Seminar – Isabelle Brunet

Venue: Centre Broca Nouvelle-Aquitaine

Isabelle Brunet
Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Biology (CIRB)
College de France
https://www.college-de-france.fr/molecular-control-of-neuro-vascular-development

Invited by Sandrine Bertrand

Title

Neuro-vascular interactions in health and diseases

Abstract

Our laboratory studies vascular and neuronal development, with particular interests in mechanisms that direct patterning and guidance. Specialized endothelial cells (EC) called tip cells located at the extremities of growing capillary sprouts mediate guided vascular patterning. Tip cells exhibit characteristic features, including extension of filopodia that explore the tip cell environment, lack of a lumen and a slow proliferation rate. Capillary sprouting shows morphological similarities to axon guidance. Our research is focused on the relationship between vascular and nervous system and how they develop interactions at a molecular. This approach led us to investigate how neuro-vascular interactions become functional and how deregulation of each component, vascular or neuronal, could affect the organism in health and diseases. Our reasearch program aims to decipher neurovascular interactions in mice, molecular determinant regulating those interactions, and how neuro-vascular development can affect physiological functions. Neuronal and vascular developments require a refined spatio-temporal orchestration to guide axons and vascular plexus through the organism, align vessels with nerves, and allow appropriate functional connections to establish between the two systems. Indeed, accurate neurovascular crosstalk is of tremendous importance as it regulates many vital aspects of body homeostasis such as neuronal activity and plasticity, blood pressure and heart rate.

Key publications