Urban Lendahl

Group members:
Urban Lendahl, group leader
Susanne Bergstedt, lab engineer
Debashis Das, postdoc
Shaobo Jin, postdoc
Heather Main, PhD stud
Anders Mutvei, undergrad

URBAN LENDAHL
Department of Cell and Molecular Biology (CMB)
Urban.Lendahl@ki.se

Our laboratory is interested in the Notch signaling pathway and its role in cellular differentiation in health and disease.

We focus on the molecular mechanisms underpinning Notch signaling, both with regard to the core signaling pathway and the roles of various Notch accessory proteins that modulate Notch signaling. An important focus of the laboratory is to understand how Notch signaling is integrated with other major signaling pathways, and we work on cross-talk between Notch and BMP/TGF-beta, Notch and Wnt, and Notch and cellular hypoxia. In the latter project, we address the consequences of the cross-talk both in stem cells and tumor cells. Finally, we explore how Notch controls differentiation in various stem/progenitor cell types, with a particular focus on ES cells, myogenic progenitors and vascular smooth muscle cells.

5 SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:

Sahlgren C., Gustafsson M.V., Jin S., Poellinger L., and Lendahl U. (2008) Notch signaling mediates hypoxia-induced tumor cell migration and invasion. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 105:6392-6397.

Jin S., Hansson E.M., Tikka S., Lanner F., Sahlgren C., Farnebo F., Baumann M., Kalimo H., and Lendahl U. (2008) Notch signaling regulates platelet-derived growth factor receptor-beta expression in vascular smooth muscle cells. Circ. Res. 102:1483-1491.

Chapman G., Liu L., Sahlgren C., Dahlqvist C., and Lendahl U. (2006) High levels of Notch signaling down-regulate Numb and Numblike. J. Cell Biol. 175, 535-540.

Gustafsson M.V., Zheng X., Pereira T., Gradin K., Jin S., Lundkvist J., Ruas J.L., Poellinger L., Lendahl U., and Bondesson M. (2005) Hypoxia requires Notch signaling to maintain the undifferentiated cell state. Dev. Cell 9, 617-628.

Dahlqvist C., Blokzijl A., Chapman G., Falk A., Dannaeus K., Ibáñez C.F., and Lendahl U. (2003) Functional Notch signaling is required for BMP4-induced inhibition of myogenic differentiation. Development 130, 6089-6099.

LINKS:

For more information, please visit our lab website.