Lishi Ma

Lishi has completed her Bachelor and Master degree in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Southern Medical University in Guangzhou in China and then joined the Lye Laboratory in the Department of Physiology at the University of Toronto to work on her PhD program. From the start of Life Science Research as a postgraduate student, she had her research in the co-operative laboratory of Dr. Guangjin Pan in Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences and participated in projects about mechanism on maintenance/differentiation of human pluripotent/trophoblast stem cells(hPSCs) and derivation of induced hTSCs from hPSC lines. She has already published work in generation of two RNF2 knockout hESC(embryonic stem cell) lines, essential role of FOXD3 in hESC maintenance, transcriptional network involving TEAD4-CDX2 axis and GATA3 in early human trophoblast development, and derivation of induced hTSCs from hPSC reprogramming.

She is now having PhD program focusing on 3D co-culture models based on hTSC differentiation to study cellular interaction at the maternal-fetal interface during pregnancy. Specifically, the scientific aims include: 1) generating hTSC spheroids and characterize gene/protein expression patterns for cell maintenance/differentiation; 2) co-culturing TSCs and fetal fibroblasts in a 3D manner to derive placental villus structure and model early trophoblast development; 3) co-culturing TSC spheroids with endometrial cells to model trophoblast invasion into maternal decidua; 4) co-culturing TSCs and ESCs in a 3D manner to derive blastocyst-like structure and study blastocyst formation/development.