Loke CTR Journal Club

What is the aim of the Journal Club?

The goal of the Loke CTR Journal Club is to discuss cutting edge research articles focusing on the cellular and molecular biology of placental development and function, not only in humans but also in model organisms and cell culture systems. This includes the following topics: epigenetic regulation, lineage specification, implantation, trophoblast differentiation, placental structure and function, and maternal-fetal interactions during pregnancy.

The journal club provides Loke CTR members and other researchers alike a friendly environment to familiarize themselves with the current literature, to critique experimental design and to have informal discussions about the "Big Picture" regarding the biology of the trophoblast lineage, the placenta and pregnancy.

We are moving the venue online! Anyone at the University of Cambridge or allied institutes who has an affinity for placental development is welcome to attend the Loke CTR journal club.

You do not need to be a Loke CTR member.

Loke CTR Journal Club Meeting Schedule (2024-2025)

The Loke CTR journal club sessions occur approximately every second Wednesday of the month (during term time) at 1:00pm or 4:00pm and meetings usually run for up to an hour.

All meetings will occur online over Zoom. An invitation will be sent out to those on the mailing list prior to each meeting.

Date	Speaker	Title
30^th October, 2024 1PM-2PM	Yudan Ren	Dissecting Rubella Placental Infection in an In Vitro Trophoblast Model https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms24097894
20^th November 2024 1-2PM	Gretchen Ruschman	Microbiome-producing SCFAs are associated with preterm birth via trophoblast function modulation DOI: 10.1128/mbio.02702-24
11^th December, 2024 1-2PM	Freddy Wong	3D reconstruction of a gastrulating human embryo https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2024.03.041
15^th January, 2025 4-5PM	Desislava Staneva	Lineage regulators TFAP2C and NR5A2 function as bipotency activators in totipotent embryos https://doi.org/10.1038/s41594-023-01199-x
19^th February, 2025	Alice Truszczynska	NK cell receptor profiling of endometrial and decidual NK cells reveals pregnancy-induced adaptations https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2024.1353556
19^th March, 2025	Chris Belton
23^rd April, 2025	Stan MacMurray
14^th May 2025	Ana Paredes Garcia
18^th June, 2025	Narendra Meena

How does the journal club work?

For Attendees

One week prior to each journal club meeting, a link to the selected article will be emailed out to those on the journal club mailing list and to all members of the CTR. This will ensure that everyone will have a chance to read the article before the meeting. If you have trouble accessing a PDF of the article, please contact Priscilla Day-Walsh.

At each meeting, the presenter spends approximately 20-25 minutes explaining the premise of the chosen article and why (or why not) they deem it to be important to the field. Attendees will then collectively discuss and critique the chosen paper. The meetings are fairly informal to encourage discussion throughout the presentation. Meetings take place at 4pm according to the schedule and usually run for about an hour.

All meetings of the 2024-2025 year will take place online over the video conferencing platform Zoom (free download). The Zoom meeting invitation will be sent out to the Loke CTR mailing list prior to each meeting. For more information on Loke CTR membership and our mailing list policy, please visit our Membership page.

For Presenters

Two weeks before your presentation date, the organizers will email you to request the article title that you wish to present. Please respond within a week's time so that your talk can be properly advertised to CTR members and journal club attendees.

Presentations are usually prepared using Powerpoint slides so that figures from the articles can be displayed for the audience. Prior to discussing the article details, you should provide sufficient background information so that those who are not experts can understand what is being discussed. How the article contributes to our understanding of placental or trophoblast biology and pregnancy at large should also be discussed. Your presentation should be between 20-25 minutes in length. Please expect that audience members will ask questions throughout your presentation, which is why the meetings will often last between 45 min to 1 hour.

Presenters should try to choose an article that is not directly related to their own research and that comes from a high impact journal (e.g., Cell, PNAS, eLife, Development, Nature, Science, etc.). The selection of an article that is not obviously connected to the trophoblast field but has implications for the research of CTR members is also encouraged. For a list of previously presented articles, click here.

Meetings will take place over the video conferencing platform Zoom. Please familiarise yourself with this platform prior to your presentation. The organisers can help you orient yourself. The organisers will host the meeting and allow you to share your screen with the attendees so that they can see your presentation as you discuss the article. The organisers will monitor verbal or written questions from the audience and interject accordingly.

For the full benefit of everyone involved, we strongly encourage presenters to attend the journal club meetings on a regular basis.

To encourage junior members to share their thoughts, we would really appreciate it if group leaders could hold their comments until we have had comments from junior members.

If you have any questions, please contact Priscilla Day-Walsh (pw516@cam.ac.uk) or Andreea Cristian (adc90@cam.ac.uk)

Who can join the discussion?

The Loke CTR Journal Club membership is open to anyone at the University of Cambridge or allied institutes who has an affinity for placental development and function, including:

Undergraduates
Graduate students
Postdocs
Technicians
Clinicians
Principal Investigators

Journal clubs are only open to current members of the University of Cambridge and its allied institutes. You do not need to be a member of the Loke CTR to attend or to present. We are always looking for new people to join us. For more information on Loke CTR membership and our mailing list policy, please visit our Membership page.

Articles previously presented at Journal Club

The CTR journal club has been running since 2010 and presenters have discussed many interesting articles. See below for some of the most recent articles presented at the journal club.

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