May
Frontiers in Neuroscience Seminar: “Cerebrovascular and inflamm-ageing link to dementia”
Welcome on May 10 to a lecture by our guest speaker Axel Montagne.
Abstract:
Our brain is an energy-hungry organ surrounded by a rich network of blood vessels supplying the oxygen and nutrients required to function. It is essential that the microenvironment in the brain is finely controlled, and this is achieved through the specialist blood-brain barrier (BBB) structure. However, dysfunction of the BBB is recognised as one of the earliest events in the progression of brain disorders that cause dementia. We have previously discovered that one type of cell within the BBB, the pericyte, is particularly affected during disease and we aim to fully understand the consequences to the BBB and brain health as a whole. Using a combination of advanced molecular and imaging techniques including MRI, we seek to uncover the disease mechanisms at play and identify therapeutic targets for intervention.
Biosketch:
Dr Axel Montagne joined the UK Dementia Research Institute at Edinburgh in December 2020. He completed his PhD degree at the University of Caen Normandy (France) in 2012, followed by postdoctoral training at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles from 2013 to 2016. Axel rapidly became Assistant then Associate Professor at USC in 2016 and 2020, respectively. His career has focused on how cerebrovascular dysfunctions contribute to neurodegeneration and dementia in both animal models and humans. In his UK DRI program, he combines molecular approaches with rodent non-invasive imaging, particularly MRI, PET, and two-photon microscopy, to study the causes and effects of blood-brain barrier (BBB) dysfunction, with a particular focus on the pericyte-endothelial crosstalk, in the context of neurodegenerative disease.
Dr Montagne was recently awarded a prestigious MRC Career Development Award for his project “Interplay between brain endothelial cells and pericytes in brain health and disease”. He also received the SCOR Young European Researcher Prize for his research into Alzheimer’s disease.
His talk will focus on the preclinical and clinical evidence supporting the vascular contribution to dementia with an emphasis on early pericyte and BBB dysfunctions.
Light refreshments will be served after the lecture.
Lecture host: Gesine Paul-Visse
About the event
Location:
Segerfalk lecture hall, BMC, A10
Contact:
diana [dot] jerman [at] med [dot] lu [dot] se