Dr. Laura Kerosuo received her PhD in stem cell biology working on neural stem cells in the laboratories of Kirmo Wartiovaara and Hannu Sariola at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She then continued as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Marianne Bronner at the California Institute of Technology where she initiated her research on stem cell characteristics of the neural crest. Since 2018, she has continued her research at NIDCR as a Stadtman Tenure-Track Investigator in her own laboratory at the Neural Crest Development and Disease Unit.
Work in the Kerosuo lab aims to understand how stemness is initiated, maintained and eventually lost in the transient neural crest niche during early embryo development. What is the molecular signature that creates these highly multipotent (or pluripotent?) stem cells and allows them to avoid differentiation during the gastrulation process? When are fate choices made? The lab is also interested in using this knowledge to find molecular mechanisms behind neural crest derived birth defects and cancer. The lab uses chick and mouse embryos as their in vivo model accompanied with human ES and patient derived iPS cell derived neural crest cultures. The research is based on modern single cell level molecular biology and biochemistry tools, high resolution imaging and multiplex gene expression analysis to complement conventional embryology.
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