Marie-Pierre Dehouck

Professor Marie-Pierre Dehouck is graduated as a physiologist and holds a PhD degree in Physiology from the University of Lille I and a Doctorate  degree in Physiology from the Université d' Artois.

During her PhD studies, she set up an in vitro blood brain barrier (BBB) model, consisting in a coculture of bovine brain capillary endothelial cells and rat glial cells. This model represents a valuable tool; its characteristics are very close to the in vivo blood brain barrier and enables transport studies of endogenous molecules or drugs to the brain. This model is extendly used by  pharmaceutical industry since the end of her PhD in 1990.

In 1999, she became Professor in Physiology at the Université d’Artois. Her research group investigates the thematic "modelling the BBB" which aims are development, characterization, standardization of physiological and pathological in vitro BBB models. Marie-Pierre Dehouck got involved in the FP7 European project EUSTROKE aiming to the modelling of the neurovascular unit. As part of this project, a three cell culture was developed including endothelial cells, glial cells and pericytes and enables studies of interactions between actors of the neurovascular unit.

Recently, thanks to a collaboration with Professor Lino Ferreira (Coimbra University, Portugal), her group has successfully developed a human in vitro BBB model using human stem cells isolated from umbilical cord blood which has been patented. She is author of 60 papers.

Currently she is involved in an ANR project (CNS-antidote) "broad spectrum antidotes against chemical warfare agents" and a Marie Sklodowska-Curie ITN (NANOSTEM) " New Nanomaterials for Neural Stem Cells Drug Delivery".