Canada

Stroke is one of the leading causes of death and disability in the world. Unfortunately, there is still no effective therapy to treat the disease. Therapeutic angiogenesis using potent pro-angiogenic agents has already been shown to provide therapeutic benefits. However, the use of such agents is a double-edged strategy because of the increased risk of exacerbation of vascular leakage. Pericytes are specialized mural cells that play a key role in stabilizing the angiogenic vasculature and possess plastic properties, as they are able to differentiate into endothelial cells by reprogramming. Because of their angiogenic and plastic properties, pericytes are an attractive target for developing new interventions to promote neurovascular repair after stroke. Using novel pharmacological and genetic approaches to target pericytes, our results indicate that a recently discovered platelet-derived growth factor, isoform D (PDGF-D), plays an important role in promoting pericyte plasticity contributing notably to a decrease in brain atrophy and a reduction in motor impairment. Furthermore, our data demonstrate that ex vivo pre-conditioned pericytes transplanted intra-nasally migrate to the lesion site and promote its vascularization, which leads to the regression of damage. The overall results therefore suggest that pericytes are an interesting target and a new tool for the development of new therapies against stroke

CAN-ACN 2021

Exploration of the pro-angiogenic potential of pericytes in the repair of neurovascular unity following cerebrovascular accidents

pericytes

angiogenesis

stroke

Colleagues and Friends:

I am very happy to welcome you to the 14th annual Canadian Neuroscience Meeting, and to the first virtual edition of our meeting. I want to highlight the important work the CAN meeting chair, **Roger Thompson** and co-chair, **Alyson Fournier**, did to put together the great program we are offering this year. Moving to a virtual format required a complete re-design of the program, and both Roger and Alyson did a splendid job in providing us with an appealing and well adapted program for our first virtual event. I wish to thank them for this very important effort.

Highlights of this year’s scientific meeting include invited speakers **Michael Hausser, Franck Polleux, Gwyneth Card, Magdalena Götz**and Brain Prize winner **Huda Zoghbi**. Plenary and parallel symposia, proposed by our members complete our diverse [scientific program.](https://can-acn.org/meeting-2021/program-2021/)

The 2021 Advocacy session, chaired and organized by CAN advocacy committee chair **Karun Singh**, will feature a special lecture and question period with Member of Parliament and past Science Minister **Kirsty Duncan**. This will be followed by a short overview of CAN’s advocacy activities over the last year. We invite you to participate in this session for insight from Dr. Duncan on the workings of Parliament Hill, and to learn more about what CAN has been doing to promote neuroscience research in Canada.

We are also excited to host **Lisa Willis** in the Equity Diversity and Inclusion session, organized by EDI committee chair **Jibran Khokhar**.

A special highlight of our meeting will be the lectures by award-winning young neuroscientists. We are please to host the CAN 2020 Young Investigator Award winner **Mihaela Iordanova**, and CAN 2021 Young Investigator Award winners **Aaron Phillips** and **Tabrez Siddiqui**. Highlights will also include presentation by the top three winners of the CAN-CIHR-INMHA Brain Star Award winners, **Claire Gizowski, Nuria Daviu Abant** and **Lukas Tamayo-Orrego**.

Independently organized satellite symposia complement and complete this exciting program, check them out here: https://can-acn.org/meeting-2021/2021-satellite-symposia/

Some of the most engaging sessions are always the poster sessions featuring the work of our trainees, so make sure to log in to Gather Town during the poster sessions to chat with the presenters.
We hope you enjoy this program, and look forward to welcoming you, virtually.

Shernaz Bamji

President of the Canadian Association for Neuroscience

![](https://s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/underline.prod/uploads/markdown_image/1/image/b9aea25343a87d5aac3b9367dc780974.jpg)



Please head to https://can-acn.org/meeting-2021/registration-2021/ to register. 

14th Canadian Neuroscience Meeting from August 23rd-25th

poster

Assessing dendritic integrity and spine morphology following impact in the porcine cortex

Repeated traumatic brain injury causes diffuse microvascular damage and impairs bidirectional synaptic plasticity

Exploring neurodifferentiation and maturation process of iPSCs derived from schizophrenia patients with multimodal optical microscopy

Effect of fasting on lateral hypothalamus GABA to ventral tegmental area GABA synapses

Neurodevelopmental impact of aberrant calcium mobilization in bipolar disorder patient-derived iPSC-neural progenitor cells

Naked mole-rat brain mitochondria tolerate in vitro ischemia

Behaviour characterization of the Q175/B6 Huntington's disease mouse model

Calcium handling in striatal neurons in Huntington disease

GABAA receptor positive allosteric modulation has symptomatic and disease modifying effects in a mouse model of chronic stress

Impact of alpha-synuclein aggregation on protein degradation systems and its implication in Parkinson's Disease pathogenesis

Exploration of the pro-angiogenic potential of pericytes in the repair of neurovascular unity following cerebrovascular accidents

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