News

Minas presents at CVI Research Symposium

The 2023 Stanford Cardiovascular Institute Research Symposium was held from November 30 to December 1, 2023 at the Li Ka Shing Center at Stanford. The symposium featured a poster session, where Minas Nalbandian, PhD, presented his work "Inhibition of the 15-PGDH Gerozyme Ameliorates Cardiac Disease".

Minas Nalbandian presents at the 2023 Frontiers in Myogenesis Comference

The 2023 Frontiers in Myogenesis meeting was held from November 6-11th 2023 in São Paulo (Brazil) at the Sofitel Guarujá Jequitimar hotel. The conference, "Frontiers in Myogenesis: Advances in Skeletal Muscle Growth, Repair and Disease", featured oral presentations posters from scientists interested in skeletal muscle. Postdoctoral Scholar Minas Nalbandian, PhD, presented a poster entitled "Gerozyme Inhibition Rescues the Skeletal Muscle Overload Response in Aged Mice" on his research.

Helen Blau speaks on The Stem Cell Podcast

From the podcast website: Dr. Helen Blau is the Donald E. and Delia B. Baxter Foundation Professor and Director of the Baxter Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology at Stanford University. Dr. Blau’s research focuses on the basic molecular mechanisms of stem cells and muscle and their application to aging, regenerative medicine, and disease. Her lab aims to understand and apply biology to improve quality of life, and their current primary focus is on understanding the gerozyme 15-PGDH. She talks about the roles of NSAIDs and CD47 in muscle regeneration. She also discusses growing cultured meat and writing a children’s book!

Minas presents at M&I Seminar Series

Postdoctoral fellow Minas Nalbandian, PhD, presented his work on October 25, 2023, at the M&I Wednesday seminar series. His talk, entitled "Inhibition of the 15-PGDH gerozyme ameliorates cardiac disease", covered his recent work aimed at understanding how modulating prostaglandin levels impact cardiac function in disease.

Restoring nerve-muscle connections boosts strength of aging mice, Stanford Medicine study finds

A drug that boosts strength in injured or aging mice restores connections between nerves and muscle and suggests ways to combat weakness in humans due to aging, injury or disease.

Boaz Goldberg presents at the 2023 CVI Early Career Symposium

His work, Delineating molecular drivers of fibrosis in cardiomyopathies, focused on the cardiac fibrosis characteristic of heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States. His research expanded on recent findings by the Blau lab showing that elevated expression of 15-PGDH contributes to muscle atrophy and the progression of fibrosis in dilated cardiomypathy.

Emmeran LeMoal Named Field Foundation Scholar

This award supports a promising young scientist engaged in research in the field of muscle biology with the goal of improving human health.

Daniel Robinson Awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the American Federation for Aging Research

Dan's proposal builds on previous work showing that the activity of the gerozyme 15-PGDH can be pharmacologically suppressed. His goal is to prevent 15-PGDH's initial overexpression in aging as a feasible option to prevent the initial onset of aging.

Helen Blau delivers Earnest McCulloch Memorial Lecture at the 2023 ISSCR Annual Meeting

Her talk, entitled Regenerating and Rejuvenating Aged Tissue by Targeting a Gerozyme, summarized recent published and unpublished data describing how the gerozyme 15-PGDH acts as a master regulator of skeletal muscle aging, and provided a therapeutic strategy to regenerate and rejuvenate aged and atrophied skeletal muscle tissue.

Helen Blau and Sarah Heilshorn awarded a 2023-24 Shriram Synthetic Biology Seed Grant

Their project, entitled Minimizing the impact of eating meat by replacing livestock with cellular agriculture, proposed a synthetic biology approach to (1) pattern scaffolds that maintain and rejuvenate bovine muscle cell characteristics to enable their long-term culture and (2) synthesize recombinant scaffolds from renewable bacterial fermentation.

Elena Monti presents at 2023 Gordon Myogenesis Conference

Postdoctoral Fellow Elena Monti, PhD, presented her talk "Rejuvenating Aged Skeletal Muscle by Targeting a Gerozyme" as part of the associated Gordon Research Seminar "Cellular and Molecular Modulation of Myogenesis"

Elena Monti Awarded Wu Tsai Postdoctoral Fellowship

The goal of her project is to find connections between muscle weakness during aging and the molecular signatures of cells in the muscles. She will compare muscle samples from young, healthy aged, and aged individuals with muscle weakness and measure muscle mass and strength along with the frequency of exercise. By making correlations between performance and the molecules in the cells within muscles, she will be able to delineate how exercise training and specific molecular targets could slow the progression of muscle weakness during aging.

Emmeran Le Moal joins Blau Lab as Senior Scientist

After completing a PhD in Exercise Physiology and Skeletal Muscle Biology at the Université de Rennes 2, France, and a postdoctoral fellowship in the Bentzinger laboratory, in the Department of Pharmacology - Université de Sherbrooke, QC, Canada, Emmeran has started as Sr. Scientist in the Blau lab. His research work will broadly focus on understanding how the gerozyme 15-PGDH imacts aging and regeneration.

Asuka Eguchi awarded a Travel Grant from CVI Mavens

The award funds her to present her work at the 2023 Myogenesis Gordon Research Conference, Intrinsic and Extrinsic Control of Myogenesis Under Physiological and Pathological Conditions.

Helen Blau speaks at the 2023 Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance Research Symposium

The goal of this symposium was celebrating human performance research. Through a series of research talks, discussions, and sessions with posters and demos, the event showcased groundbreaking human performance research and seed new collaborations. Her tak was part of the Reversing Injury with Regenerative Medicine session. Advances in regenerative medicine and rehabilitation protocols are helping to dramatically accelerate healing for multiple tissue types, helping reach the vision of reversing injury and fully restoring function to damaged tissues. Speakers shared late-breaking advances in regenerative biology that are laying the groundwork for new therapies to heal cartilage, bone, tendon, and muscle, whether due to injury, overload, or aging. The advances are made possible not only through new discoveries about the stem cell microenvironments that best support regeneration but also by synergizing regenerative therapies with the mechanical environment of the tissue.