Dr Isabel Uwagboe

From time spent at the National Heart and Lung Institute and the Department of Materials at Imperial College London, I explored tissue engineering within my PhD project, to investigate the effect of fibrotic extracellular matrix stiffness on cellular phenotype and behaviour through in-vitro disease modelling. Continuing along the same vein at King’s, with the Parsons’s group and Rosenblatt lab, the evolution of my research now investigates epithelial cell extrusion in the lung and how changes to the matrix (e.g., in severe fibrotic respiratory diseases like Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis - IPF) can affect this mechanism. With focus to IPF, the alveolar epithelium is studied and why increased matrix stiffness and dysregulated extracellular matrix deposition can cause not only failure within this aspect of cell mechanobiology but also beget accelerated movement towards a more diseased state.