Gabriel Rocha
DPhil Student
My research focuses on studying the blood-brain-barrier and how different pathologies may affect it. The cerebrovascular field has been growing as an important area of neurodegenerative diseases, with significant phenotypes shown in diseased patients. I am interested as to how diabetes, hyperglycemia, and insulin resistance affects the blood brain barrier, and how that can lead to cognitive impairment. My research currently takes on two aims:
1. Develop an IPSC - brain endothelial cell protocol to model diseases on a dish. Once established, creating an iBBB including pericytes and astrocytes can help identify sources of pathologies within the BBB.
2. Develop a protocol to isolate endothelial and pericytic populations from human post-mortem, fresh frozen tissue, and run transcriptomic analyses on isolated nuclei. This will uncover differentially expressed genes and therapeutic targets to be tested on the IPSC model.
Recent publications
-
Fine Tuning of Phosphorothioate Inclusion in 2'-O-Methyl Oligonucleotides Contributes to Specific Cell Targeting for Splice-Switching Modulation.
Journal article
Aoki Y. et al, (2021), Front Physiol, 12