Iman Mali

Research focus

The overall aim of my research is to use human induced pluripotent stem cells-derived brown adipose tissue to understand human brown adipogenesis and to develop potential therapies for the treatment of metabolic complications associated with obesity.

Background and experience

I previously worked at the Sanger Institute and have experience with cancer cell lines and organoid models, high throughput drug screening, and automation platforms. I moved to the IMS-MRL to further develop skills in the field of stem cell biology. I am also extremely interested in data science.

Current research interests

My current project is to improve the differentiation efficiency and characterisation of stem cell-derived brown adipocytes. This will be achieved by comparing the transcriptomic signature from these culture model to existing RNAseq data set. To complement our approach, we will also perform cellular and structural studies of these brown adipocytes using biological cryoimaging.

Key publications

1. Jaaks, P., Coker, E.A., …, Mali, I et al., Effective drug combinations in breast, colon and pancreatic cancer cells. Nature 603, 166–173 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04437-2
2. Gonçalves, E., Poulos, R., Cai, Z., …, Mali, I et al., Pan-cancer cell line proteomic atlas reveals principles of cancer vulnerabilities. Cancer Cell. 2022 Jul 13:S1535-6108(22)00274-4. doi: 10.1016/j.ccell.2022.06.010
3. Gonçalves, E., Segura-Cabrera, A., …, Mali, I et al., Drug mechanism-of-action discovery through the integration of pharmacological and CRISPR screens. Mol Syst Biol. (2020) 16: e9405. https://doi.org/10.15252/msb.20199405
4. Song, M., Mali, I., Pisupati, V., and Merkle, FT., 2021. Live Cell Quantification using Image Analysis V.2, Protocols.io. DOI: 10.17504/protocols.io.bzgep3te.
5. Chen, C., MALI, I., and Merkle, FT., 2021. Differentiation of hPSCs to hypothalamic neurons V.2, Protocols.io. DOI: 10.17504/protocols.io.bzghp3t6.