“Immune Regulation of Blood-Brain Barrier Integrity after Perinatal Stroke” Thursday 3 September

Thursday 3 September @ 1-2 pm, Lecture Theatre 1, MMC
Prof Zena Vexler Director of Research, Neonatal Brain Disorders Center

Dept of Neurology, UCSF, USA   (NB. different time to usual)

Professor Zena Vexler is interested in the role of inflammatory signaling and blood-barrier function in injury and repair after stroke. In particular, she focuses on how brain immaturity at the time of the insult affects stroke pathophysiology.

Her lab was the first to establish and characterize the in vivo model of neonatal focal stroke in rats, and is the only laboratory that can produce focal arterial stroke in neonatal mice. With these age appropriate models, they have shown that depletion of microglia before neonatal stroke does not limit neuroinflammation or protect and that in fact microglial cells contribute to endogenous defense mechanisms. They discovered that, strikingly, the blood-brain barrier (BBB) is markedly more intact after acute neonatal stroke than after adult stroke and that, based on the endothelial transcriptosome, the “signature” of genes that regulate BBB permeability is vastly different in acutely injured adult and neonatal brain.

Prof Vexler’s lab has investigated the effects of microglial cells on neurovascular integrity after neonatal stroke.

They were one of the first to show that neuronal progenitor cells differentiate into a region-appropriate neuronal phenotype, but only a limited number of progenitor cells migrate to the injured cortex. They found that angiogenesis is surprisingly delayed after neonatal stroke and are currently investigating how to enhance angiogenesis and neurogenesis and repair after neonatal stroke by changing brain microenvironment and by stem/progenitor cells.