The Cantù Lab - Genome Regulation in Development and Disease

Salome Brütsch. Salome was born in a small town close to Zurich. She studied biology at the University of Zurich and performed her Master thesis in the Konrad Basler lab under the supervision of Claudio Cantù working on TBX3 and BCL9, both proteins involved in Wnt signaling. After the Master’s degree Salome decided to dive into a new topic and started her PhD in the lab of Sabine Werner in a small subgroup led by Mattia Bordoli. She studied VLK/Pkdcc, the first and so far only known secreted tyrosine kinase, in the mouse model and observed perinatal lethality upon mesenchyme-specific deletion of VLK/Pkdcc. The project initially outlined for wound healing went to a completely different direction. Salome wanted to find out why the mesenchyme-specific VLK/Pkdcc knockout is lethal and therefore she became the first person in the Werner lab that studied a protein in the context of embryonic lung development.

After completion of her doctoral studies Salome joined the Cantù lab in February 2023 for a short postdoctoral fellowship to work again on the interesting transcription factor TBX3.

Outside of work Salome enjoys to do sports, on weekends she loves to spend time in nature, hiking, road cycling and trying to cross country ski. She also enjoys having good conversations with friends accompanied by a good wine. During the week you can find her in various group fitness classes and at home relaxing through reading, listening to podcasts and doing Makrameh for all the baby plants she tries to raise.

Michael Gerstorfer. Michael is a cellular biologist who has focused his academic studies and work towards investigating highly spatially organized in vitro cellular constructs, like gastruloids and organoids, and their potential to act as medical screening, research and eventually treatment tools. Michael received a Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from the UAS Technikum Vienna. 

Later, he went on to do a double Master’s degree in Cell and Tissue Engineering from the UAS Technikum Vienna and Medical Sciences from Linköping University. During his thesis, Michael used gastruloids as research device to investigate the role of Wnt signalling in early embryonic development in the group of Claudio Cantù. Michael is currently working at the CeMM Research Institute in Vienna investigating gastric organoids as a screening tool for esophageal and gastric diseases in the lab of Georg Busslinger.

Valeria worked as a Research preparatory course student in Claudio Cantù's lab. She graduated in Biology, with a Molecular Biology curriculum, at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy. Her main interest is understanding the molecular mechanisms behind developmental diseases.

Photo credit Emma Busk Winquist

Patricia Johansson. Patricia started her career in the Cantù lab as a Master´s student in January 2019, and stayed for about 2 years as a Research Assistant after her studies. In the group, she got a lot of freedom to explore new and fascinating techniques and help establish them in the lab. This ranged from stem cell work and proteomics with Mass Spectrometry. Currently, she has chosen to set her eyes on research connected to product development and is working at Fujirebio Diagnostic AB with development of in vitro-diagnostic products.

Mattias Jonasson in the lab. Mattias was awarded his MSc in Molecular Biology by Umeå University. Drawn to the field of developmental biology, he joined the Cantù lab as a research engineer in 2018. Chromatin biology soon caught his interest, leading him to set up CUT&RUN to study transcription factor occupancy in development and cancer. Apart from hands-on lab work, he also found fulfillment in supervising undergraduate students; all of whom he remembers with great pride. In 2021, Mattias left to join the lab of Dr. Elly Tanaka (IMP, Vienna) as a PhD student. He now studies how fibroblast plasticity determines wound healing outcomes and regenerative potential of different species.

Alessandro Mattia. Alessandro was born in Milan, Italy, and obtained his Master degree in Medical and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology at the University of Pavia, where he developed interest for genome integrity and the role of chromatine in tumorigenesis. Soon after defending his thesis, Alessandro joined the Cantù Lab to improve his laboratory skills and his critical sensibility, before starting a PhD. At the moment, he is working on TBX3 and its potential function in colorectal cancer metastasis.

