Mattias Malaguti (FHEA)

Senior Researcher

Undergraduate teaching

2021-2023: Biotechnology 3 (Tutor)

2020-2021: Developmental Biology 3 (Demonstrator, Marker)

2019-2020: Quantitative Skills for Biologists 1 (Tutor)  

Postgraduate teaching

2022-2023: MScR Regenerative Medicine & Tissue Repair (Interactive Lecture/Discussion Group)

2019: Tissue Repair PhD/MSc cohort (Interactive Lecture/Discussion Group)

2014-2022: Supervision of PhD research students (Member/Convener of Thesis Committee)

Research summary

How does communication between cells affect their decision-making?

It has long been known that the behaviour of one cell can affect that of its neighbours, but we have until recently lacked tools to interrogate this process at high spatial and temporal resolution. I have recently developed modular synthetic tools to monitor and manipulate cell-cell interactions in pluripotent stem cell lines and their derivatives (Malaguti et al. 2022, Lebek et al. 2023). I am currently using these technologies to study how cell-cell communication can influence cellular behaviour in development and in disease.

My previous work focused on analysing the output of cell communication events: I characterised how feedbacks between signalling molecules, gene regulatory networks and adhesion molecules can stabilise transitions between cell states in early mouse development (Malaguti et al. 2019, Malaguti et al. 2013, Costa et al. 2022, Rao et al. 2020, Punovuori et al. 2019, Zhou et al. 2013). In Malaguti et al. 2019, I characterised a mechanism that confers robustness to early developmental events by rendering cells deaf to specific signalling cues during a narrow developmental time window. I am now interested in understanding whether a similar mechanism could be operating in other developmental contexts, and whether it may regulate the initiation and progression of malignancy.

View all 9 publications on Research Explorer