Lina Dagnino
Associate Professor
PH.D. University of Alberta |
Dr. Dagnino is an Associate Professor of Physiology/Pharmacology and Paediatrics at the University of Western Ontario (UWO). She is also a Research Scientist at the Childrens Health Research Institute and at the Lawson Health Research Institute, and a member of the Developmental Biology Graduate Program at UWO. Her research interests include regulation of growth and differentiation in the skin, as well as elucidation of the mechanisms of epidermal stem cell maintenance and regeneration of the epidermis after injury. She has made major contributions to this field, such as the identification of key proteins necessary for the establishment of barrier function in the epidermis and for wound healing. She has held multiple awards, including a New Investigator Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, a Premiers Excellence Award from the Ontario Ministry of Health, Science and Technology, and a Margaret P. Moffat Scholarship from the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Western Ontario. She is currently a member or invited member of several national and international scientific review panels, including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the National Science and Engineering Research Council and the National Instututes of Health in the U. S. Summary of current research a) Transcriptional control of epidermal cell growth, differentiation and regeneration after injury. The E2F family of transcription factors is present in the epidermis, and individual members of this family are differentially expressed in undifferentiated vs. differentiated cells. We have examined the mechanisms that regulate E2F expression in the epidermis, and have determined that both transcriptional and post-translational signaling events regulate abundance, subcellular localization and activity of E2Fs. We are analyzing the role that signaling molecules activated during epidermal differentiation play in modulating E2F activity and E2F target gene expression.
b) Role of integrins and their signaling complexes in epidermal development and regeneration. Integrins and their downstream signaling molecules are key for epidermal development during embryogenesis, post-natal maintenance of this tissue, and regeneration after injury. We have established that integrin-linked kinase (ILK) is a central mediator of these processes. We are using multiple approaches, including biochemistry, cell and molecular biology, as well as characterization of mutant mouse models to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of ILK modulation of epidermal function.
SJA D'Souza, A Vespa, S Murkherjee, A Maher, A Pajak and L Dagnino. E2F-1 is essential for normal epidermal wound repair J Biol Chem 277:10626-10632, 2002 IA Ivanova and L Dagnino. Activation of p38- and CRM1-dependent nuclear export promotes E2F1 degradation during keratinocyte differentiation. Oncogene, e-pub 21 Aug 2006. WY Chang, J Andrews, DE Carter, and L Dagnino. Differentiation and injury-repair signals modulate the interaction of E2F and pRb proteins with novel targets in keratinocytes. Cell Cycle in press (2006) A Vespa, A Darmon, C Turner, SJA D'Souza and L Dagnino. Ca2+-dependent localization of integrin-linked-kinase to cell-cell junctions in differentiating keratinocytes. J Biol Chem. 278:11528-11535, 2003 A Vespa, SJA D'Souza and L Dagnino. A novel role for integrin-linked kinase in epithelial sheet morphogenesis. Mol Biol Cell 16:4084-4095, 2005