Martina Pedna
Academic and Work Experience Prior to Sept 2023 Programme Start
I obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Genomics at the University of Bologna. As part of my undergraduate thesis project, I completed a placement at King’s College London in Dr. Alessandra Vigilante lab. During this time, as part of a collaboration with Prof. Micheal Malim and Dr. Luis Apolonia labs, I used a multi-omics approach to interrogate HiPsci cell line’s variation to study the influence of host genetic factors upon HIV-1 infection.
PhD Programme- Year 1- MRes and Project Rotations
During the first year of the Wellcome Trust Cell therapies and Regenerative Medicine 4-year PhD Programme I completed three different rotations:
For my first rotation I joined Prof. Jernej Ule lab, where using a bioinformatics approach we researched the impact of Arginine methylation on alternative polyadenylation in cancer.
For my second rotation I worked in Dr. Alessandra Vigilante’s lab where we researched the role of transcription factor ATF4 on protecting the heart under stress.
During my last rotation I worked in Prof. Beatriz Rico lab where we focused on pinpointing the differences between 2D and 3D culturing protocols in recapitulating human interneurons development.
PhD Programme- Years 2 to 4 - Doctoral Studies
I decided to join Dr. Alessandra Vigilante and Prof. Jernej Ule labs where I will investigate interstasis in the context of cancer.
Interstasis, is a newly discovered mechanism, which allows for mutual regulation of highly dosage sensitive – low complexity domains containing proteins by sequestration of their mRNAs in nuclear speckles.
We decided to explore interstasis in the context of cancer by firstly analysing snRNAseq glioblastoma datasets to then expand to other cancer types. We will assess interstasis characteristics for the different samples in the different cell types and in relation to different metadata variables, such as age and recurrence of the tumour as well as furthercharacterise the location of interstatic cells in the tissue context by using spatial transcriptomic datasets to assess the tumour microenvironment’s role.
Ultimately, my PhD project aims at characterising a novel mechanism of regulation which will allow for the design of therapeutics that modulate interstasis in the events of dysregulation.
