Scientist U. Mayor organized symposium on glial cells in Portugal

07-18-19

Dr. Felipe Court was the only representative who had the opportunity to present at the XIV European Meeting of Glial Cells in Health and Disease, among hundreds of applicants.

The director of the Center for Integrative Biology (CIB) of the Universidad Mayor, Dr. Felipe Court, organizes a symposium on glial cells and its effect on neuronal circuits, within the framework of the XIV European Meeting of Glial Cells in Health and Disease. in the city of Porto, Portugal, which gathered more than a thousand people.

This congress is the largest in the world associated with the study of the nervous system of a perspective not focused on the neuron but on the glial cells, which fulfill important functions in both physiological and pathological states.

The scientist explained about this paradigm shift. "In the last 20 years it began to find that many of the functions in the nervous system are made with glial cells associated to neurons: it went from thinking that everything that the nervous system does is done by neurons, to which there are some functions associated with glial cells. This change of paradigm begins with the observation that the nervous system is composed of the numbers of neurons and glia, and the findings that show that both cellular types fulfill important functions in memory and learning, functions that historically, they have been associated to neurons", said Dr. Court, who is also a academic of the doctoral in Neurobiology of the U. Mayor

His symposium was selected among hundreds of applicants and Court was the only Chilean representative who led a presentation, with guests from Israel and the United States. In it, the researchers talked about the remodeling of neuronal circuits by glial cells, both in normal conditions and in pathologies of the nervous system.

On his presence at the meeting, the director of the CIB hightlight that "show that the research we are doing in the laboratory is recognized internationally, organizing this symposium and presenting our results let us to generate new networks with scientistic of the world".

Currently the laboratory of the center works on projects on the functions of glial cells in the aging of the nervous system (FONDAP project), as well as on the regeneration of the nervous system.