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'SUP?

Old News

Keep up with what's happening in the lab! Here we highlight any significant events that have been going on from conferences, to publications, to new staff!

OCTOBER - DECEMBER 2024

  • New Publication: Ezzo, M., Spindler, K., Wang, J.-B., Lee, D., Pecoraro, G., Cowen, J.., Pakshir, P., and Hinz, B. (2024): Acute contact with profibrotic macrophages mechanically activates fibroblasts in soft environment via ⍺vβ3 integrin-mediated engagement of Piezo1. Science Advances

  • New Publication: Tam, E., Song, E., Noskovicova, N., Hinz, B., Xu, A., and Sweeney, G. (2024): Autophagy deficiency exacerbated hypoxia-reoxygenation induced inflammation and cell death via a mitochondrial DNA/STING/IRF3 pathway. Life Sciences.

  • With the traditional "end-of-year-fondue", our lab wishes everyone who feels like receiving it - Happy Holidays!

  • Congratulations to alumni Raquel Benitez for yet another cover page in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology (JID). Her picture was chosen for the December issue of the JID, quote from the journal: “How can we resist the image below that so resembles Christmas lights?  We would like it to appear on the December 2024 cover of JID." - Two out of four on the JID landing page ain't bad.

  • Congrats, Kyle Lam for having been selected to give a Flash talk on his project at the Science and the City event at St. Michael’s Hospital.

  • Congratulations to Maya Ezzo for having her first-author publication accepted by Science Advances!

  • And more congrats to Maya for the selection of her touching electron micrograph to be the featured picture of the October issue of Science Advances (publishing date of October 23).

  • The picture and article were also featured on the landing page of Science.

  • Congratulations also for having one of Maya's publication’s pictures chosen on BPoD. It remained on their homepage for 24 hours before being stored in perpetuity in their archive.

  • Thanks for continuing the Hinz lab tradition of publishing pretty pictures!

  • Congrats to Fereshteh Younesi for having her abstract selected for an oral presentation at the 4th Aegean Fibrosis Conference in Crete, Greece.

  • Fereshteh, amazing talk; more congrats for receiving a generous presentation prize from the conference and an  International Travel Awards from the Canadian Stem Cell Network!

  • Congratulations to Hinzlab alumni Nina Noskovicova for being an author on the paper just published in Life Sciences by the Gary Sweeny lab, our long-standing collaborators.

Proud winner and prouder PI

Picture of the day - Maya Ezzo 

Fibroblasts are heterogeneous - German PIs not so much

  • On October 18 and 19, 2024, we made another step to finally heal fibrosis with the help of nine outstanding scientists referring on different aspects of fibrosis. Thanks so much to all attendees and speakers making the Keen-on Healing Fibrosis Symposium memorable.​

  • To reminisce, check out the Unity Heath Newsflash: here.

  • Or watch this cute video of Andras and Boris: here.

  • Congratulations to Boris for being honored with the Charles Lapière Memorial Lecture at the Annual Conference of the European Tissue Repair Society (ETRS) in Amersfoort, The Netherlands: "Everything you always wanted to know about myofibroblasts * (*but were too afraid to ask)".

  • ​Check out the PhotoBox shots from the joint meeting of the ETRS and the Wound healing Society (WHS) in Amersfoort: Germans I, Past ETRS Presidents, Canadians, Germans II, WHS Board Members - Past and Present.

JULY - SEPTEMBER 2024

  • New Publication: Younesi, F. S., and Hinz, B. (2024): The Myofibroblast Fate of Therapeutic Mesenchymal Stromal Cells: Regeneration, Repair, or Despair? International Journal of Molecular Sciences 25 (16), 8712

  • New Publication: Hinz, B. (2024): Commentary: More Velcro for the TGF-β1 Straitjacket – A New Antibody Straps Latent TGF-β1 to the Matrix. Science Signaling 17(844):eado5279

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  • For a Keen-On Healing Fibrosis Symposium Newsflash, click here.

