Fani Papagiannouli
Fani Papagiannouli is a Stem Cell and Developmental biologist, currently Lecturer at Medway School of Pharmacy, Universities of Kent and Greenwich. After finishing her undergraduate studies at the University of Patras in Greece in 1998, she continued with her Ph.D. degree at the University of Heidelberg, and the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ, Heidelberg), working on the role of the highly conserved polarity and tumor suppressor genes dlg, scrib and lgl in the Drosophila male gonads and testis architecture. After completing her PhD in 2003, she continued her research analysing the development and morphogenetic events of the early Drosophila embryo at Zentrum für Molekulare Biologie der Universität Heidelberg (ZMBH). In 2009 she joined the Centre for Organismal Studies (COS, Heidelberg) to study the role of the Hox transcription factors abdA and AbdB in the Drosophila testis. In 2016 with an awarded Fellowship from the German Research Foundation (DFG), she moved to Stanford University to study soma-germline communication together with Margaret Fuller. She returned to Germany in 2018 to continue her studies on the mechanisms and factors that regulate germ cell control during spermatogenesis in Drosophila, hosted by Prof. Maria Leptin at the Institute of Genetics in Cologne. Her latest work revealed that cortical polarity and cellular trafficking regulate EGFR in the somatic epithelial-type cyst cells that encapsulate the germ cells and promote germ cell survival and animal fertility. Dr. Fani Papagiannouli joined the Medway School of Pharmacy (MSoP) in September 2019 as a Lecturer in Biological Sciences with specialty in Stem Cell and Developmental Biology. Her scientific focus is on the mechanisms and factors that regulate stem cell maintenance and how stem cells interact with their neighbouring cells to shape the niche and local tissue microenvironment. Elucidating the role of transcription factors such as the Hox gene AbdB, as well as that of the cortical polarity proteins Dlg, Scrib and Lgl, and nucleoporins in soma-germline coordination, within the complex gene network underlying testis homeostasis, are some of her main research interests.