Cedric Lamboley

Before joining Victoria University as a postdoctoral research fellow in November 2009, Cedric Lamboley obtained his PhD in Biophysics from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Sherbrooke, Canada.

During the first year of his appointment at Victoria University, Dr Lamboley has acquired an intimate knowledge of the very powerful and advanced "mechanically skinned muscle fibre" technique, whereby the surface membrane of a single muscle cell is mechanically peeled back to expose the inside of the cell, which allows the investigator to alter the internal environment in a rapid and controlled manner. The whole sequence or individual steps within muscle contraction-relaxation remains functional and can be studied biochemically or mechanistically. Then, he developed this technique for the first time in human muscle.

His research project involves performing both comprehensive physiological examinations (skinned muscle fibre technique) and multiple biochemical analysis (western blotting procedures) on single segments of individual fresh muscle cells, obtained from muscle biopsies of human subjects. To date, his work involves gaining an understanding of how human muscle normally functions so as to try and elucidate what changes or factors contribute to various forms of muscle weakness with ageing, inactivity or various chronic diseases.