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The Zammit Group

Skeletal muscle is an archetypal adult stem cell model, in which maintenance, growth and repair of functionally specialised post-mitotic cells is achieved by recruitment of undifferentiated precursors. Our core research is directed at understanding how muscle stem cells are regulated in healthy, aged and diseased skeletal muscle. The functional unit of skeletal muscle is the myofibre: a giant syncytial cell maintained by hundreds of post-mitotic myonuclei. The routine needs for myonuclear homeostasis, together with the more sporadic demands for hypertrophy and repair, are performed by muscle satellite cells. These resident stem cells are normally mitotically quiescent in mature muscle, and so must first be activated to undergo extensive proliferation to generate myoblasts that eventually differentiate to provide new myonuclei. Diseases such as the muscular dystrophies are characterised by muscle wasting, meaning that this repair/regeneration function performed by satellite cells becomes progressively compromised.

The main themes of the Zammit group include investigating the transcriptional and signalling control of satellite cell activation and cell fate choice and examining pathomechanisms and potential therapies for muscular dystrophies including Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy and Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy and muscle-related cancers such as rhabdomyosarcoma.

Current PhD students:
Johanna Prüller
Luca Pinton

Collaborators
Professor F. Relaix (Faculté de Médecine Pitié-Salpétrière, Paris)
Dr H. Wackerhage (TUM, Germany)
Professor A. Belayew (University of Mons, Belgium)
Dr S. Tedesco (University College London)
Dr Y. Ono (University of Nagasaki, Japan)
Dr C. Christ (McGill University, Canada)
Dr R. Knight (King’s).

Zammit

Members

Massimo Ganassi

Research Associate

Peter Zammit

Peter Zammit

Professor of Cell Biology

View all publications
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Selected Recent Talks

Gordon Research Conference - Building, Maintaining and Regenerating Skeletal Muscle, Italy, June 2019 Co-Chair-FSH Society’s 26th Annual FSHD International Research Congress, France, June 2019 OLIGO 2019 OXFORD: Antisense & Therapeutic Nucleic Acids, Oxford, UK, April 2019 AFM-Téléthon Myology 2019, Bordeaux, France, March 2019 240th European NeuroMuscular Centre workshop: The involvement of skeletal muscle stem cells in the pathology of muscular dystrophies, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, January 2019 FASEB Skeletal Muscle Satellite Cells and Regeneration, Steamboat Springs, USA, July 2018 Lay talk at 2018 FSHD Connect: The FSH Society’s International Network Meeting for FSHD Families, Clinicians, and Researchers, Las Vegas, USA, June 2018 Co-Chair-FSH Society Facioscapulohumeral Muscular Dystrophy 2018 International Research Congress & Research Planning Meetings, Las Vegas, June 2018 OLIGO 2018 OXFORD, St. Hilda’s College Oxford, UK, April 2018 Muscle Development, Regeneration and Disease 2018, Berlin, Germany April 2018 Gordon Research Conference - Advanced Mechanisms of Growth and Repair in Myogenesis, Italy, June 2017

Former group members

  • Viola Gnocchi PhD
  • Yusuke Ono PhD
  • Frederico Calhabeu PhD
  • Robert White PhD
  • Mathieu Fortier PhD
  • Jaclyn lee
  • Janet Davies PhD
  • Congshan Sun PhD
  • Nicolas Figeac PhD                                            

Former PhD students

  • Heather Steele-Stallard (co-supervisor)
  • Huascar Ortuste Quiroga
  • Steffanie Knapp (2nd supervisor)
  • Christopher R.S. Banerji (a joint supervisor)
  • Louise Moyle
  • Juergen Scharner
  • Paul Knopp

Our partners

We are extremely grateful to our funders

Medical Research Council

Muscular Dystrophy UK

The FSHD Society

The French Muscular Dystrophy Association

Wellcome Trust