Junior Research Fellow - Kellogg College
Cardiovascular disease leading to heart attack is the major cause of morbidity and mortality in humans and is a growing global health problem. The damage caused by a heart attack cannot be repaired in humans, leading to a permanent loss of cardiac tissue.

Unlike the human heart, the zebrafish maintains the ability to regenerate cardiac muscle lost by injury into adulthood. Activation of the epicardial layer occurs as an immediate response to damage and has been shown to be crucial for the regenerative process. My ongoing work focus on understanding epicardial cell differentiation potential and signalling, seeking to determine whether heterogeneity at the single-cell level correlates with distinct cell fates and function during cardiac development (Weinberger, Simões et al., Developmental Cell 2020) and regeneration. Funded by a recent British Heart Foundation CRE Intermediate Transition Fellowship award, I am also investigating the nature of the innate immune response to heart injury, in order to boost its regenerative capacity post-injury (Simões et al., Nature Communications 2020).