Summer Symposium
As part of the 3rd ENTRAIN meeting the ESR's have invited a series of speakers to deliver talks on the topic of Brain Vasculature & the Immune System. We are very excited to welcome; Mario Merlini, Steffen Jung, Anne Schaefer, Jonathan Kipnis and Andrew Yang to be a part of the experience. These highly respected members of the scientific community will be joining us and presenting their research along with taking questions from the audience members.
Participation is free for all, however registration is required details of which can be found below. We look forward to seeing you there.
Registration
If you have any questions feel free to contact us to summerschool.ENTRAIN@uni-luebeck.de
Link for registration: https://forms.gle/qvugzMJ4XNtNmAiH9
Learn about our speakers
Dr. Mario Merlini
Title: "In Vivo Imaging of Neurovascular Dynamics in Neuropsychiatric Disorders"
Mario Merlini is a Junior Team Leader at the Blood & Brain @ Caen Normandie Institute, which is integrated within the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) and hosted by the biomedical imaging platform Cyceron in Caen, France. With his team he focuses on determining novel molecular and systems mechanisms that drive neurovascular dysfunction in neuropsychiatric disorders including depression and psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia. At a more fundamental level, he is interested in how neurovascular interactions shape cognition, how they contribute to the extraordinary abilities of the human brain and define what makes us human. The research questions are addressed with functional and structural in vivo multi-photon and PET/MR imaging of cerebral blood flow, neuronal activity, and glial dynamics in experimental animal models and human brains, as well as with electrophysiological recordings and neuropathological studies. Dr. Merlini applies his electronics and physics tinkerer/Maker skills and interests to developing imaging- and brain physiology-related hardware tools to aid his research and that of others.
Prof. Dr. Steffen Jung
Title: "Probing brain macrophage functions"
Born in Homburg/ Saar, Germany, Steffen Jung began his undergraduate studies at the University of Bonn, and then moved to Cologne, where he performed his Ph.D. in the Institute of Genetics headed by Klaus Rajewsky under the guidance of Andreas Radbruch. Specifically, he used the then newly introduced gene targeting technology to define cis-acting control elements driving non-coding 'sterile' transcripts in immunoglobulin class switch recombination. In 1993, Steffen moved for post-doctoral training to Israel and joined the laboratory of Yinon Ben-Neriah at the Lautenberg Center (Hebrew University, Jerusalem) studying transcription factors and kinases in T cell signaling. In 1997, Steffen went to New York for a post-doc in the laboratory of Dan Littman at the Skirball Institute for Molecular Pathogenesis, NYU Medical Center. His studies there focused on the chemokine receptor CX3CR1 and its membrane-tethered ligand CX3CL1/ fractalkine, specifically, he generated CX3CR1gfp reporter mice. In 2002, Steffen returned to Israel and joined the faculty of the Department of Immunology at the Weizmann Institute, where he received tenure in 2009 and full professorship in 2015. Current work of the Jung lab aims at elucidating in vivo aspects of mononuclear phagocytes, including developmental pathways and differential functions of monocytes, DC and macrophages. Specifically, the team applies intra-vital imaging, conditional cell and gene ablation, and precursor graft-mediated reconstitution, combined with advanced genomic analysis to investigate the biology of these cells in physiological health and disease context. Recent focus is given to the study of monocyte-derived intestinal macrophages, brain macrophages including microglia and CNS-border associated macrophages, as well as the role of nerve-associated macrophages and their involvement in metabolic disorders.
Dr. Anne Schaefer
Title: "Beyond pruning and inflammation: How microglia participate in neuronal activity"
Dr. Anne Schaefer is a Professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Psychiatry, Vice-Chair of Neuroscience and Director of the Center for Glial Biology at the Friedman Brain Institute at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York. Most recently, she became a Director at the Max Planck Institute for Aging in Cologne, Germany. Since starting her postdoctoral career in Paul Greengard’s laboratory at the Rockefeller University in New York, Anne has been focusing on the molecular mechanisms underlying neuronal specification, function and neurodegeneration. Her most recent work describes previously unknown mechanisms of microglia-mediated regulation of neuronal activity and complex behavior. Dr. Schaefer has been awarded with the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the Inaugural Landis Mentoring Award for Outstanding Mentorship by the NIH, a Max Planck Sabbatical Award, a NARSAD Young Investigator Award, Cure Challenge Award, Seaver Autism Research Award, Harold and Golden Lamport Research Award, and was named a Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow by the National Academy of Sciences in 2014 and the Inventor of the Year 2018 by Mount Sinai.
Prof. Dr. Jonathan Kipnis
Title: "Meningeal immunity and CNS immune privilege"
Prof. Dr. Jonathan (Jony) Kipnis is BJC Investigator, Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Immunology and Professor of Neurology, Neuroscience, and Neurosurgery at Washington University in St. Louis, School of Medicine. He is also an inaugural Director of Center for Brain immunology and Glia (BIG) at Washington University. Jony graduated from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, where he was a Sir Charles Clore scholar and a recipient of distinguished prize for scientific achievements awarded by the Israeli Parliament, The Knesset.
Kipnis lab focuses on the complex interactions between the immune system and the central nervous system (CNS). The goal is to elucidate the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying these interactions in neurodegenerative, neurodevelopmental, and mental disorders as well as in physiology (including healthy aging). They showed that the brain function is dependent, in part, on the function and integrity of the immune system and that immune molecules (cytokines) can play neuromodulatory roles. The fascination with immunity and its role in neurophysiology is what brought the team to a breakthrough discovery of meningeal lymphatic vessels that drain the CNS into the peripheral lymph nodes and thus serve as a physical connection between the brain and the immune system. This finding challenged the prevailing dogma of CNS being an “immune privileged organ” and opened new avenues to mechanistically study the nature of neuroimmune interactions under physiological and pathological conditions. The implications of this work are broad and range from Autism to Alzheimer’s disease through neuroinflammatory conditions, such as Multiple Sclerosis. Among other awards, Dr. Kipnis is a recipient NIH Director’s Pioneer award for 2018 to explore in more depth neuro-immune interactions in healthy and diseased brain.
Dr. Andrew Chris Yang
Title: "Molecular tools to decipher communication across the blood-brain barrier"
Andrew is a recent graduate of Tony Wyss-Coray’s lab and will start his own group at UCSF as a Sandler Faculty Fellow in January 2022. His group will develop molecular tools to decode communication across the blood-brain barrier and eventually engineer it to enhance healthy brain homeostasis. They are also beginning to uncover the various ways Alzheimer’s disease risk genes influence BBB communication.