News

We were delighted to host Linda Hammerich from Charité – Berlin University Medicine to ZML Seminar this month! Linda presented research of her lab on the tumour microenvironment and interactions between cancer and immune cells with amazing insights in development of immunotherapies and ferroptosis induction strategies to fight HCC.

Niclas got a chance to visit an excellent Toulouse School of Lipids. Together with Andrea Ventrui from DAISY Lab in Perugia, they learned a lot about lipid biochemistry!  Niclas is ready to apply his new knowledge on lipid metabolism in his master thesis project to study the lipidome of axolotl!

The book chapter by Sider and Maria on “Membrane Epilipidome-Lipid Modifications, Their Dynamics, and Functional Significance” was published in the book “The Biology of Lipids: Trafficking, Regulation, and Function”, 2nd Edition, of the Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology. Take a read if you are interested in the biology and importance of epilipid modifications for complex life.

https://cshperspectives.cshlp.org/content/early/2024/01/20/cshperspect.a041417

Maria was invited by Katrin Watschinger and Markus Keller to the Medical University of Innsbruck to present our research at the Center for Chemistry and Biochemistry (CCB) seminars. Was a great experience to meet all wonderful researchers with a great interest in lipids, membranes and lipid metabolism!

Silvia Schäfer from the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) Dresden (research group of Alexander Wurm) started her 2-week PhD lab rotation at the LMAI with Ni to become familiar with the principles of lipidomics data analysis.

Two new young visiting scientists arrived to learn lipidomics at LMAI and apply it to their exciting projects. Magali Walravens came from University of Antwerp (laboratory of Tom Vanden Berghe) to apply lipidomics techniques to her project on ferroptosis in multi-organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS). Simona Fontana from University of Torino (laboratory of Chiara Riganti) will investigate potential lipid biomarkers in the development of chemo-immuno-resistance in non-small cell lung cancer. Welcome and best of luck!

As is tradition every December, we had a special Friday lab seminar where Maria put together all what we have achieved as a team in 2023. With all the papers published, conference talks, awards and visiting researchers, it was a very productive year which we celebrated with a nice lunch!  

Also, LMAI said our farewells to Gabriele, who visited us for 2 months from Perugia but who will also come back to Dresden soon as a part of LMAI team.  

LMAI team is thrilled to announce that Niclas, our youngest and inspiring fellow, has been awarded the FOSTER – Funds for Student Research. This grant will enable Niclas to research age-dependent remodeling of the lipidome in axolotl and mice, furthering his groundbreaking work in lipid quality control and lipostasis.

We were delighted to host José Pedro Friedmann Angeli, a renowned expert in ferroptosis from the University of Würzburg. During his visit, Pedro delivered an inspiring talk on his research in uncovering the intricate mechanisms regulating ferroptosis.

We welcomed Dr. C.H.A. (Chris) van de Lest from Utrecht University at LMAI. During his visit, Ni shared his expertise in lipidomics data analysis, focusing on the use of Lipostar for efficient LC-MS data processing and curation.

We attended the annual XMass Updated Symposium hosted by the Shevchenko group. Palina showcased her research on tracing lipids by click chemistry-enhanced LC-MS.

Andrea had his last day in our lab. During the last six months, he focused on making lipid extraction a more greener process by replacing chloroform by more environment friendly solvents. Look out for the publication next year on how you can make your lipidomics routines greener. We wish Andrea all the best for the future and will be missing you a lot!

Maria and Michele went to the 3 ^rd Annual Meeting of the DFG SPP2306 on ferroptosis in Heidelberg. Michele presented our results on “Lipidome plasticity in ferroptotic cell death”.

Palina went to Kunming, China to participate at EMBO Workshop “Membrane shaping and remodeling by proteins”. For her poster “Swift dynamics of plasma membrane repair upon lipid peroxidation-mediated injury” she was awarded with an “Excellent Poster Award”. Congratulations Palina!

Maria was invited to speak at the 18 ^th Meeting of French Lipidomics Group (GERLI) which was hold in Paris, France. She presented our concept of Lipid Quality Control (LQC) with the talk entitled “Lipidome plasticity in stress responses”.

LMAI hosted SPP2306 Ferroptosis Training School “Mass spectrometry based lipidomics in ferroptosis research”. Over 5 days our trainees got experience in lipid extraction, TLC, targeted and untargeted LC-MS/MS, and data analysis. Our participants gained both theoretical knowledge and hands-on experience on a complete workflow they can use for lipidomics and epilipidomics discoveries in ferroptosis research.

Gabriele Lombardi Bendoula from DAISY Lab of University of Perugia, Italy started his 2 month ERASMUS internship at LMAI. Gabriele is a Master graduate in Chemical Science from the lab of Prof. Gabriele Cruciani and Prof. Laura Goracci. The aim of his research stay is to develop cheminformatics methods to support tracing of lipid metabolism using click chemistry approaches.

Annual FERROPath Consortium Meeting was hosted by Ana I. Casas at University Hospital Essen. Sider presented updates on our subproject including developed SOPs for epilipidomics analysis of tissue samples.

Maria was invited to present at the EMBO workshop “Lipid droplets: Metabolic hubs in health and disease” held in Sant Feliu de Guíxols, Spain. She presented the concept of “Using epilipdomics for assessing the role of lipid droplets in lipid quality control” describing our data and current understanding of how living systems maintain lipid homeostasis by integrating lipid metabolism and lipid droplet dynamics.

Sider was invited to give a talk at the EMBO workshop “Developmental metabolism: flows of energy, matter, and information” in EMBL, Heidelberg. His presentation entitled “Interwinding metabolic and developmental plasticity in C. elegans: how worms choose between growth and quiescence” was dedicated to how growth and developmental signaling are coordinated with cell metabolism to determine the developmental fate of an organism.

Katyeny Manuela Da Silva who worked with the LMAI team as a visiting researcher from Van Nuijs’s group at the University of Antwerp, together with Michele, Palina and Maria, published the article “Investigating the Potential of Drift Tube Ion Mobility for the Analysis of Oxidized Lipids” on the application of ion mobility as a promising technology to increase the resolving power of LC-MS in the analysis of lipids modified through oxidation. She also defended her PhD thesis recently. Congratulations Dr. Da Silva and all the best for the future!

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.analchem.3c02213

Maria was invited to present a keynote lecture at the 8th Lipidomics Forum organized by the International Lipidomics Society in Vienna. Maria’s lecture entitled “Lipidome dynamics at the crossroad between survival and cell death” was dedicated to the mechanism of lipid quality control in pro-ferroptotic conditions.

A new review article “An overview of food lipids toward food lipidomics” co-authored by Michele as part of a team of EpiLipidNET members  was published in the journal Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety. This detailed and comprehensive review covers many important aspects of food lipidomics such as the diversity of lipids in different food products, analytical strategies for covering this huge diversity, the effects of food processing on lipid analysis, as well as a perspective on the future trends and challenges in food lipidomics.

https://ift.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1541-4337.13225

Antonino Asaro from the group of Giovanni D’Angelo at EPFL Lausanne visited LMAI to learn about analysis of oxidized lipids and apply this knowledge to his exciting project about homeostatic maintenance during neurogenesis. We wish him the best of luck in his quest!

Michele spent last three weeks at the lab of Sven Heiles, Leibniz Institute for Analytical Sciences in Dortmund to learn about AP MALDI imaging directly from the experts! Thank you Sven for hosting Michele and we are very much looking forward to establishing MS Imaging at LMAI.