Dr Axel Montagne

Axel Montagne completed his PhD at the University of Caen Normandy (France) with Professor Denis Vivien in 2012, followed by a postdoctoral training at the University of Southern California (USA) with Professor Berislav Zlokovic from 2013 to 2020. He published several articles about the vascular contribution to dementia in humans but also using innovative animal models. In December 2020, Axel has joined the University of Edinburgh Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences as a Chancellor’s fellow. He combines molecular approaches with rodent non-invasive imaging, particularly MRI and PET, to study the causes and effects of blood-brain barrier (BBB) dysfunction in the context of neurodegenerative disease. BBB dysfunction is a major cause of inflammatory and bioenergetic deregulation in the brain, but the interplay between pericytes and endothelial cells that causes this collapse is not fully delineated. The Montagne lab is now focusing on probing BBB function and pericyte-endothelial cross-talk, especially the consequences of pericyte dysfunction on endothelial cells and the BBB, plus reciprocal signaling by activated endothelial cells.

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