Our News
We welcome Professor Elena Matsa to the School of Biochemistry and Cell Biology
It is with great pleasure that we welcome Professor Elena Matsa to the School of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, UCC, following the recent announcement and launch of our strategic collaboration with NIBRT (National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training).
Professor Elena Matsa was previously a postdoctoral fellow and Instructor at the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute, Stanford University School of Medicine, where she studied human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) to model cardiovascular disease and cardiomyocyte-drug interactions. As an Instructor, Professor Matsa coordinated a team of postdoctoral fellows for the development and optimisation of drug screening assays in iPSC derived cardiomyocytes (iPSC-CM), managed full-time research associates, mentored graduate students, and conducted independent research experiments.
Since 2017, Professor Matsa has held several roles in industry, through which she used state-of-the-art technologies for next-generation sequencing, genome editing, high throughput automated characterisation of iPSC-derivatives such as skeletal muscle cells, neurons, macrophages and hematopoietic stem cells, and high throughput screening to advance new therapeutic products towards the clinic.
In her most recent role as Senior Vice President in Cell Therapy Research at Cellistic, Professor Matsa strengthened the leadership team providing expertise and strategic guidance on bioreactor-based iPSC specification towards immune cell types, such as T-regulatory cells (Treg), Natural Killer (NK) cells, and T-cells.
Professor Matsa has expertise and experience in a broad array of functions essential to successful allogeneic cell therapy manufacturing, and her work has been published in Cell Stem Cell, Nature Medicine, Science Translational Medicine and the European Heart Journal, among others.
Professor Matsa joins the UCC-NIBRT with the ambition to strengthen the iPSC Cell Therapy field in Ireland, and worldwide. Her research will focus on improvements in the purity, yield, and reproducibility of iPSC-based cell therapy manufacturing, in an overall plan that will bring together a cooperative research program between UCC, NIBRT, industry and academic partners as well as hospitals and patient groups.