the National Eye Institute and then joined Pfizer Global Research & Development working on bone and osteoporosis research.  While at Pfizer he was responsible for putting multiple drug candidates in clinical trails one of which recently received regulatory approval in Europe.  He then went to lead a group that was responsible for the entire biologics portfolio for the Cardiovascular & Metabolic Disease Area. Having led multiple programs (both NCEs and biologics) from early target identification all the way in to phase-II development, Vishwas recently left Pfizer to become a Senior VP in charge of biology for a start-up  Biotech company focused on bone research.

Ye-Guang Chen

Ye-Guang Chen is since 2002 Professor at the School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing. He received his PhD in Cell Biology from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1996 and was during the next 4 years Post-doctoral Research Associate at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center/HHMI, both in New York. In the period 2000-2002 he was Assistant Professor at the University of California, Riverside. During his stay in J. Massagué’s lab he made seminal contributions to the TGFbeta receptor and Smad signalling field. His current interest is in the regulation (including negative regulation) and fine-tuning, direct target genes, and cell biological aspects of TGFbeta/activin and BMP signalling primarily in cultured cells, including in self-renewal and differentiation of stem cells.

Ye-Guang Chen's lab webpage