LABORATORY OF NEUROBIOLOGY AND NEUROVIROLOGY

Research line

Nuclear receptors: Implications in chronic inflammatory diseases

Neurodegenerative diseases, in which neuronal death is accompanied by inflammation, have no effective treatment. Among the nuclear receptors, retinoid X receptors (RXR) could constitute a new therapeutic target for their treatment because, in addition to directly promoting cell survival, they could present a specific mechanism of inhibition of the inflammatory response. In this research, we examine the ability of RXRs to regulate cell signaling pathways, including survival, inflammation, regeneration, and innate immune response, with a particular focus on the antiviral response.We investigate whether the activation of RXRs is necessary to maintain the physiological neuro-glial and neuro-epithelial dialogue essential for the survival of retinal neurons. To this end, we integrate models of retinal neurodegeneration. We employed an animal model of retinitis pigmentosa (RP), the rd1 mouse, and in vitro models of degeneration of neurons, glial cells, and retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells. Given the recent proposal of viral infection as a risk factor for some of these diseases, we study how these compounds affect the antiviral response of infected cells.

Furthermore, we test the biological activity of novel synthetic compounds that have the potential to function as RXR agonists, thereby regulating neuronal and RPE cell survival. These compounds could serve to mitigate adverse effects and/or optimize their administration in patients.