Herve Boutin

Overview

Leading preclinical brain imaging, with a main focus on PET imaging, and supporting brain imaging projects from collaborators.

Biography

Over the years, I have developed a strong interest for neuropathological conditions and their mechanisms, and how we could manipulate these molecular mechanisms to develop therapies. Understanding acute neuropathological conditions such as stroke or chronic brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease implies the ability to study in vivo the mechanisms of such conditions, hence my interest in animal models and in vivo imaging. Among the mechanisms involved, I am particularly interested in the relation between inflammation, neuroinflammation and brain damage/neuronal loss.
To answer the numerous scientific questions related to the understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved, I have acquired a strong knowledge in several domains such as pharmacology of various neurotransmission systems (e.g. opioidergic, cholinergic, benzodiazepine), neuroscience, and neuroinflammation and neuropathological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease or stroke. More particularly, I have now acquired a good overview of the experimental approach of stroke, through model of brain ischaemia, and most importantly their respective strength and weakness (i.e. high reproducibility that translate poorly to clinical application). During my PhD I had the opportunity to approach PET imaging, a thematic that I was looking to take further during my post-doc in Orsay and now in Manchester. This technique obviously requires theoretical and practical knowledge of the biology it is applied to, but also knowledge in various domains outside biology such as neuroanatomy, and basic knowledge in radiochemistry to liaise with the radiochemists efficiently. Computing and programming are almost compulsory in this field to enable efficient image analysis, data management and processing which fit quite well with my taste for programming.