Autumn - Winter 2025
Conferences
Three members of the CVDR speak at VasCog25 meeting
Joanna Wardlaw, Axel Montagne and Susanne van Veluw spoke at this meeting in Southampton, and Joanna was awarded a prize (see below).
Six members of the CVDR speak at BBB meeting
Susanne van Veluw, Mootaz Salman, Axel Montagne and David Attwell gave talks at the Barcelona Blood-Brain Barrier meeting in October. Austėja Čiulkinytė, a PhD student in Blanca Diaz Castro’s lab, and Audrey Chagnot, a post-doc in Axel Montagne’s lab, were also selected to give talks.
CVDR Launch Event
On October 16, the CVDR was formally launched at the Science Gallery in London, at an event attended by over 100 Vascular Dementia researchers, and representatives of funding bodies and patient groups. Along with introductory talks by the heads of the co-funders - Bryan Williams of the BHF and Siddharthan Chandran of the UK DRI - all the Group Leaders in the CVDR gave talks on their work, and there was a panel discussion on the future of Vascular Dementia research.
Grant successes
Attwell and Saffari groups at UCL awarded BrightFocus grant ($300,000) to study whether ultrasound can be used to activate microglial removal of amyloid beta in dementia.
Hilde van den Brink (senior post-doc in Susanne van Veluw’s lab) has been awarded an early career grant from Alzheimer Nederland, to study the consequences of blood-brain barrier leakage in patients with cerebral small vessel disease, in collaboration with Joanna Wardlaw.
Promotions and Honours
September 2025: Joanna Wardlaw was presented with the Biochemical Society Award for Sustained Excellence at VasCog25, and gave a Prize Lecture on Brain Vascular Function and Small Vessel Disease.
September 2025: Mootaz Salman awarded Baylis-Starling Prize Lecture by Physiological Society.
October 2025: Blanca Diaz Castro awarded tenure in her position at Edinburgh.
November 2025: David Attwell awarded 2026 Derek Willoughby Medal by the William Harvey Institute for work on the microvasculature and inflammation.
December 2025: Mootaz Salman awarded the Geoffrey Burnstock Prize by the British Pharmacological Society.
Publications
November 2024: Attwell group publish a new paper on restoring cerebral blood flow in Alzheimer’s disease: Inhibiting Ca2+ channels in Alzheimer's disease model mice relaxes pericytes, improves cerebral blood flow and reduces immune cell stalling and hypoxia. Korte N, Barkaway A, Wells J, Freitas F, Sethi H, Andrews SP, Skidmore J, Stevens B, Attwell D. Nat Neurosci. 2024 Nov;27(11):2086-2100. doi: 10.1038/s41593-024-01753-w.
December 2024: Wardlaw group publish new paper on the design of clinical trials in Small Vessel Disease, including the successful LACI-2 trial: Design of trials in lacunar stroke and cerebral small vessel disease: review and experience with the LACunar Intervention Trial 2 (LACI-2). Blair G, Appleton JP, Mhlanga I, Woodhouse LJ, Doubal F, Bath PM, Wardlaw JM. Stroke Vasc Neurol. 2024 Dec 30;9(6):581-594. doi: 10.1136/svn-2023-003022.
January 2025: Hall lab publish paper on ApoE4 and vascular function: APOE4 and sedentary lifestyle synergistically impair neurovascular function in the visual cortex of awake mice. Anderle S, Bonnar O, Henderson J, Shaw K, Chagas AM, McMullan L, Webber A, McGowan K, King SL, Hall CN. Commun Biol. 2025 Jan 29;8(1):144. doi: 10.1038/s42003-025-07585-z.
February 2025: Montagne group publish a review on vascular transcriptomicsw in dementia: Unraveling the transcriptomic landscape of brain vascular cells in dementia: A systematic review. Sewell M, Fialova N, Montagne A.Alzheimers Dement. 2025 Feb;21(2):e14512. doi: 10.1002/alz.14512.
April 2025: Wardlaw and Montagne groups publish paper on blood biomarkers of vascular dysfunction. Blood biomarkers of vascular dysfunction in small vessel disease progression: Insights from a longitudinal neuroimaging study. Jaime Garcia D, Clancy U, Arteaga C, Valdés-Hernandez MC, Chappell FM, Jochems ACC, Cheng Y, Zhang J, Thrippleton MJ, Stringer MS, Sleight E, Backhouse EV, Wiseman S, Brown R, Doubal FN, Montagne A, Wardlaw JM; MSS3 Study Group.Alzheimers Dement. 2025 Apr;21(4):e70152. doi: 10.1002/alz.70152.
