Glial Cells in Health and Disease of the CNS

Rommy von Bernhardi is professor of Neurology at the School of Medicine, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (Santiago, Chile) and head of the Neuroscience lab. She obtained her Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the Universität Basel (Basel, Switzerland). Her research areas of interest concern: the biological mechanisms of clinical diseases of the CNS--particularly Alzheimer's disease and neurodegenerative pathology; as well as the functional and disease-related role of glial cells in the inflammation of the nervous system. She is coauthor and coeditor of over 80 scientific publications. Dr. Von Bernhardi is also a member of several distinguished societies such as the Society for Neuroscience and the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO); she was president of the Sociedad Chilena Neurociencia and is currently head of FALAN (Federación Latinoamericana y del Caribe de Neurociencia).

• Glial cells and the Integrity of the CNS.- NG2-glia: More than Progenitor Cells.- Pharmacological tools to study the role of astrocytes in neural network function.- "Microglia function in the normal brain”.- Physiological functions of glial cell hemichannels.- Role of astrocytes in central respiratory chemoreception.- Purine signaling and microglial wrapping.- Oligodendrocytes, functioning in a delicate balance between high metabolic requirements and oxidative damage.- Schwann cell and axon: an interlaced unit, from action potential to phenotype expression.- Age-dependent changes in the activation and regulation of microglia.- Astrocyte dysfunction in developmental neurometabolic diseases.- Microglia in cancer: for good or for bad?.- Peripheral inflammation and demyelinating diseases.- Regulation of oligodendrocyte differentiation and myelination by nuclear receptors: role in neurodegenerative disorders.- The Role of Galectin-3: from Oligodendroglial Differentiationand Myelination to Demyelination and Remyelination Processes in a Cuprizone-Induced Demyelination Model.- Prenatal systemic hypoxia-ischemia and oligodendroglia loss in cerebellum