Christine Mummery

Harvard Stem Cell Institute Radcliffe Fellow
Molecular and Cellular Biology
Hubrecht Laboratory (Netherlands)

Engineering the Right Scaffold: How Matrix Flexibility May Determine Cardiac Cell Fate

Photo by Tony Rinaldo

Christine Mummery is a group leader at the Hubrecht Laboratory at the Netherlands Institute for Developmental Biology. She is a developmental biologist and a leading stem cell expert specializing in the conversion of embryonic stem cells into cardiac and vascular cells.

The heart and blood vessels are subject to cyclic changes in flexibility and pressure as they pump blood around the body. Cells of the cardiovascular system in culture respond to stretch and shape changes rather like the heart and real vessels. By forcing these cells to undergo work in two- and three-dimensional structures under laboratory conditions, Mummery hopes to learn more about cardiovascular physiology. More specifically, heart cells derived from stem cells are often immature; Mummery will test the hypothesis that forced shape changes and cyclic work will make them mature in culture. This method will be applied in the future to develop alternatives to animals for testing cardiac drugs and identifying other drugs with unwanted side effects in the heart and vascular system.

Mummery became the ICIN Professor of Developmental Biology in 2002 and has been awarded two Royal Society (UK) Fellowships and multiple European Union and Netherlands Heart Foundation grants. She serves on the ethical councils of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Science and the Netherlands Ministry of Health, providing specialized advice on research with human embryos and embryonic stem cells.

For more information, read the feature article from the Winter 2008 issue of the Radcliffe Quarterly, "Why Is It So Hard to Fix a Damaged Heart?"

Fall term only.