In his sparetime, Alessandro takes care of his plants, and has a strong passion for architecture and photography, reason why it is very likely to find him looking up to get the perfect shot.

Position: Postgraduate Erasmus student
E-mail: alemattia3197@gmail.com

Vittorio Monticelli. Vittorio studied Biomedical Laboratory Techniques at the University of Foggia, Italy, and he received his Degree of Master of Medical Science at Linköping University. Here he defended his thesis “Uncovering the regulatory machinery required for the transcription of the Wnt target gene AXIN2” after attending Claudio Cantù’s Lab for a period of 6 months in June 2020. Following a post-degree research course in the Cantù Lab, Vittorio started his Ph.D. at the University of Liège where he studies the tumor evolution of a virus-induced type of leukaemia by means of microfluidics single-cell approaches.

Photo credit John Karlsson Pierfrancesco was born in Alessandria, Italy. He studied Biology at the University of Milano-Bicocca from 2005 to 2011, and then moved to Zurich, Switzerland. During his PhD and his postdoc at the University of Zurich, he focused on the study of teeth, an incredibly powerful model for the study of developmental and evolutionary biology. In this system, he identified and characterized non-canonical functions of several molecules – including the neurotrophin Nerve Growth Factor, the neurite growth inhibitor Nogo-A, and the Wnt/β-catenin transcriptional coactivators Bcl9/9L and Pygo1/2. As Oberassistant/Junior Group Leader at the University of Zurich, he set up microfluidic culture systems to emulate complex organs in vitro, with the aim of modeling and imaging developmental processes. With these microfluidic devices, he could faithfully recapitulate the in vivo tooth innervation patterns.

He exploited these culture systems to compare the neurotrophic properties of dental pulp and bone marrow stromal cells, cell populations currently studied in the context of hard tissue regeneration, as well as cancer cells. In a parallel line of research, he applied single cell RNA sequencing to determine the cellular composition of human teeth, realizing a comprehensive single cell atlas of human teeth.
In April 2021, he joined the lab of Prof. Claudio Cantù at Linkoping University, to gain expertise in the study of chromatin structure, protein / DNA interactions, and how these events affect major developmental and pathological processes.

Jacopo Ulisse. Born and raised in Naples (Italy), Jacopo obtained a bachelor’s degree in 2020 in Health’s Biotechnologies at the University of Naples-Federico II and started an experimental master´s program in Medical Biotechnologies-Advanced Technologies Curriculum at the University of Naples-Federico II. After obtaining a master’s degree in December 2022, Jacopo won a 6-month scholarship grant from the Erasmus + Programme, which he exploited to conduct a traineeship in the Claudio Cantù Lab at Linköping University.

At the moment, Jacopo is participating in an ambitious project aimed at understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying the function of the β-catenin cofactor BCL9, and how it affects cell behaviour and embryonic development. Specifically, Jacopo is becoming specialized in the execution of the proteomics and transcriptomics assays, respectively. Outside work, Jacopo enjoys spending is free time mainly in cooking, watching movies, listening to music and going out for quite long walks.

Gianluca Zambanini, previous member of Claudio Cantù's research group. Photo credit John Karlsson Originally from Riva del Garda (Italy), Gianluca moved to Milan in 2015 to study Biological Science. After 3 years he obtained a bachelor’s degree and started a master´s program at the University of Milano- Bicocca. During the second year of that master´s, Gianluca moved to Linköping to work on a master´s project. During this project, Gianluca focused on the DNA binding detection of β-catenin, a critical component of the WNT signaling pathway. To do so, Gianluca tried to develop a new and improved version of the CUT&RUN protocol first described by the Henikoff Lab in 2017. After the thesis´ defense, Gianluca was awarded a 6-month scholarship by LiU to proceed with his project, aimed at improving the CUT&RUN technology.

Gianluca worked in the Lab as a research assistant using CUT&RUN to study limb development in addition to the differential binding pattern of β-catenin in different tissue and phases of mouse development.