  • Congrats to Fereshteh Younesi for receiving a generous International Travel Award from the Canadian Stem Cell Network – way to network, Fereshteh! 

  • Two cover pages in two months, what a ride. Raquel’s submission features the July Issue of the Journal of Investigative Dermatology and Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology dedicates their August Cover Page to Wound Repair articles by our lab and Paul Martin’s team.

  • Congratulations to Fereshteh Younesi for another review published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences. Chapters 1.2 and 1.3 of the thesis, check √.

  • The Hinzlab had its annual retreat activity going rafting on the Grand River - grand, but not wild. Check our activities page here.

  • Welcome Lorena Immler! Lorena will join the lab on September 3 and stay for 6 months to perform a Bachelor project. Lorena is in her 3rd year of BSc at the University of Reutlingen, Germany.

  • And congrats to Lorena Immler for being awarded with the Mitacs Globalink Research Award - for research in Canada. 

  • Congrats to Michael Diao for having been selected to present his work as a 3 min lightning talk at the Ontario Cell Biology Symposium on August 15 in Guelph. 

  • Congrats to Raquel Benitez for having one of her beautiful pictures selected as the Cover Art for the September issue of the Journal of Investigative Dermatology (JID). The picture will also be presented as a poster at the JID lounge at the annual meeting of the European Society for Dermatological Research in Lisbon in October.

  • Say “Bon voyage” to Maya Ezzo, as she leaves July 12th! Maya started in the Hinz lab in July 2019, rode successfully and with minimal damage through the COVID years and came out shining with a sparkly PhD. Maya will continue a postdoc training in the lab of Sandrine Etienne-Manneville at the Institut Pasteur. 

  • Thanks to Fereshteh Younesi for taking on the task to run the Fibrosis Satellite Symposium on October 18 as part of the student organizing committee. 

APRIL - JUNE 2024

  • New Publication: Son, D.O., Benitez, R*., Diao, L.*, and Hinz, B. (2024): How to keep myofibroblasts under control: culture of mouse skin fibroblast on soft substrates. Journal of Investigative Dermatology

  • New Publication: Lichner, Z., Ding, M., Khare, T., Dan, Q., Benitez, R.*, Parszner, M., Song, X., Saleeb, R., Hinz, B., Pei, Y., Szászi, K., and Kapus, A. (2024): Myocardin-related transcription factor mediates epithelial fibrogenesis in polycystic kidney disease. Cells 13(11):984 [PDF]

  • Farewell Raquel Benitez! After a visit in the Summer of ’21 and subsequent 2 years in the Hinz lab, Raquel returns back home to Grenada. One last BBQ on the Toronto islands. All the best, Raquel!!

  • And Raquel leaves with a bang – congrats for your co-authorship on a paper just published by the Kapus group in Cells.

  • Welcome Daniel Han! Daniel will perform a Summer Research Project under guidance of Donna to continue the study of MSC secretome actions on macrophages, fibroblasts, and who knows, endothelial cells?

  • Congrats to Dr. Maya Ezzo for her successful PhD defense!

  • Congrats to Donna Son, Raquel Benitez, and Michael for Diao having their manuscript accepted by the Journal of Investigative Dermatology.

  • Congrats to Elham Karimizadeh for receiving the CCTC Travel Award, to Kyle Lam for receiving the CCTC Poster Award, and to Raquel Benitez for the CCTC social media award!

  • Congrats to @ezzo for featuring the “Picture of the Month” of the European Tissue Repair Society (last page).

  • Congrats to Fereshteh Younesi for having her Nature Review paper featured by Unity Health News. Here is the gist of it: Fibrosis is a major cause of death.

  • Congrats to Kyle Lam for receiving funding for one year from the Canada Graduate Scholarships — Master’s program (NSERC).

  • Special congrats to Elham Karimizadeh, Xinying Guo, Raquel Benitez, Fereshteh Younesi, and Michael Diao for being selected to present their works as a talks at the Canadian Connective Tissue Conference, from May 13-15.

