Prof.Dr. Carmen Faso

Unconventional protein secretion (UPS), proteins crossing the plasma membrane outside the canonical secretion pathway, is a topic that has been of growing interest of cell biologists in various study systems. UPS was shown to be at the core of health and disease related processes and a better understanding of the involved molecular mechanisms holds great promises for translational applications. We are studying UPS in the protist parasite Giardia lamblia, with a streamlined endomembrane system, to advance the understanding of UPS mechanisms in eukaryotes.

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Funding sources: SNSF

The study of host-parasite interactions relies on the experimental reproduction of a physiologically relevant context for interspecies exchange. Hence the robustness of the generated data is only as good as the degree to which the context for interaction faithfully mimics the natural setting. This is a daunting task that has seen the development of numerous in vitro co-cultivation techniques, mostly relying on amenable cell lines in scarcely physiological 2D settings. The introduction of organoids as 3D co-culturing platforms marked a major improvement. This project proposes to develop a microfluidics-based and biopsy-derived human “mini-gut” system in a complementary and multi-disciplinary effort involving researchers with expertise in molecular parasitology, mucosal immunology and biomedical engineering. The long-term goal of the proposed project is to implement this tool for the study of environmental and genetic exacerbation factors to intestinal pathogen infections.

Funding sources: Ruth and Artur Scherbarth Foundation