Congratulations to Darren Wisniewski on passing his PhD viva

Tissue Repair student Darren Wisniewski passes PhD viva voce

Many congratulations to Darren on this fantastic achievement.

Darren carried out his PhD research in the lab of Prof Sally Lowell, in close collaboration with Dr Guillaume Blin, at the Centre for Regenerative Medicine.

Pluripotent cells, which are found in the very early embryo, have the remarkable ability to generate all of the cell types in the body. Even more remarkably, they can orchestrate all these cell fate decision in time and space to generate the complexity of form and function that is a living organism. It is not fully understood how cells share information to coordinate this process. During this project, Darren discovered that the way cells are organised in 3D space can change the way that these cells respond to chemical signals that control their cell fate decisions. This gives us a better understanding of how morphogenesis is coordinated with changes in cell identity during development. These findings may also help us to devise engineering strategies based on controlling the 3D organisation of stem cells in order to better control our ability to generate useful cell types from pluripotent cells in a culture dish.