Isabelle Loubinoux
  • E-mail :[email]
  • Phone : +33 5 62 74 61 83
  • Location : Toulouse, France
Last update 2023-04-17 19:31:28.147

Isabelle Loubinoux PhD Medical Imaging

Course and current status

Current position: Researcher at ToNIC, INSERM UMR 1214

Laboratory: Toulouse NeuroImaging Center (Head : Pierre PAyoux)

Isabelle LOUBINOUX: PhD, Senior researcher (Directeur de Recherches)

Head of team 3: iDREAM, Innovation in Drug, Regenerative mEdecine, stimulAtion and modulation of Motor plasticity and recovery

h-index: 33

Education and qualifications:

2011            Senior researcher

2006-2011   Contrat d’interface: Innovative strategies in Stroke

2010            Aptitude to experimental neurosurgery. Neuroanatomy, neurohistology and neurosurgery of laboratory animals (Veterinary school of Toulouse).

2010            Head of team 'Therapeutic innovations in cerebrovascular disease' at Inserm U825.

2006            Collaboration in L.G. Cohen’s laboratory at the NIH/NINDS (Bethesda, 5 months).      - Learning in healthy subjects and stroke patients (MRI, rTMS).

2006            Aptitude to conduct experimental research in animals (Veterinary school of Toulouse).

2003            Degree from the CESAM Paris VI (Centre d’Enseignement de la Statistique Appliquée à la Médecine et à la biologie médicale). Design of Clinical trials.

2002            Aptitude to conduct Research in Neurosciences (UPS Toulouse).

2000            Position as researcher at INSERM.

1996-2000   Post-graduate: Post-doctoral training at INSERM U455

1995            Graduate: Ph.D, University of Paris XI, Speciality: MEDICAL IMAGING. Très honorable avec les félicitations du jury. CNRS (URA 641, Paris).

1991            Engineer of Institut National Agronomique Paris‑Grignon (AgroParisTech)

71 publications WOS, 1 book chapter, 40 invited conferences, supervision of 15 PhD and 2 post-doc.

Expertises : ANR, Volkswagen Foundation, Wellcome Trust, AP-Hôpitaux de Paris, Université Lille2, Université Paris-Descartes, Délégation Interrégionale de Recherche Clinique Rhône-Alpes-Auvergne, COSSEC, Swiss National Science Fondation, etc…

 Scientific societies :

  • PI of seminars ‘Interlab Neurobio Techno et Santé’ (Toulouse)
  • Member of doctoral school CLESCO.
  • Elected at the Inserm Scientific Council CSS Technology for Health n°8 2012-2016.
  • Scientific Council of the Fondation pour la Recherche dans les AVC (stroke).
  • Scientific Council of ‘réseau AVC France’ 2019-
  • Member Strokelink F-CRIN (French Clinical Research Infrastructure Network) 2022
  • Commission ANR 2019-2020, Technologies for Health, expert Imaging
  • Associate Editor Frontiers in Neurology, section Stroke, 2018-2021

Recent fundings : ANR Défi Industriel 2017; ANR ASTRID-2019-2023 (PI); ANR Medecine Regenerative 2022-2027 (PI). Fondation Gueules Cassées (PI); Agence Innovation Défense (PI); Inserm, PhD salary (PI); Région Occitanie.

Prize: Fondation Gueules Cassées. Regenerative Medecine Project. Annual Prize 2021

Patent: 3D scaffold model for the cortex and sub-cortex. I Loubinoux; J Clauzel. In preparation.

Scientific summary

Isabelle Loubinoux is an engineer from AgroParisTech, Institute National Agronomique Paris Grignon, and obtained her PhD in Medical Imaging from University of Paris XI. She monitored with diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging the progression of the ischemic lesion in experimental rodent models of stroke and tested pharmacological treatments to salvage the ischemic penumbra. After a post-doctoral training in the Inserm unit of François Chollet in Toulouse, she became an Inserm junior researcher. Her project was to find pharmacological treatments to improve motor recovery of impaired post-stroke patients. Hemiplegia is the more common deficit. First cause of handicap, stroke has a heavy economical cost. She was the first to evidence serotoninergic modulation of motor brain activity with fMRI. She tested serotoninergic and mono-aminergic drugs during her “Contrat d’interface 2006-2011: Innovative strategies in Stroke” with the Toulouse University Hospital. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging showed that such drugs were able to specifically modulate motor cerebral activation when a patient uses his/her hand in correlation with improved motor performance. Today, no pharmacological treatment has been validated in human clinics when deficits are constituted. She demonstrated that fluoxetine, Prozac®, apart from being an antidepressant, is a serotoninergic drug that significantly improved motor outcome and augmented the ratio of independent patients (Chollet F et al., I Loubinoux, Lancet Neurology, 2011, highly cited paper). Isabelle Loubinoux has conducted the Inserm team “Therapeutic innovations in cerebrovascular disease” in 2010-2015. She became a senior Inserm Researcher in 2011. She now leads the Inserm iDREAM team 2016-2025: “Innovation in Drug, Regenerative mEdecine, stimulAtion, and modulation of Motor plasticity and recovery”. The research program of the team relies on the comprehension of mechanisms for cognitivo-motor functions after stroke and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), from the acute phase to the chronic phase. It uses neuroimaging and brain stimulation techniques that promote cerebral plasticity, with the aim of improving recovery. The team has three axes. Axis 1: Therapeutics after acute brain injury and MRI biomarkers, Axis 2: Multimodal imaging, post-lesional signatures and predictors, Axis 3: Neurobiomechanics, biomarkers of physiologic and pathologic motricity. The team includes scientists in neuroimaging, biomechanics, cellular biology, and clinicians in neurology, anesthesiology and critical care, neurosurgery, neurorehabilitation, neurophysiology, and psychiatry. The expertise of the group is highly translational since it goes from cells, rodents, non-human primates to humans (healthy subjects and patients).

Her project aims to determine experimentally the therapeutical strategies that will have a major clinical impact on future clinical treatments for stroke specifically in highly invalidated patients. Apart from serotoninergic drugs, other hopes also rely on cellular therapy. After the fluoxetine clinical trial, the decision was then taken to target those patients that remain very invalided and dependent despite rehabilitation and fluoxetine treatment. She built a strong collaboration with clinicians (Pr T. Geeraerts, critical care department, Pr J.-C Sol, neurosurgery department) of Toulouse Hospital. The projects Innov-in-Stroke, Neuraxe and RECOVER was then launched to regenerate brain tissue in the lesion and create appropriate long-distance connections. Given that the lesion is a quite hostile environment for stem cells and that 95% will die, biomaterials were envisioned to increase cell survival and direct axonal growth. Her team was the first to make the proof of concept that guiding neuro-implants with predifferentiated stem cells inserted in the cortical lesion, were safe in marmosets and improved motor performance in rats (Vaysse et al., Biomaterials 2015; Davoust et al., Stem Cell Res & Ther 2017; Le Friec et al., Neural Plasticity 2019). The FAVOUR project aims to progress beyond 1) simple architectures of implants proposed so far for brain regeneration, and 2) existing cell therapies in various neurologic conditions needing tissue repair. A clinical trial assessing the safety of guiding implants inserted during the cranioplasty after TBI is now ready to be launched.

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