July 2025: Montagne group publishes a review on specialised brain pericytes. Walking on the tightrope: the shared roles of the bridging pericytes in the brain. Chagnot A, Montagne A. Front Cell Neurosci. 2025 Jul 22;19:1615579. doi: 10.3389/fncel.2025.1615579.
September 2025: Van Veluw group publishes paper on the angioarchitecture of enlarged perivascular spaces, in cleared human brain tissue samples, in collaboration with the Chung lab in Boston and the Lorthois lab in Toulouse. CAA-related enlarged perivascular spaces are associated with abnormal angioarchitecture in human brain tissue: A key role for white matter atrophy? Giraud M, Yun DH, Munting LP, Chung K, Bacskai BJ, Greenberg SM, Frosch MP, Goriely A, van Veluw SJ, Lorthois S. J Cereb Blood Flow Metab. 2025 Sep 8:271678X251369256. doi: 10.1177/0271678X251369256. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 40919822;
September 2025: Díaz Castro lab publishes BBB phenotyping paper: Multiregional blood-brain barrier phenotyping identifies the prefrontal cortex as the most vulnerable region to ageing in mice. Bravo-Ferrer I, Gaasdal-Bech K, Colvin C, Vaughan HJ, Moss J, Williams A, Díaz Castro B. Brain Commun. 2025 Sep 10;7(5):fcaf332. doi: 10.1093/braincomms/fcaf332.
September 2025: Salman lab publishes: Galectin-3 induces neurodevelopmental apical-basal polarity and regulates gyrification. Soares, L.C., Huang, N., Bernhardova, H., Macarelli, V., Chan, M., Nikel, L., Bandiera, S., Yan, D., Gupta, D., Cruz, E.M. and Vasaturo-Kolodner, T., 2025. Science Advances, 11(36), p.eadt5859. *Work is the cover of September issue.
October 2025: Montagne group publishes new review on blood-brain barrier: The blood-brain barrier. Chagnot A, Montagne A. Curr Biol. 2025 Oct 20;35(20):R1010-R1015. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.06.061.
October 2025: In a collaboration led by colleagues in Leiden and Bonn, the van Veluw group contributed to a paper on measuring CSF mobility with MRI in humans: Region-specific drivers of CSF mobility measured with MRI in humans.Hirschler L, Runderkamp BA, Decker A, van Harten TW, Scheyhing P, Ehses P, Petitclerc L, Layer J, Pracht E, Coolen BF, van der Zwaag W, Stöcker T, Vollmuth P, Paech D, Effland A, van Walderveen MAA, Radbruch A, van Buchem MA, Petzold GC, van Veluw SJ, Caan MWA, Deike K, van Osch MJP. Nat Neurosci. 2025 Nov;28(11):2392-2401. doi: 10.1038/s41593-025-02073-3.
October 2025: Attwell group publish a review on Vascular Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease: The vascular contribution to cognitive decline in ageing and dementia. Anderle S, Dixon M, Quintela-Lopez T, Sideris-Lampretsas G, Attwell D. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2025 Oct;26(10):591-606. doi: 10.1038/s41583-025-00950-1.
November 2025: van Veluw group publishes paper on measuring BBB leakage with MRI-based contrast agents in patients with CAA: In Vivo Imaging of Blood-Brain Barrier Leakage Using a Contrast Agent in Patients With Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy: An Exploratory Study. van den Brink H, Kozberg MG, Makkinejad N, Kirsch JE, Thrippleton MJ, van Harten TW, Voigt S, Freeze WM, Van Osch MJP, Viswanathan A, van Veluw SJ. Neurology. 2025 Nov 25; 105(10): e214336. doi: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000214336.
November 2025: Díaz Castro lab publishes paper on endothelial cell - astrocyte interactions: Molecular profiling of brain endothelial cell to astrocyte endfoot communication in mouse and human. Hill SA*, Bravo-Ferrer I*, Čiulkinytė A, Pérez Ramos N, Rossetti I, Colvin C, Beltran-Lobo P, Parra-Pérez C, Emelianova K, Dando O, Geary B, Nirujogi RS, Alessi DR, Lee D-Y, Lee Y-B, Díaz Castro B. Nat Commun. 2025 Nov 6;16(1):9750. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-65487-4.
News article
February 2026: Salman lab publishes review on glymphatic system: Measuring glymphatic function: Assessing the toolkit. Ayyappan K, Unger L, Kitchen P, Bill RM, Salman MM. Neural Regen Res. 2026 Feb 1;21(2):534-541. doi: 10.4103/NRR.NRR-D-24-01013.