Untangling the Interorgan Communication Network

Featured Speaker: Ilia Droujinine, PhD

Human organs are highly specialized and coordinate their functions to maintain steady state. For instance, during exercise, muscle activity is coordinated with the release of stored nutrients from adipose tissue and liver. This coordination is achieved via communication networks of factors secreted from a specific organ into the blood where they can then move to and act on distal organs. Studies have shown that diseases significantly impact these interorgan communication networks, and interorgan communication impacts disease development. This lecture will describe how scientists are tackling this difficult problem, the solving of which holds the tremendous promise of novel therapeutics.
 

Presenter Biography

Presenter: Ilia Droujinine is a Principal Investigator at Scripps Research, where he has led the Droujinine Lab since October 2020. The lab focuses on development of novel technologies aimed at identifying and characterizing interorgan-communication secreted factors in steady state and disease. Droujinine received his BS from the University of Waterloo and his PhD from Harvard University.
 

Coordinator: Marlene Rayner