Fiona Watt

Early life

Fiona Watt knew she wanted to be a scientist from a very young age. She even had her own lab coat in which she pretended she was a chemist, playing with her chemistry set. She is so passionate about her career that she was quoted saying, "I think that being a scientist is in a sense hardwired, and there are people who just couldn't conceive of being anything else."

Career

Fiona Watt obtained her Bachelor of Arts in Natural Sciences in 1976, and her Masters degree in 1979, both from Cambridge University, U.K, where she was the only female graduate student in her department. She also obtained her Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) from the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford in 1979, naming her thesis "Microtubule-organizing centers in cells in culture and in hybrids derived from them". Professor Watt, then, completed a two-year postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), US, with Dr. Howard Green. Upon returning to the UK, she founded her first lab at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology in London where she became Head of the Molecular Cell Biology Laboratory, and in 1987, relocated to the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute where, until 2006, she served as Head of the Keratinocyte Laboratory. Currently, Watt is the Herchel Smith Professor of Molecular Genetics at the University of Cambridge, Deputy Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Stem Cell Research – University of Cambridge, and also Deputy Director of Cancer Research UK Cambridge Research Institute (formerly known as the Imperial Cancer Research Fund). She is a member of European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), Academy of Medical Sciences fellow, and Royal Society fellow.

In 2011, Professor Watt was chosen to become Director of the Centre for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine, a department of King's College London that intends to promote collaboration between scientists and clinicians to enhance the progress of the potential of stem cells into clinical reality for patients. As of January 2012, Watt began organising previous research findings at King's College and proceeded to institute her own research program involving the use of stem cells in regenerative medicine and disease, especially the development and renewal of epidermal stem cells.

Her major research interest is in the role of stem cells in adult tissue maintenance. For many of her studies, she uses mammalian epidermis as a model system, both in the context of genetically modified mice and epidermal reconstitution in culture.

Some of her current projects are exploring self-renewal and lineage selection by human and mouse epidermal stem cells, the role of stem cells in epidermal and oral tumor formation, and the nature of mesenchymal cells in skin. She also actively collaborates with bioengineers and chemists to study stem cell-niche interactions in vitro. Her lab is particularly concerned with the interplay between intrinsic and extrinsic factors in the regulation of the cell fate decisions.

She collaborates with bioinformaticians and computational biologists who are helping explore stem cell heterogeneity at single cell resolution. With Richard Durbin at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute I lead HIPSCI – the Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Initiative – to examine how genetic variation between cells impacts on their phenotypic behaviour in culture.

Stem cell research

In Watt's lab, the researchers study the adult mammalian epidermis, the outermost layer of skin, which is maintained throughout life by the differentiation of stem cells into hair follicles, sebaceous glands, and interfollicular epidermis. Generally, these stem cells remain dormant and do not divide, but proliferation is initiated by damage. Professor Watt's lab and others have discovered many stem cells markers including high expression of 1 integrins, but their goal is to determine whether or not stem cell markers are hard-wired or expressed due to certain environmental cues depending on where the stem cells are located.

During this process, researchers in Watt's lab found that most of these cell surface markers control behaviour of the stem cells and certain factors affect those behaviours. Two factors that Watt's lab investigate are the enzyme Rho GTPase Rac1 and c-Myc, a proto-oncogene. Watt and colleagues found that Rac1 is required for maintaining epidermal stem cells by deleting Rac1 in adult epidermal cells which caused an increase in proliferation resulting in premature terminal differentiation.

Another factor that Watt's lab studies is β-catenin. High levels of β-catenin cause ectopic hair follicle development in adult epidermal cells. Watt's lab has studied β-catenin by fusing it to a mutant oestrogen receptor. Through this process, timing and location of activation of β-catenin can be controlled. These researchers found that ectopic hair follicles induced by β-catenin possess cells which have stem cell properties. The future goal of the lab is to discover the interaction of different signalling pathways, and the different feedback mechanisms to control pathway activations.

Watt's lab also studies epidermal tumors, including the different signalling pathways and oncogenic mutations. The researchers have found that some tumors in sebaceous glands contain mutations in LEF1, a transcription factor that leads to β-catenin inhibition.

Publications

Past and present positions

Editorial boards

Memberships

Fellows

Honors and awards

1. 1990 – Biological Council Medal
2. 1999 – William Montagna Award of the American Society for Investigative Dermatology
3. 1999–2006 – President of the British Society for Cell Biology
4. 2001 – Tanioku Memorial Lectureship, Prize of Japanese Society for Investigative Dermatology
5. 2001 – CE.R.I.E.S. (CEntre de Recherches et d'Investigations Epidermiques et Sensorielles) Research Award of Chanel
6. 2003 – FEDERA award of the Dutch Federation of Medical Scientific Societies
7. 2004 – William Harvey Lecture, St Bartholomew's hospital, London
8. 2006 – Almroth Wright Lecture, Imperial College London
9. 2006 – Ebling Award of the European Hair Research Society
10. 2008 – President, International Society for Stem Cell Research
11. 2008 – Honorary Foreign Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
12. 2008 – ASCB Women in Cell Biology Senior Award
13. 2009 – Distinguished lecturer, International Association for Dental Research