ROMAIN BOULESTREAU PhD student
Course and current status
After studying medicine and becoming a cardiologist, I became passionate about clinical research. I became particularly interested in malignant hypertension, one of the most severe forms of hypertension, and set up a European cohort on the subject. The more I learned about this pathology, the more questions I had about the pathophysiology of this diffuse subacute microvascular aggression. This naturally led me to embrace fundamental vascular research, and to start a science thesis under the supervision of Prof. Thierry Couffinhal.
Scientific summary
Hypertension, particularly malignant hypertension, leads to cerebral microvascular lesions, which are implicated in the majority of cases of dementia. One of these lesions, recently described, is the dilatation of perivascular spaces. Concurrently, a population of cerebral perivascular fibroblasts has been described, and a GWAS has demonstrated a link between genes involved in the extracellular matrix (partly secreted by fibroblast) and the load of dilated perivascular spaces on brain MRI scans of patients. My thesis aims to explore the role of perivascular fibroblasts and their matrix in maintaining functional cerebral vascularization and preventing the onset of dilated perivascular spaces and dementia.
