Grant

Maria Bernabeu receives €1 million for cerebral malaria research

The grant will enable EMBL Barcelona researchers to generate 3D cerebral malaria models and treatments

Maria Bernabeu and her group at EMBL Barcelona received the prestigious Spanish CaixaResearch Health grant to generate 3D blood-brain barrier models to better understand disease pathogenesis and identify disease treatments.

The Bernabeu group studies cerebral malaria by building 3D human blood-brain-barrier (BBB) models. These models contain several critical cell types present in the human BBB and are one of the most complete organ-on-chip models to date. 

This grant will allow the Bernabeu Group to form an alliance with EMBL-EBI, the University of Glasgow, and the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Programme to take their BBB model a step further. The team will use new tissue analysis tools to study preserved brain samples from deceased patients, together with Christopher Moxon’s Lab at the University of Glasgow and in Malawi. This will allow the researchers to make a detailed map of cell types in the brain and their disruption markers during cerebral malaria. 

Researchers at EMBL Barcelona will build an advanced 3D experimental model of brain blood vessels that includes microglia – immune cells from the brain – and expose it to malaria-infected blood cells to track how BBB damage occurs during infection. Using powerful computational analysis with the help of Evangelia Petsalaki’s Group at EMBL-EBI, they will compare findings from patient-derived brain tissue and their on-chip model to develop a refined 3D model that matches what happens in patients. 

“The CaixaResearch Health grant will allow us to combine our expertise on tissue biology with our partner’s molecular analysis and computational knowledge,” said Maria Bernabeu, Group Leader at EMBL Barcelona. “We are very excited to team up with such an international, interdisciplinary team and be able to tackle cerebral malaria progression from different scales and angles.”