CRM welcomes group leader Dr Stefano Comazzetto

Established in 2014, Chancellor’s Fellowships are five-year tenure track positions that invest in researchers delivering cutting-edge interdisciplinary research and innovation. They are designed to help the most promising academics advance from the early stages of their career to more senior roles, and to empower their ground-breaking research.

Chancellor’s Fellowships are for academics with a vision for future leadership in research and innovation, which may straddle leading a major area of research, forging new industry partnerships, or implementing research-led teaching innovations.

Stefano said,

I am very excited to join the Centre for Regenerative Medicine as a Chancellor’s Fellow. For years CRM has been leading the way in ground-breaking discoveries in the field of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine. I am very much looking forward to joining such a fantastic and collaborative group of outstanding scientists that push the boundaries of scientific knowledge.

Stefano attended the University of Padua for his undergraduate studies. He then earned his PhD from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the University of Dundee for his work investigating the physiological role of small non-coding RNA pathways in male germ cell maintenance in Professor Donal O’Carroll’s laboratory. Stefano was next awarded an EMBO fellowship to work with Dr Sean Morrison’s at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

During his postdoc, Stefano first identified the key cellular components of the niche for haematopoietic progenitors in the bone marrow. More recently, he focused his efforts on studying the role of ascorbate (vitamin C) in haematopoiesis, and discovered that ascorbate restricts self-renewal in haematopoietic stem cells and progenitor cells. In his lab, he will continue to investigate how diet-derived metabolites control stem cell function in normal and clonal haematopoiesis.

Stefano said,

The goal of my lab is to understand how nutrients derived from the diet impact the function of haematopoietic stem cells. As a Chancellor’s Fellow, I aim to identify the molecular mechanisms by which dietary nutrients regulate the function of normal and mutated pre-leukaemic haematopoietic stem cells that arise during ageing. My hope is that in the future, these basic discoveries will translate in novel pharmacological strategies that promote haematopoietic recovery after injuries and prevent the harmful expansion of pre-malignant cells in the ageing population.

Stefano joins two other new Chancellor's Fellows in the Institute for Regeneration and Repair (IRR) Dr Chloe Stanton in the Centre for Inflammation Research and Dr Güneş Taylor.

CRM and IRR Director, Professor Stuart Forbes said,

I am delighted to welcome our new Chancellor’s Fellows to the Institute. Their diverse expertise adds to the fundamental and translational research at an exciting time in our development as an Institute. I look forward to seeing their research develop in IRR and have great impact.