  • Congrats to Fereshteh Younesi for being selected for an oral presentation at the RTC Research Day.

  • LTRR on the roof to see the eclipse. Yet, we could not see anything because it was too dark.

  • New Publication: Younesi, F.S. Miller, A., Barker, T.H., Rossi, FMV, and Hinz, B. (2024): Fibroblast and myofibroblast activation in normal tissue repair and fibrosis.. Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology [PDF​]

  • New Publication: Xu, Y., Ying, L., Lang, J.K., Hinz, B., Zhao, R. (2024): Modeling mechanical activation of macrophages during pulmonary fibrogenesis for targeted anti-fibrosis therapy. Science Advances 10 (13): eadj9559

  • New Publication: Dewar, M.B., Ehsan, F., Izumi, A., Zhang, H., Zhou, Y.Q., Shah, H., Langburt, D., Suresh, H., Wang, T., Hacker, A., Hinz, B., Gillis, J., Husain, M., Heximer, S.P. (2024): Defining transcriptomic heterogeneity between left and right ventricle-derived cardiac fibroblasts. Cells 10;13(4):327 [PDF]

  • New Publication: Cho, S., Dadson, K., Sung, H.K., Ayansola, O., Mirzaesmaeili, A., Noskovicova, N.*, Zhao, Y., Cheung, K., Radisic, M., Hinz, B., Sater, A.A., Hsu, H.H., Lopaschuk, G.G., Sweeney, G. (2023): Cardioprotection by the adiponectin receptor agonist ALY688 in a preclinical mouse model of heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF). Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy  171:116119 [PDF]​

  • New Publication: Wang, Y. Cortes, E., Huang, R., Wan, J., Hinz, B., Damoiseaux, R., and Pushkarsky, I. (2023): FLECS Technology for High-Throughput Screening of Hypercontractile Cellular Phenotypes in Fibrosis: A Function-First Approach to Anti-Fibrotic Drug Discovery. SLAS Discovery: S2472-5552(23)00109-0 [PDF]

  • Congrats to honorary lab member Sushant Singh and to Michael Diao. Their research collaboration has just been funded with a $500,000 grant by the Canadian Space Agency (FAST 2023). Like lead principal investigator Axel Günther has elegantly put: “It started as pigs in space but ended being rats on earth.”

  • Huge congratulations to Fereshteh Younesi for her first author review paper in NATURE REVIEWS MOL CELL BIOL! Amazing achievement, a staggering impactor factor 113 wave to ride on for your whole career ;).

  • Congratulations to Raquel Benitez for winning the first prize for a post-doc poster at the FoD Research Day.

  • Congrats to the lab for two collaboration papers with the Scott Heximer group at TBEB and the Rougang Zhao lab at SUNY .

  • Bravo and thanks to all for representing the Hinz lab at the FoD Research Day

  • And it's out: Celebrating the 22 year anniversary of "Myofibroblasts and mechano-regulation of connective tissue remodelling" (2002), we just published a myofibroblast "update" in Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology on "Fibroblast and myofibroblast activation in normal tissue repair and fibrosis" (2024), congrats to the co-first authors Fereshteh Younesi and Andrew Miller!

  • Farewell Franka Raible and safe return to Germany! We hope whenever you drink tequila, you always feel warm…

  • Welcome Rachel Low, new star technician in the Hinzlab, starting in February. Rachel comes with a Master from the University of Western Ontario. And a taser to keep everyone in line – including Boris.

  • Congrats to alumni Nina Noskovicova for a co-authorship on a study published by the Sweeney lab – thanks Gary, wonderful paper.

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  • Here are some exciting news from the beginning of the years: After being offline, the Hinz Lab web presence is restored. This is it - enjoy!

  • If you want to catch up what happened over the past months, why don't you check out 2023.

JANUARY - MARCH 2024
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