News
Congratulations to Clara for successfully defending her PhD!
Her research focused on mechano-chemical coordination in intestine morphogenesis and regeneration.
Clara did a wonderful presentation. We are so proud of her and wish her all the best in her next chapter!
During our 10th year celebration, Prisca rang our bell and with that our new lab tradition was born: the “Bell of Success”.
From now on, every time someone in the lab achieves something, whether big or small, they will ring the bell. When the bell rings, we pause our work to come together and celebrate the moment all together.
Looking forward to our fun moments through sharing our moment of success!
On 27th of June, we celerbated the 10 year anniversary of the Librali Lab at ETH D-BSSE. Our lab began in June 2015, and now in June 2025, our lab has reached a major milestone: 10 incredible years of science and collaboration.
To celebrate this special occasion, we invited our alumni, colleagues, and friends from both FMI, DBSSE, people who have helped shape our journey. It was an amazing evening of reflecting on the past ten years, celebrating our achievements, and sharing excitement for what lies ahead.
Take a sneak peak of our party through the photos!
The Liberali lab now has two home bases: ETH D-BSSE and FMI.
We’ve recently expanded to our second location at ETH D-BSSE and are excited to be fully operating across both institutes. This will provide us to engage and interact with two excellent scientific communities. Plus, we have our own high-tech coffee machine now at D-BSSE.
Check out some fun photos during our move!
Prisca and Qiutan have published a new paper in Nature Physics together with the Hannezo lab. It explores the mechanical underpinnings of crypt formation in organoids with strong modelling and experimental parts. Check it out here: www.nature.com/articles/s41567-025-02792-1
This month we spent some wonderful days in the Austrian alps with the Hannezo lab from IST Austria, discussing our science, concepts and exploring further possible collaborations!
We had a very nice lunch at Prisca’s place, where we cooked dishes from our own countries! It was such a great way to share a bit of our cultures with each other.
A very chill and wholesome lunch! 😊
Preprint alert! Have you wondered how cell-to-cell heterogeneity drives intestinal regeneration? Then, check out our recent preprint!
This year, we explored the charming christmas market in Basel! We enjoyed seasonal treats, warm gruhwein, and the holiday atmosphere. It was a nice way to celebrate the season :)
For the Christmas outing, the Liberali lab went for the Room escape this year! It was a day filled with teamwork, puzzles, and plenty of laughs as everyone worked together to solve mysteries :)
Prisca have been granted this year’s Science Prize by the City of Basel in honor of her pioneering work on collective behaviors of developmental and regenerative systems. Every year, exceptional researchers based in Basel receive the prize, which is worth 20,000 Swiss Francs.
To celebrate Prisca’s award, the entire Liberali lab went to Rathaus! Check out the fun moment during apero :)
Prisca and Alex wrote the amazing review for the 50th Cell Press. In this review, they explain how developmental biology field has been accelerated by emerging model systems and technological advancements in imaging, engineering, and computational biology. Congratulations!
The evolution of developmental biology through conceptual and technological revolutions: Cell
Exciting news! Prisca has been officially announced as Professor of Multicellular Systems at the ETH Zürich, leading to a double affiliation with the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering (D-BSSE) of the ETH and with the Friedrich Miescher Institute (FMI). Both institutes are located in Basel, making it possible for our group to combine our work in two fantastic research environments and foster collaborations even further. We are all very excited for the new opportunities and proud of Prisca’s recognition as a leading expert in the field!
Maurice successfully defended his PhD on Friday on “Dynamics and Plasticity of Stem Cells in the Regenerating Human Colonic Epithelium”. Maurice will continue his work on organoid models and high throughput experiment designs with us at the FMI in a new role - we are very happy to continue working with such a legendary [ ;-) ] colleague. Congrats, Dr. Kahnwald!
Together with our colleagues from Novartis, Clara and Prisca have published a novel YAP activator called NIBR-LTSi, that they extensively validated in different in vivo and in vitro model systems. This tool will be highly valuable for research on regeneration.
Check out the publication:
Namoto K, Baader C, Orsini V, Landshammer A, Breuer E, Dinh K T, Ungricht R, Pikiolek M, Laurent S, Lu B, Aebi A, Schönberger K, Vangrevelinghe E, Evrova O, Sun T, Annunziato S, Lachal J, Redmond E, Wang L, Wetzel K, Capodieci P, Turner J, Schutzius G, Unterreiner V, Trunzer M, Buschmann N, Behnke D, Machauer R, Scheufler C, Parker C N, Ferro M, Grevot A, Beyerbach A, Lu W-Y, Forbes S J, Wagner J, Bouwmeester T, Liu J, Sohal B, Sahambi S, Greenbaum L E, Lohmann F, Hoppe P, Cong F, Sailer A W, Ruffner H, Glatthar R, Humar B, Clavien P-A, Dill M T, George E, Maibaum J, Liberali P and Tchorz J S 2024 NIBR-LTSi is a selective LATS kinase inhibitor activating YAP signaling and expanding tissue stem cells in vitro and in vivo Cell Stem Cell 31 554-569.e17
The whole Friedrich Miescher Institute has found a new home!!
Friedrich Miescher Institute has moved into the Novartis campus and our new address will be Fabrikstrasse 24 (Fab 24).
Looking forward to continuing our scientific journey in a new home!
The work on our second version of the open top lightsheet microscope for live cell imaging of organoids by Franziska and Simon in cooperation with Viventis has been published in Nature Methods! With the LS2, we can now image multiple conditions with large organoids and even hydra simultaneously. Have a look at the reviewed paper:
Moos, F. et al. Open-top multisample dual-view light-sheet microscope for live imaging of large multicellular systems. Nature Methods 1–6 (2024) doi:10.1038/s41592-024-02213-w.
Congratulations Prisca for winning the award!
Prisca received the 2024 International Suffrage Science Award for Life Sciences. This award celebrates women in science not only for their scientific achievements but also for their ability to inspire other scientists. Its main goal is to encourage more women to become involved in and pursue scientific career.
This year, 9 awardees were chosen for the Life Sciences category. Congrats!
Biological research has long moved away from isolated wet-lab work. Current methods and hypotheses tend to be rather complex, necessitating the expertise of scientists from various different fields, like physics, computer science, or math. Conny and her collaborator, David Brückner from the IST in Austria, wrote up which considerations are important when bridging experimental and theoretical work, with a focus on mechanobiology.
Congrats on this beautiful piece!
Interested? Find the full perspective here:
Connecting theory and experiment in cell and tissue mechanics
Just the right timing for the festive season!
While many studies focus on biological processes in the small intestine, research in the colonic epithelium is lacking behind. To this end, Koen and Maurice worked to improve culture conditions for human colonic organoids to use them in a robust and scalable manner. Through extensive characterisation with in vivo data, they found that the switch from regeneration towards homeostasis is accompanied by a switch between two stem cell states. An initial, ASCL2+/LGR5+ fetal-like stem cell population concludes the regenerative process, while the subsequent switch to an OLFM4-high adult-like state enables efficient differentiation into all lineages. Interested? Read the full story as a preprint here:
Dynamics and plasticity of stem cells in the regenerating human colonic epithelium
