The CrickConnect team are delighted to be able to invite community members to join us for the institute's regular Crick Lecture.

Crick Lectures provide a broad insight into biomedical research from leading scientists. Not to be missed, the one-hour lectures are the event of the week for the Crick community to come together. 

Crick Lectures take place weekly (usually on Thursday at 16:00), and are given by leading scientists. The lectures aim to be accessible to scientists across different disciplines, while also offering something for the specialist.

Due to the pioneering and sensitive nature of some of the research discussed in these lectures, only Crick Lectures from selected speakers will be shared, and we ask all attendees to respect the private nature of these talks by refraining from making any type of recording, sharing access details or in any other way compromising the research that is discussed.

We are delighted to welcome alumni Taija Mäkinen back to the Crick for this week's lecture - "Exploring the multifaceted functions of the lymphatic vascular system in development and disease"

There will also be a netwroking opportunity after the Lecture from 5pm. If you are able to join us in person at the Crick please let us know at connect@crick.ac.uk so we can arrange access

Taija Mäkinen

Some of you will know Taija from her time as Group Leader (Lymphatic Development lab ) at the CRUK London Research Institute ( 2007-2013)- she left London in 2013 and went to Uppsala University as a Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor and in 2019 became a Professor there. See below for full biography.

Vascular Development Lab

The key aim of the Mäkinen lab is to understand how endothelial cells lining blood and lymphatic vessels communicate with each other and the tissue environment to co-ordinate vascular morphogenesis. Most of the research has focused on the lymphatic vasculature that was traditionally considered a passive drainage system responsible for removal of fluid, molecules and cells from tissues. However, emerging evidence in the last few years shows active roles of lymphatic vessels in inflammation, immunity, lipid metabolism and metastasis, and consequent involvement in common diseases such as obesity, autoimmune diseases, atherosclerosis and cancer. This exciting development suggests a high degree of functional diversification of endothelial cells of specific vascular beds. Their second major aim is therefore to understand organ-specific regulation of lymphatic vessel formation and function. They utilise and develop advanced mouse genetic tools to spatially and temporally control expression of genes in specific cell types of interest. By identifying genetic causes of lymphatic diseases we additionally aim to uncover mechanisms of vascular development that are directly relevant to human pathology.