Dear Biology Students, Postdocs, and Faculty,
Next week for our Faculty Seminar Series at 1:00 p.m. on Monday, December 29th, we will have a talk by Dr. Rachelly Normand of the Massachusetts General Hospital Harvard Medical School Broad Institute of MIT and Harvad Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Dr. Rachelly Normand will present a talk titled “Advancing
Women’s Health One Cell at a Time: From Autoimmunity to Pregnancy”.
Talk Abstract:
Women’s health has historically been marginalized in research, and much of biomedical
knowledge still defaults to male physiology. My goal is to build a women-centered
research program focused on two complementary areas of research: autoimmunity,
which disproportionately affects women, and pregnancy, a critical and complex process
that shapes women’s health long after delivery. Autoimmunity and pregnancy share
fundamental tolerance pathways, making their joint study particularly powerful. In this
seminar I will present my post-doctoral study on thyroid autoimmunity, where we show
that Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and Graves’ disease – though clinically distinct – share many
features in the cellular ecosystem of the thyroid gland. We identified epithelial-immune
cellular niches that form in the gland during autoimmunity and may act as a tissue
tolerance mechanism to help preserve organ function in the setting of chronic immune
attack. I will then share results from the largest single cell placenta atlas profiled to date,
including five different pregnancy complications. This comprehensive atlas reveals
previously unrecognized placental cell subsets and uncovers distinct dynamics of fetal
and maternal cells across different complications. I will conclude by outlining my future
research program, which will move beyond cataloging individual cell types to
systematically defining the cellular niches that support tissue function and tissue
tolerance in diverse contexts of women’s health.
Looking forward to seeing you!
Maya
