Dive into Imaging Science | ESMI Podcast

Episode #11: John Ronald, London (ON, Canada)

Welcome back!  It has been a while but we are back with a bang, having our good friend John Ronald from The Robarts Research Institute in London, Ontario as our guest. John’s group combines advances in molecular and synthetic biology with a multimodal imaging perspective to build new tools for early detection and treatment of cancer, as well as non-invasive monitoring of cell, gene and genome therapies. 

One of John’s passions is gene reporter imaging, which is also the main focus of this edition. The paper up for discussion comes from Cynthia Dunbar’s lab at NIH, Bethesda which was recently published in Cell Stem Cell. We discover their approach to non-invasively follow engraftment and maturation of pluripotent stem cells in rhesus macaques with myocardial infarctions, discuss some of the technicalities of engineering autologous cells, and fall in love with the beautiful RNAScope images that are presented. We discuss what makes a good imaging reporter, why one size doesn’t always fit all, and a future where not just cells, but activation states can be imaged.

Along the way, John also shares advices received from the wonderful Sanjiv Sam Gambhir on how to improve the chances of getting your grants funded and why supposedly crazy ideas should not be discarded… they might even lead to high impact publications.

And of course, true to our tradition, we enjoy a special cocktail. For this edition the “Angry Canadian”, obviously. For the curious listeners: a good measure of Whisky, 2 tablespoons of fine Canadian Maple syrup, a few drops of bitters and 1 teaspoon lemon juice, then top up with soda water.  

Selected publication:

Long-term engraftment and maturation of
autologous iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes in two
rhesus macaque

Lin Y, Sato N, Hong S, Nakamura K, Ferrante EA, Yu ZX, Chen MY, Nakamura DS, Yang X, Clevenger RR, Hunt TJ, Taylor JL, Jeffries KR, Keeran KJ, Neidig LE, Mehta A, Schwartzbeck R, Yu SJ, Kelly C, Navarengom K, Takeda K, Adler SS, Choyke PL, Zou J, Murry CE, Boehm M, Dunbar CE. Long-term engraftment and maturation of autologous iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes in two rhesus macaques. Cell Stem Cell. 2024 Jul 5;31(7):974-988.e5. doi: 10.1016/j.stem.2024.05.005. Epub 2024 Jun 5. PMID: 38843830; PMCID: PMC11227404.

About the Guest

John is the Director of the Imaging Laboratories at the Robarts Research Institute, Director of the Translational Immune-Oncology Research Group at the Centre for Translational Cancer Research, and an Associate Professor in Medical Biophysics at The University of Western Ontario in Canada.

He completed his PhD at Western before moving to Stanford University in the lab of Sam Gambhir on a postdoctoral fellowship. After an incredibly successful postdoc in California, working with some amazing scientists, I might add, he returned to Western in 2015 to set up his group.  Here, they combine advances in molecular and synthetic biology with a multimodal imaging perspective to build new tools for early detection and treatment of cancer, as well as non-invasive monitoring of cell, gene and genome therapies.