BIANCA KERN
PHD STUDENT
Promoting intestinal tissue regeneration presents a promising therapeutic approach for treating intestinal disorders characterized by chronic tissue damage, such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and colorectal cancer (CRC). However, mechanism known to date that promote tissue regeneration concomitantly promote tumor growth, highlighting the need to better understand the distinct mechanisms of tissue repair and tumor development.
My research journey began with my undergraduate thesis, where I worked on establishing a zebrafish-based in vivo model to study intestinal damage and regeneration with its potential use for large-scale compound screenings to identify modulators of intestinal tissue repair. Currently, as part of my PhD project, I aim to characterise the spatiotemporal transcriptomic programs of the tumor microenvironment, which ultimately affect colorectal cancer development and response to treatment, and how these processes are modulated by dietary cholesterol metabolites.
Villablanca Lab | KI 