Stress-responsive pathways in pathophysiological prenatal brain development
April 28, 2026 @ 15:15 – 16:15 CEST
Professor Valérie Mezger, Université de Paris
Abstract
The Development and Environment Interface team led by Valérie Mezger studies the impact of stress on cell identity. We aim to understand how prenatal stress perturbs neural cell fate and therefore contributes to neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) through transcriptomic and epigenetic components of stress responses to shape normal and pathological neurodevelopment. For this, we focus on stressors of prenatal relevance (prenatal alcohol exposure or neuroinflammation, induced by infections), which are major causes of non-genetic NDDs and, for genetic NDDs, combine the use of mouse models and human cerebral organoids to single-cell multi-omics approaches. The team demonstrated that deregulation of stress-responses is also observed in monogenic NDDs and therefore have developed a transfer project and collaborations with mathematicians in deep learning to build therapeutic strategies.
Biography
After her cursus in the École Normale Supérieure (ENS Paris, France), VM completed her PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology (Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris 6) at the Pasteur Institute, in the François Jacob Lab, under the supervision of Olivier Bensaude and Michel Morange. She obtained a permanent position in the CNRS, based on her unravelling of key, physiological, activation of the stress-responsive Heat Shock transcription Factors (HSFs) in normal (unstressed) early embryonic development. For her postdoc, she joined the laboratory of Uri Nudel and David Yaffe in the Weizmann Institute (Israel), on the cerebral role of the Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy gene. VM then developed her own group in the Morange Lab in the ENS, and uncovered the role of HSF2 in normal brain development. Since 2009, she has been leading the Interface between Development and Environment Team, one of the six founding groups of the Center of Epigenetics and Cell Fate (CNRS), created at the new campus (PRG) of Université Paris Diderot (now Université Paris Cité). She co-directed this Centre as Deputy Director (2009-2018; Director, Jonathan Weitzman) and then directed (2019-2024; Deputy Director, Claire Rougeulle). She has had a long-term collaboration with the Lea Sistonen laboratory (Åbo/Turku University, Finland) and Pierre Gressens (Hôpital Robert Debré, NeuroDiderot, INSERM, Paris). She collaborates with Auguste Genovesio laboratory (iBENS, Institut de Biologie, ENS, Paris) for the development of deep learning solutions to distinguish subtle phenotypes from biological variability intrinsic to complex biological objects, like organoids. VM is also a coleader of the preclinical program of the IHU Robert Debré du Cerveau de l’Enfant (ICE; Hospital-University Institute of the Child Brain, Paris).
Host: Anniina Vihervaara anniina.vihervaara@scilifelab.se
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