Affiliation: Gulbenkian Institute of Molecular Medicine, Portugal
Keywords: Gut-Brain axis ; Neuroimmunology ; Microbiota ; peptidoglycan; Pattern Recognition Receptors (PRRs); Sex hormones
Full profile: I started my research training in 2004, at the University of Sao Paulo (USP) in Brazil. The main goal of my undergraduate, and Master’s projects was to uncover novel therapeutical approaches for Diabetes Mellitus. This research was supported by Brazilian government fellowships. During my Master’s, I obtained a scholarship from the École normale supérieure de Cachan (France) to spend six months there, in a research training program expanding my knowledge of molecular biology and viral vectors. In 2011, I joined a neuroimmunomodulation group and started my Ph.D. at USP. In the 2nd year of my Ph.D., I obtained an international fellowship to continue my research training at the Rockefeller University in New York, studying neuroimmune interactions in the gut. The work I accomplished during my thesis, uncovered a neuro-immune axis that induces a tissue-protective program in gut macrophages in response to a potentially pathogenic insult (Gabanyi et al. Cell 2016).
During this time, I acquired a solid understanding of gut immunology and the enteric-associated nervous system and became increasingly interested in studying the poorly characterized mechanisms of neuronal responses to bacterial stimuli. Thus, I joined the Institut Pasteur (France) for my postdoctoral work, where I have gained a solid foundation in neuroscience, particularly in the study of the central nervous system. The work I carried during this period describes cell-autonomous effects in brain neurons in response to bacterial compounds regularly released by the intestinal microbiota at homeostasis, uncovering a new sex- and age-dependent microbiota-brain axis involved in metabolism control (Gabanyi et al. Science 2022). Although many studies have highlighted the importance of the gut-brain axis, we are still far from understanding the mechanisms by which the gut microbiota modulates brain circuits. To continue to dissect the mechanisms and external factors involved in the microbiota-gut-brain axis interactions I joined the Gulbenkian Institute of Science (now Gulbenkian Institute of Molecular Medicine) in Portugal to establish my research team in 2022.