CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE AND REGENERATION UNIT
Zebrafish are a valuable model to study cardiovascular development and disease due to their conserved genetics and resilience to cardiovascular defects, lethal in other model organisms. Moreover, this animal model has a unique capacity to regenerate multiple organs and tissues contributing to the understanding on how new tissue is formed after injury.
The main focus of the Unit is to develop new genetic models to study cardiovascular disease and regeneration. We take advantage of zebrafish amenability for live imaging with single-cell resolution to understand the cellular mechanisms and dynamics regulating tissue development and disease, allowing us to track in real time the tissue modifications associated with each disease.
This Unit integrates the expertise of biologists and clinicians to benefit form the great potential of zebrafish as a translational model organism.
RESEARCH TEAM
Bensimon-Brito, Anabela, PhD
GROUP LEADER
Anabela Bensimon-Brito graduated in Marine Biology by the University of Algarve (Portugal) in 2005. In 2012, she completed a joint PhD in Biological and Biomedical Sciences at UGent/UAlg (Belgium/Portugal) working on zebrafish bone development and breaking old dogmas on how vertebrae are built separately. She then started working on mechanisms of bone regeneration at the Centre for Chronic Diseases from NOVA Medical School (Lisbon, Portugal) for a first postdoctorate. In 2016, she joined Didier Stainier’s Lab at the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research (Bad Nauheim, Germany) as a Postdoctoral Researcher to study cardiac valve development and regeneration. There, she established a new model for cardiac valve regeneration to study valve-cell recruitment and new tissue formation, relevant for the improvement of cardiac valve implants. She also identified new mechanisms of cardiac valve development using live imaging at single-cell resolution, and adapted pre-clinical imaging techniques to the adult zebrafish, including Echocardiography, Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Micro-Computed Tomography.
Recently, Anabela was granted the ATIP-Avenir award from INSERM/CNRS and joined the Marseille Medical Genetics Center (France) as a group leader, where she will develop her research in cardiovascular regeneration and disease models in zebrafish.
She now maintains a strong collaboration with CCUL and the Cardiovascular Disease and Regeneration Unit.
ORCID: 0000-0003-1663-2232
E-mail: anabela.bensimon-brito@univ-amu.fr