CEMO monthly seminar - Oceane Perdaens

CEMO is delighted to announce the seminars of the department that will be given by PhD student and Postdoc.

The seminar is followed by a lunch (kindly provided by the department) in order to allow everybody to interact and promote collaboration between labs.

Agenda:

12:00 - “MicroRNA dysregulation in Multiple Sclerosis and other neuro-inflammatory diseases: multi-compartment patterns of expression and pathway analysis.” - Oceane Perdaens ( Neuroimmunology and CFS Neurochemistry group)

Abstract

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is the most common cause of non-traumatic neurological disorder of the central nervous system (CNS) affecting young adults, characterized by multifocal inflammatory demyelinating lesions, axonal loss and neurodegeneration. While T cells invasion through an abnormal permeable blood brain barrier is a fact, MS pathogenesis remains incompletely understood. Thus, the study of novel bioactive molecules, involved in neuroinflammation, is of increasing interest. In this field, microRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs circulating in all body fluids and regulating gene expression post-transcriptionally, including immune-related genes. Therefore, we screened for a panel of miRNAs in cerebrospinal fluid, serum and peripheral blood mononuclear cells of patients with relapsing-remitting MS and other neurological disorders versus symptomatic and healthy controls. 21 miRNAs are differentially regulated according to disease activity in one of these compartments in MS, they are mainly upregulated in relapsing MS. We identified a partially common miRNA expression profile between relapsing MS, inflammatory and infectious CNS disorders. Hereby, we confirm dysregulation of miRNAs already studied by other groups, e.g. miR-146a-5p, miR-150-5p and miR-155-5p. Interestingly we have also found seven miRNAs that have not been described in MS so far, to our best knowledge. By principle component analysis we demonstrated that these miRNAs can segregate MS according to disease activity but also from controls. In silico analysis of Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways confirms the involvement of these miRNAs in cell cycle and survival, cancer, immunoregulation, neurogenesis and lipidic metabolism.

PERDAENS O^1,2 (MD), DANG HA¹, D’AURIA L¹ (PhD), VAN PESCH V^1,2 (MD, PhD)

¹Neurochemistry Group, Institute of Neuroscience, Université Catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), avenue Emmanuel Mounier 53/B1.53.03, 1200 Brussels, Belgium
²Cliniques universitaires Saint-Luc, avenue Hippocrate 10, 1200 Brussels, Belgium

12:45 - Q&A session

13:00 - Lunch