Roman Lab

Movement is natural to us. From slowly crawling out of bed to the occasional dash to catch the bus, our muscles are hardwired to mechanically comply to our command. This ability stems from the unique architecture of the muscle organ which is designed to contract and regenerate damages. Our laboratory is interested in understanding how cells communicate to establish muscle architecture and how this communication is altered during exercise, muscle diseases and aging.

To study intercellular communication, we combine tissue engineering, cell biology and imaged-based spatial transcriptomics. This allows us to observe in real time how cells respond to one another by linking cell behaviour and genetic responses.

Our goals lie at both the translational and fundamental ends of the discovery pipeline. We devise technologies to preserve muscle integrity in muscle diseases, aging, and exercise. In parallel, we harness the one-of-a-kind structure of muscle to understand the mechanistic processes underlying intercellular communication.

Myofiber self-repair

Skeletal muscle is prone to rip and tear. Thankfully, muscle possesses an outstanding capacity to repair injuries and to adapt by growing stronger and/or more endurant. At the forefront of this regenerative prowess is the satellite cell, a stem cell which activates, proliferates, and regenerates muscle cells. However, we recently showed that muscle cells can repair autonomously local damages by upregulating repair genes. This self-repair mechanism may represent the first line of defence against muscle injury. Our goal is to understand the cytoplasmic and genetic networks that operate to coordinate the self-repair mechanism and how this process interacts with stem cell-dependent regeneration.

Research

Muscle engineering

Advances in microfabrication, stem cells and cell biology have paved the way to generate complex cellular in vitro systems. We adopt an organ-on-chip strategy to compartmentalize and organize different cell types into microdevices. This bottom-up approach enables to control the environment and behaviour of cells and their interaction. We particularly focus on generating innervated and irrigated muscle cultures as well as a myotendinous junction. These muscle systems are used to model exercise and muscle disorders for biological investigation and drug discovery.

Cell-cell communication

We are interested in understanding how cells coordinate to establish organ architecture. Being the largest cell in the body, myofibers act as communication hub with other cell types such as neurons, stem cells, tenocytes as well as endothelial and immune cells. This cellular interplay results in unique structures such as the neuromuscular and myotendineous junctions. By observing cellular and transcriptomic responses, we aim to identify fundamental mechanisms of intercellular communication during development, disease, and aging.