The epigenetics of cartilage repair and regeneration
The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded a prestigious ERC Synergy Grant - perhaps the most competitive funding scheme from ERC - to the research groups of Prof. Filippo Rijli from the FMI and Prof. Ivan Martin from the Department of Biomedicine at the University of Basel and the University Hospital of Basel. The funding from ERC will flow into a joint project investigating the regenerative properties of adult nasal cartilage cells with the final goal of using them in vivo to regenerate intervertebral disc. ' Read a more high-level article about this topic on the Uni Basel website During craniofacial development, Cranial Neural Crest Cells (CNCCs) maintain broad plasticity and the capacity to differentiate into various cell types until they make appropriate cartilage and bone structures in response to local environmental signals. In a study published in Science in 2017 1) , the Rijli group found that CNCC embryonic plasticity involves a specific epigenetic chromatin mechanism regulated by the Polycomb group proteins that maintains genes in a transcriptionally silent but poised state, so that they can be readily switched to an active state in response to position-specific environmental signals.
