Contact

Dominika Berdecka
Laboratory for General Biochemistry and Physical Pharmacy
Ghent University
Ottergemsesteenweg 460
9000 Ghent
Belgium
Tel: 0032 9 264 8047 (secretary)
Tel: 0032 9 264 8365 (direct)
E-mail: dominika.berdecka@ugent.be

Biography

Dominika obtained her Master’s degree in Biochemistry at Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland. During her Master studies she worked on characterization of antigenically-defined bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) subpopulations, as well as MSC-derived extracellular vesicles for the application in ischemic tissue regeneration. Afterwards, she joined 3B’s Research Group, University of Minho (Portugal) to work on engineering of in vitro microenvironments for tenogenic differentiation of adipose-derived stem cells for tendon tissue engineering. In August 2019 she moved to Ghent University to join the Laboratory for General Biochemistry and Physical Pharmacy.

Summary of Research Project(s)

Ex vivo engineering of primary cells has been of central importance for generation of cell-based therapies, such as chimeric antigen receptor T cells for cancer treatment. Despite transfection efficiency and viability being the most common success metrics in intracellular delivery, an emerging body of evidence calls for more in-depth functional studies, unravelling the impact of the delivery mechanism on cell phenotype and function post treatment. Photoporation, though being a relatively novel technology, has been already proven successful in intracellular delivery of a wide variety of functional molecules in several cell types, ranging from cancer cell lines to primary cells. In the present project we aim to gain an in-depth understanding of the impact of photoporation on cell physiology, focusing on clinically relevant cell populations, such as primary T cells and stem cells. Cell response to plasma membrane permeabilization by photoporation will be evaluated by genome wide expression study and further validated at the protein level. Additionally, a comparison with other state-of -the-art transfection technologies will be performed.