Euroglia 2019 workshop : emerging technologies to study glial cells

Held on the first morning of the Euroglia 2019 meeting in Porto (Portugal), this workshop is co-organized by NeurATRIS.

Emerging technologies to study glial cells

Development, physiological functions and pathologies of the brain depend on the tight interactions between neurons and different types of glial cells, such as astrocytes, microglia, oligodendrocytes, and oligodendrocyte precursor cells. Assessing the relative contribution of different glial cell types is required for the full understanding of brain function and dysfunction. Over the recent years, several technological breakthroughs were achieved, allowing glio-scientists to address new challenging biological questions. These new technical developments make it possible to study the roles of specific cell types with medium or high throughput flows, and perform fine analysis of their mutual interactions in a preserved environment.

This workshop illustrates the potency of these cutting-edge approaches to unravel the role of glial cells in specific brain functions or diseases. More specifically, Dr. Hirbec (France) will present different RNA-seq based strategies to decipher the role of microglia in the early phases of Alzheimer disease, Prof. Déglon (Switzerland) will talk about new viral vector-based strategies to target astrocytes in situ. Dr. Foo (Switzerland) will discuss purifying methods to study glial cells in vitro. Prof. Grutzendler (USA) will present novel methodologies for live imaging and manipulation of different types of glial cells by two photon microscopy. Dr. Muffat (Canada) will show new methods to derive human microglial cells from iPSC and integrate them into organoids, and finally, Dr. Goshen (Israel) will discuss optogenetic and chemogenetic manipulations of astrocytes for in vivo analysis. Each talk will incorporate an introduction on the technology and present its advantages, pitfalls and limits. Through selected examples, this technical workshop will highlight specific gliobiological questions that can now be tackled with these technologies.

Chairwoman: Carole Escartin; UMR 9199 (CNRS, CEA, University Paris-Saclay); MIRCen, NeurATRIS

Speakers / affiliation / Intervention title:

• Dr. Hélène Hirbec / CNRS UMR5203 - INSERM U661; Montpellier (France) / “RNA-seq approaches to unravel the role of microglial cells in the early phase of Alzheimer disease”
• Prof. Nicole Déglon / Neuroscience Research Center (CRN); Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) / “Studying astrocyte functions in the age of genetic engineering.”
• Dr. Lynette Foo / Neuroimmunology section, Roche Innovation Center Basel (Switzerland)/ “Utility of prospectively purified neural cells for drug development”
• Prof. Jaime Grutzendler / Department of Neuroscience; Yale School of Medicine (USA) / “Novel strategies for intravital optical imaging and manipulation of glial cells”
• Dr. Julien Muffat / Laboratory for Synthetic NeuroImmunology; Peter Gilgan Centre for Research and Learning; Toronto (Canada) / “Human Microglia in 3D Neural Cultures: In Vitro Models of Neuro-immune Disorders”
• Dr. Inbal Goshen / Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences (ELSC), The Hebrew University; Jerusalem (Israel) / “Chemogenetic and optogenetic tools for astrocyte research in behaving animals”

More information : http://glia2019.eu