CV Science

Marie-Ange Renault PhD, Biology of Cardio-Vascular Diseases

Course and current status

Marie-Ange Renault is a research associate at UMR Inserm U1034 “Biology of cardiovascular diseases” in Bordeaux, France since 2011. More particularly, she is one of the principal investigators of the “Hedgehog and vessel diseases” project.

After she obtained a PhD in Biological and Medical Sciences at the University of Bordeaux in 2004, she performed a postdoctoral fellowship in Douglas W. Losordo’s lab (St Elizabeth medical center, Boston/Feinberg Cardiovascular Research Institute, Northwestern University, Chicago, USA). She went back in Bordeaux, France at the end of 2008, where she had a postdoctoral position in Alain-Pierre Gadeau’s group at UMR Inserm U828, before she obtained a permanent position at Inserm in 2011.

Scientific summary

Marie-Ange Renault’s research focuses on characterizing the cellular and molecular mechanisms that control the growth and maintenance of blood vessels under both physiological and pathological conditions in adults, with a particular attention devoted to the involvement of the Hedgehog signaling pathway.

Notably, she has demonstrated that:

- Ischemic limb revascularization depends on myogenesis and peripheral nerve integrity.

- Hedgehog signaling is impaired in the setting of diabetes which contributes to the development of neuropathy

- Endothelium integrity depends on Desert Hedgehog-induced autocrine, non canonical, signaling

- Microvascular dysfunction participates in the pathophysiology of critical limb ischemia