Dr Karina Pombo-Garcia
Dr Karina Pombo-Garcia
Group Leader
Karina Pombo-Garcia is a group leader on “Molecular Organization of Cell Interfaces”. Her lab will investigate the molecular assembly of cell interfaces in the epithelial tissue and in pathology of intestinal diseases. Her group will use super-resolution imaging STED in combination with gut organoids, biophysics & chemical biology to uncover how epithelial cells organise their components in space and time under different physico-chemical environments to drive self-organisation processes that shape mesoscale structures enabling tissue function. Her lab will explore how cells control the formation of bimolecular condensates under different chemical spaces to organise the cell. Karina hopes that this research will lead to the opening of novel therapeutic venues in dysfunctional junctions after pathogen entry or intestinal diseases.
Karina completed her PhD in Chemistry between Helmholtz (HZDR), Technische Universität Dresden (TUD), Germany and Monash University, Australia on the development of radiopharmaceuticals and nanomaterials for molecular imaging for early cancer diagnosis. Later, she shifted to do a postdoc in cell biology and biophysics at the Max Planck for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden. During her time there, she made a key discovery on the understanding the process by which epithelial cells connect via wetting of liquid-condensates of tight junctions. Exciting collaborations also allowed her to work on lipid imaging, neuropathology of stress granules, small drugs on transcriptional condensates, all using super-resolution microscopy.
Read more about Karina’s work here and her portfolio of academic articles is accessible on Google Scholar.
Karina can be contacted by email at karina.pombo-garcia@rfi.ac.uk or @karina_pombo on X.