Majlinda Lako, Prof.
Biochemistry and Genetics graduate from Faculty of Natural Sciences in Tirana, Albania.
Description
For her PhD studies in Human Genetics in 1993 she joined the lab of two world known geneticists, Prof. Tom Strachan and Susan Lindsay, in Newcastle, where she cloned and characterised novel genes involved in development of the brain. These led to a great interest in pluripotent stem cell biology, which she studied at Durham University. In 2003, she established her own research group at Newcastle University’s Institute of Genetic Medicine, where she pioneered the establishment of human pluripotent stem cells and development of robust methods for generation of light responsive retinal organoids for disease modelling, drug discovery and therapeutic applications. Studying the developmental biology and disease of the eye is a core activity of her research group. Dysfunction of any of the cell types that reside in the retina or supporting cells, the retinal pigmented epithelium (RPE), which is vital for the health of the retina, will disrupt vision. The aim of her research group is to determine the mechanisms that cause such disruption and find ways to repair the damage.
She is the Co-director of Regenerative Medicine, Stem Cells and Transplantation, a member of the Biosciences Institute and her work contributes to the Regenerative Medicine, Stem Cells and Transplantation theme. She is also part of the Neuroscience NUCoRE.
Publication list
The full list of publications by Prof. Majlinda Lako is available here: lako m – Search Results – PubMed (nih.gov).
Research projects
Research groups
We are interested in creating new approaches for comprehensive inference of developmental trajectories and delineation of cell atlases from single-cell data, understanding the role of cell-to-cell signaling and biological pathways in lineage commitment and transitions between cellular states.
Image-guided Devices for Ophthalmic Care
We seek to research novel techniques and develop instrumentation to address unanswered questions in vision science and unmet needs in ophthalmology and optometry.
Integrated Structural Biology
Research aims to elucidate the mechanisms of vision, particularly proteins of the phototransduction pathway and the visual cycle, at an atomic and molecular level.
We use electrophysiology for investigating the system of local and distant communication between populations of neurons responsible for information processing.
Physical Optics and Biophotonics
The research in our group can be seen as a perfect interplay between physics, biology and chemistry. We are focusing on developing imaging techniques and using them in many biological and chemical systems.
