Dr. Baptiste LacosteCould a better understanding of brain blood vessels lead to new approaches to prevent or treat brain disease? Dr. Baptiste Lacoste and his team think so, and they recently contributed to two important papers in this area.
The first paper, published in Communications Biology, looked at the impact of a high-fat maternal diet on mouse brain development. The offspring of these mice had major changes to their brain blood vessels, altered gene expression related to metabolism and immunity, and persistent behaviours often associated with neurodevelopmental disorders.
The second paper, published in Science, defined a new strategy to potentially treat conditions like stroke, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, and Alzheimer’s disease by repairing the blood-brain-barrier. The researchers found the same molecules that control the embryonic development of the brain-blood-barrier could be engineered to trigger repair of the barrier in adult mice. Dr. Lacoste is co-senior author on the first paper and co-author on the second, with Master’s student Joanna Raman-Nair as co-author on both.
Full reference:
Communications Biology: Maude Bordeleau, Cesar H. Comin, Lourdes Fernández de Cossío, Chloé Lacabanne, Moises Freitas-Andrade, Fernando González Ibáñez, Joanna Raman-Nair, Michael Wakem, Mallar Chakravarty, Luciano da F. Costa, Baptiste Lacoste & Marie-Ève Tremblay. This research was funded by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, and Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo.
Science: Maud Martin, Simon Vermeiren, Naguissa Bostaille, Marie Eubelen, Daniel Spitzer,Marjorie Vermeersch, Caterina P. Profaci, Elisa Pozuelo, Xavier Toussay, Joanna Raman-Nair,Patricia Tebabi, Michelle America, Aurélie de Groote, Leslie E. Sanderson, Pauline Cabochette,Raoul F. V. Germano, David Torres, Sébastien Boutry, Alban de Kerchove d’Exaerde,Eric Bellefroid, Timothy N. Phoenix, Kavi Devraj, Baptiste Lacoste, Richard Daneman,Stefan Liebner, Benoit Vanhollebeke. This research was funded by Le Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique, Excellence Cluster Cardio-Pulmonary Institute, DZHK Germany, New Frontiers Research Funds-Exploration, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, Canadian Institute of Health Research.
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