Speakers > Hélène Marie
Institut de Pharmacologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire (IPMC) in Valbonne, France
Hélène Marie is team leader and DR2 CNRS at the Institut de Pharmacologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire (IPMC) in Valbonne, France. After a PhD at University College London and a post-doc at the University of Stanford, she became an independent group leader at the European Brain Research Institute (EBRI) in Rome. She came back to France as an ATIP-Avenir group leader in 2010 at the IPMC. Her team’s research focuses on the identification of new mechanisms governing neuron function in the healthy brain and how these mechanisms are perturbed in neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, depression and addition. Amyloid precursor protein peptides: physiological modulators of glutamatergic signaling.
The amyloid precursor protein (APP) and the peptides generated from its cleavage are generally studied in the context of Alzheimer’s disease pathology. Yet, little is known of their endogenous role in the physiological brain. Here, I will summarize evidence we obtained over the last years demonstrating that APP peptides control glutamatergic signaling at the hippocampal CA3-CA1 excitatory synapse in the healthy brain. With these data in hand, we propose that APP peptides represent a new class of endogenous physiological neuromodulators of glutamatergic signaling. These findings shed new light on the complex regulation this essential neurotransmitter pathway that drives information processing in the brain. |
