The webinar with the title “Disease and the Hippo Pathway: Cellular and Molecular Mechanisms.” provided fundamental molecular insights into human disease.

Associate Prof. Dr. Carsten Hansen studies the cellular functions regulated by and of the Hippo Pathway and his teams research uses various interdisciplinary approaches aiming to solve still outstanding fundamental aspects of the Hippo pathway. As the chair of the webinar, Associate Prof. Dr. Carsten Hansen welcomed the audience to the subject, and he introduced the following expert researchers: Prof. Dr. Toshiro Moroishi, Assist. Prof. Dr. Gernot Walko, Assist. Prof. Dr. Hyun Woo Park, and Dr. Zach Brandt.

Prof. Dr. Toshiro Moroishi held the first presentation about "Hippo Pathway in Cancer and Immunity." The next presentation was held by Assist. Prof. Dr. Gernot Walko, who is Assistant Professor and Principal Investigator in the Department of Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Bath, UK. He talked about “YAP/WBP2/TEAD Interplay Controls Proliferation and Differentiation in Normal and Neoplastic Human Epidermis".

Assist. Prof. Dr. Hyun Woo Park was the next speaker of the webinar. He held a presentation with the subject "Regulation of Hippo Pathway in Cancer Metabolism" and his presentation was followed by Dr. Zach Brandt. Dr. Zach Bradt, who is a recent graduate of Brian Link’s lab, located at the Medical College of Wisconsin, gave the last talk of the webinar about "Hippo-Yap Signaling in Hepatobiliary Development: Insights from Zebrafish."

The details of all experts:

Associate Prof. Dr. Carsten Hansen carried out his MSc in Molecular Biology at Aarhus University, Denmark and his PhD, under the supervision by Dr Ben Nichols in the Cell Biology department, at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. His Post Doctoral studies, funded by a fellowship from the Danish Science Ministry, was carried out in Professor Kun-Liang Guan's laboratory at UCSD in La Jolla, California. He was in 2015 recruited to the University of Edinburgh on a Chancellor's Fellowship to set up his own laboratory at the Center for Inflammation Research. His teams research uses various interdisciplinary approaches aiming to solve still outstanding fundamental aspects of the Hippo pathway.

Prof. Dr. Toshiro Moroishi is a Professor of the Faculty of Life Sciences at Kumamoto University, Japan. He received his M.D. and Ph.D. in medical sciences from Kyushu University, Japan, and pursued his postdoctoral research at the University of California, San Diego, USA. Since 2017, Dr. Moroishi has been leading a research team studying cell signaling and cellular metabolism. His long-term research interests involve physiological mechanisms regulating tissue homeostasis and integrity in multicellular organisms, with a special focus on the interplay between metabolic and signal transduction pathways. His work spans from basic science to drug discovery, aiming to provide scientific basis for future clinical applications.

Assist. Prof. Dr. Gernot Walko (Magister rer. nat., Doctor rer. nat) received his undergraduate and postgraduate training in microbiology and molecular biology from the University of Vienna, Austria. He did his PhD in molecular cell biology in the lab of Prof Gerhard Wiche, where his research project focused on the roles of cytoskeletal linker proteins in the context of human skin blistering diseases. In 2013, Dr Walko moved to London on a prestigious Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship to join the world-leading stem cell lab of Prof Fiona Watt at the newly opened Centre for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine at King’s College London. There, his research focused on the molecular mechanisms controlling self-renewal of human epidermal stem cells. Since 2018, Dr Walko is Assistant Professor and Principal Investigator in the Department of Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Bath, UK, where his research group studies epidermal stem cells in healthy and diseased skin, with a special focus on the Hippo signalling pathway and its role in skin cancer.

Assist. Prof. Dr. Hyun Woo Park is an assistant Professor at Yonsei University, Department of Biochemistry since 2016. Trained at Yonsei University and University of California at San Diego (UCSD). Specialist in Cell Biology, Pharmacology, and Biochemistry, with research focus on oncology, cell signaling, metabolism, and precision medicine. Published over 30 peer-reviewed papers, including recent articles in Cell, Nature Cell Biology, and PNAS. Current research in the Translational Cancer Research Laboratory includes Hippo pathway and drug development, elucidate novel paradigm in cancer metastasis, generate mouse models for tumor microenvironment research, and dietary intervention as anticancer therapy.

Dr. Zach Brandt is a recent graduate of Brian Link’s lab, located at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He graduated from Wisconsin Lutheran College in 2014, and immediately went on to join the Interdisciplinary Program in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the Medical College of Wisconsin where he joined Brian Link’s lab in June of 2015. His graduate school research focused primarily on the core components of the Hippo pathway. During his career, he studied this pathway and its regulation across multiple tissues and in various contexts, including sensory neuron development and arborization, biliary system development and maintenance, peripheral nerve sheath tumor biology, and most recently emmetropization. He defended his dissertation virtually at the end of March and is currently exploring new opportunities for his postdoctoral research.