by Leigh MacMillan
Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado, PhD, executive director and chief scientific officer of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Missouri, will discuss tissue regeneration at the next Discovery Lecture, in person on Thursday, March 24 in 208 Light Hall.
Sánchez Alvarado’s presentation, “Understanding the Sources of Regenerative Capacity in Animals,” begins at 4 p.m. and will also be livestreamed.
Tissue renewal and repair mechanisms are critical in responses to injury and normal wear and tear, but these processes are not well understood at the cellular and molecular levels.
Sánchez Alvarado and his team have developed powerful model systems for studying tissue regeneration using organisms including the planarian flatworm Schmidtea mediterranea and the African killifish Nothobranchius furzeri. They have identified multiple genes and genetic programs that drive tissue regeneration and regulate the integration of new cells into older tissues.
Sánchez Alvarado is an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Latin American Academy of Sciences.
Sánchez Alvarado received his bachelor’s degree from Vanderbilt University and his PhD from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. He completed postdoctoral training and independent research at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Baltimore, Maryland and was on the faculty at the University of Utah School of Medicine before moving to the Stowers Institute in 2011.
Sánchez Alvarado’s lecture is sponsored by the Vanderbilt Eye Institute Initiative in Regenerative Medicine, the Center for Stem Cell Biology, and the Program in Developmental Biology. For a complete schedule of Discovery Lectures, archived video of previous lectures, and the livestream link, go to https://www.vumc.org/dls/.