Sara Pahlavan Ph.D.

Department of Stem Cells and Developmental Biology

Assistant professor

Phone: +98 21 23562512

About

Sara Pahlavan is a member of Royan Cardiovascular Group. She studied Biology in her B.Sc and graduated in M.Sc of Physiology from Shiraz University. During her undergraduate studies, she got interested in physiology of cardiac cells, specifically excitation-contraction coupling. To pursue her interest, she moved to Germany and started her graduate studies in Professor Peter Lipp’s lab at Universitäts Klinikum des Saarlandes.
There, she learned state of the art technologies such as simultaneous “patch-clamp” and “Ca2+ imaging” to study excitation-contraction coupling in cardiomyocytes. Furthermore, she used transgenic mice to study pathophysiology of inherited cardiac diseases with respect to electrophysiology and/or Ca2+ machinery.
Toward the end of her PhD studies, she got interested in using patient-specific iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes to study cardiac disease in human cardiac cells and to test new drugs. To pursue this goal, she moved to United States and started her postdoctoral fellowship in Professor Martin Morad’ lab at Medical University of South Carolina.
There she could develop a new genetically-encoded Ca2+ probe to study Ca2+ induced Ca2+ release and Ca2+ sparks in cardiomyocytes of healthy and patient-specific iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes. She joined Royan Institute at 2015 and currently she works as an Assistant Professor in cardiovascular Group.

Research interests

Physiology/ Disease Modeling/ Drug Testing

Dr. Pahlavan’s research focuses on the mechanistic studies of cardiovascular diseases using in vitro models. Both 2D human pluripotent stem cells-derived cardiomyocytes (hPSC-CM) and 3D cardiac micro-tissues are used by her group to model pathological conditions such as hypoxia and fibrosis, and to explore the therapeutic approaches. In line with that, part of her research is directed toward maturation of hPSC-CM and development of more native-like cardiac micro-tissues. She uses a combination of tissue engineering and stem cell biology to improve this 3D cardiac tissues. Furthermore, she is interested in regenerative approaches for heart by dedifferentiation of cardiomyocytes. And she uses in vitro platforms to find the major molecular players of dedifferentiation.

Group members

Hoda Madani

MD-PhD student

Project title: Safety and Feasibility of Intracoronary Transplantation of Allogenic Wharton’s Jelly Derived-Mesenchymal Stem Cells (WJ-MSCs) in Pediatrics with Non-Ischemic Dilated Cardiomyopathy (PNIDCM): Clinical Trial Phase I

Mohammad Mehdi Imani

MSc student

Project title: The study of angiogenesis potential and cardiomyocyte maturation in cardiac microtissue after heterotopic transplantation onto Chorioallantoic membrane

Maryam Amoun

MSc student

Project title: Investigation into the maturation of neonatal rat cardiomyocytes by metabolic shift from glycolysis to oxidative phosphorylation by targeting SIRT3

Fatemeh Etezadi

postdoctoral Fellow

Project title: Optimizing the Maturation of Human Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Cardiomyocyte Using a Selected Small Molecule Approach

Mahshad Shiri

MSc student

Project title: Study of miRNAs in cell cycle arrest of human pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocyte

Maryam Ghalami

MSc student

Project title: Studying the effect of PDMS micropatterns on the maturation of neonatal rat cardiomyocytes

Parisa Karami

MSc student

Project title: The study of the effect of U266 secretome- or hypoxia-preconditioned mesenchymal stem cells conditioned medium on angiogenesis of in vitro generated cardiac microtissue

Negar Ghorbani

PhD Alumni

Mahya Hosseini

MSc Alumni

Shiva Ahmadvand

MSc Alumni

Hanieh Sadeghi

MSc Alumni

Yasaman Pourmehran

MSc Alumni

Roghayeh Hamidi

Former Research assistant

Malihe Rezaei

Former Research assistant

Fariba Moslem

MSc Alumni

Leyla Ostadi

MSc Alumni

Fatemeh Movahedi

MSc Alumni

Hamid Khodayari

MSc Alumni

Mojtaba Shafaghi

MSc Alumni

Siamak Rezaeiani

PhD Alumni

Roham Yaghubi

Former Research Assistant

Publications

Selected Publications:

2023 Ghorbani N, Yaghubi R, Davoodi J, Pahlavan S. How does caspases regulation play role in cell decisions? apoptosis and beyond. Mol Cell Biochem. 2023 Nov 17. doi: 10.1007/s11010-023-04870-5.

2024 Zarkesh I, Movahedi F, Sadeghi-Abandansari H, Pahlavan S, Soleimani M, Baharvand H. ROS scavenging activity of polydopamine nanoparticle-loaded supramolecular gelatin-based hydrogel promoted cardiomyocyte proliferation. Int J Biol Macromol. 2024 Feb;259(Pt 2):129228. doi: 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2024.129228.

2024 Yaghoobi A, Rezaee M, Behnoush AH, Khalaji A, Mafi A, Kazemzadeh Houjaghan A, Masoudkabir F, Pahlavan S. Role of long noncoding RNAs in pathological cardiac remodeling after myocardial infarction: An emerging insight into molecular mechanisms and therapeutic potential. Biomed Pharmacother. 2024 Mar:172:116248. doi: 10.1016/j.biopha.2024.116248.

2024 Negar Ghorbani, Mahshad Shiri, Maedeh Alian, Roham Yaghubi, Mojtaba Shafaghi, Hamidreza Hojjat, Sara Pahlavan, Jamshid Davoodi. A Non-Apoptotic Pattern of Caspase-9/Caspase-3 Activation During Differentiation of Human Embryonic Stem Cells into Cardiomyocytes. Adv Biol (Weinh) 2024 Jun;8(6):e2400026. doi: 10.1002/adbi.202400026.

2024 Hamid Khodayari, Saeed Khodayari, Malihe Rezaee, Siamak Rezaeiani, Mahmoud Alipour Choshali, Saiedeh Erfanian, Ahad Muhammadnejad, Fatemeh Nili, Yasaman Pourmehran, Reihaneh Pirjani, Sarah Rajabi, Naser Aghdami, Canan Nebigil-Désaubry, Kai Wang, Habibollah Mahmoodzadeh, Sara Pahlavan. Promotion of cardiac microtissue assembly within G-CSF-enriched collagen I-cardiogel hybrid hydrogel. Regen Biomater. 2024 Jun 19:11:rbae072. doi: 10.1093/rb/rbae072.

2024 Siamak Rezaeiani, Malihe Rezaee, Mojtaba Shafaghi, Mohammad Karami, Roghayeh Hamidi, Hamid Khodayari, Sadaf Vahdat, Sara Pahlavan, Hossein Baharvand. Expandable hESC-derived cardiovascular progenitor cells generate functional cardiac lineage cells for microtissue construction. Stem Cell Res Ther. 2024 Sep 12;15(1):298. doi: 10.1186/s13287-024-03919-6.