Seminari de Recerca "New Insights into Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy (CAA) diagnostics and potential therapies"

Speaker:  Dr. Mar Hernández Guillamon, Senior researcher Neurovascular Diseases (VHIR)

The most common form of cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) is associated with the deposition of amyloid-beta (Aβ) peptide in blood brain vessels. CAA is the main cause of lobar intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) in the elderly and ICH recurrence is a major complication, leading to significant mortality and disability. CAA prevalence is particularly high in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), which demonstrates the strong association between both diseases. Several factors favor vascular or parenchymal Aβ deposition, such as the peptide length, specific co-deposited proteins or APOE genotype. Determining the role of such factors will help understanding the intersections between CAA and AD and their impact on treatments for both diseases. Indeed, no current therapeutic options are available for CAA and a definitive diagnosis requires histopathologic demonstration. Dr. Mar Hernández-Guillamon will review the new insights that have been described in the field in terms of CAA clinical diagnosis and possible biomarkers in biological fluids. In this regard, she will focus on one of the most recent studies of the lab, which described the protein MFG-E8 (Milk Fat Globule-EGF factor 8) as a novel biomarker for CAA, as well as a potential target for therapeutics. Finally, she will delve into the relationship between lipid metabolism and cerebral Aβ deposition and how this association has led her group to testing different strategies based on the treatment of modified apolipropoproteins to prevent the cognitive dysfunction and cerebral hemorrhagic load in a transgenic model of CAA.

​CV: Dr. Mar Hernández-Guillamon has dedicated her career to the study of cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) and other pathologies associated with cerebal amyloid-β (Aβ) deposition. During her PhD at the Department of Biochemistry of UAB, her research was based on understanding the role played by the cerebral vasculature in Alzheimer's disease (AD). She started her postdoctoral training at the Neurovascular Research Laboratory at VHIR in 2006 and continued her postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Pathology of NYU (New York, US), where she focued on the study of cellular proteases in the degradation of the Aβ protein. In 2012, she was awarded with a tenure-track position as Miguel Servet I (ISCIII) in the Neurovascular Research Lab at VHIR and since 2018 she became a VHIR senior reseracher (Miguel Servet II, ISCIII). The translational research developed by Dr. Hernandez-Guillamon's group has allowed the achievement of important aims to date, as demonstrated by the scientific production obtained and the continuous leadership of national and international projects. Her laboratory has focused on the discovery of biomarkers that can predict the diagnosis and prognosis of patients with CAA in life, as well as understand the molecular mechanisms that explain the fragility of cerebral vessels exposed to the amyloid proteins using diferent experimental models.​

Host: Dr. Anna Rosell Novel, Head of group Neurovascular Diseases

Online registration: https://gencat.zoom.us/j/98859958042