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
Cristo, Inês, PhD
Inês Cristo graduated in Microbiology and Genetics at Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa in 2007 and did a MSc degree in Molecular biology and Genetics in 2008 (also at Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa). She pursued her PhD in Developmental Biology at Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica – António Xavier and CEDOC, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, where she studied wound healing and tissue repair. She was also an Assistant Lecturer at the NOVA Medical School, between 2014 and 2016. In late 2016, Inês moved to Institut Curie (Paris, France) for her post-doctoral studies on cell adhesion and cell cycle regulation during morphogenesis. In 2020, she worked briefly as the Features and Reviews Editor at the Journal of Cell Science at The Company of Biologists. With her extense expertise in high-resolution live imaging and different animal models, Inês joined the CCUL in 2021 to start the Cardiovascular Disease and Regeneration Unit, in close collaboration with Dr. Anabela Bensimon-Brito, Principal Investigator at the Marseille Medical Genetics (France). ORCID: 0000-0002-7576-326X