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International Collaborations
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Current collaborations:
The Cuello lab entertains a number of
collaborations with McGill colleagues and also with
colleagues abroad, mainly in the USA and Europe. These
collaborations have resulted in a number of well noted
publications. The lab philosophy and culture is one of open
exchanges and interactions in order to enhance the value of
ongoing studies. These collaborations are largely based on
sharing information and harnessing complementary expertise.
Our trainees are occasionally sent abroad to acquire
methodologies needed for their thesis projects or
postdoctoral studies. In recent years graduate students were
sent to the ICGB ,Trieste, Italy; the Department of
Pharmacology, Oxford University, England and the Cajal
Institute and the Severo Ochoa Institute for molecular
Biology, both in Madrid, Spain .
At McGill University the lab has kept
longstanding collaborations with the Laboratories of Dr Szyf
(Pharmacology, Epigenetics Molecular Biology) and with Dr
Alfredo Ribeiro Da Silva (Dept. of Pharmacology, Pain
research, quantitative Immunocytochemistry). More recently
we have carried out collaborative studies with the Labs of
Dr Karim Nader (Dept. of Psychology, Memory mechanisms), Dr
Nahum Sonnenberg ( Dept. of Biochemistry, Regulation of
Transcription), Dr Guillermina Almazan (Dept. of
Pharmacology, Cellular Neuropharmacology) and Dr Walter
Mushinsky (Dept. Biochemistry, Cell Biology).
The Lab maintains strong interactions with
colleagues abroad, currently with Dr David Bennett, Director
of the Alzheimer’s Center at the Rush Medical Center and Dr
Elliott Mufson also from the Rush Medical Center, Chicago
(USA). Together, we have published studies on synaptic
markers and growth factors in human brain material of
Alzheimer’s and Mild Cognitive Impairment cases from the
Brain Bank of the Religious Order Studies. The lab has also
initiated collaboration with Dr Fiona Crawford (Roskamp
Institute, Florida, USA) for an in-depth pathology-dependent
proteomic analysis of protein networks altered in the
cerebral cortex and hippocampus of the newly characterized
transgenic rat mimicking the human Alzheimer’s-like amyloid
pathology.
The lab has generated several transgenic rat
models in close collaboration with Dr Leena Alhonen of the
Virtanen Institute. Most notably we have generated a new
transgenic rat model of the Alzheimer’s disease (AD)-like
amyloid pathology ( model coded McGill-R-Thy1-APP). This
model is currently being utilized by some research
laboratories and industry in the USA, Norway, Germany and
Austria.
The lab has started a joint research agreement with the Lab
of Dr George Koob at the Scripps Research Institute with the
objective of defining possible alterations in emotional
traits in the McGill-R-Thy1-APP rat transgenic model, taking
advantage of the richer behavioral display of rats as
compared with mice, the most common species used for
transgenesis.
We have completed a collaborative project
estimating the total number of CA1-CA3 neurons in our
transgenic mouse model of the AD-like amyloid pathology at
different ages applying a stereological approach with Dr.
Wilma van de Berg, Dept. of Anatomy and Neurosciences,
Neuroscience Campus Amsterdam, VU University Medical Center,
Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
We are also continuing a collaboration with
Dr Jesus Avila at the Severo Ochoa Institute for Molecular
Biology, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (Spain) on the
status of phosphorylation of tau proteins at diverse
pathology phases of our AD-like transgenic rat.
Past Collaborations
The Cuello Lab while at Oxford and later at
McGill has maintained a number of collaborations. The most
notable has been the long standing collaboration with the
late Cesar Milstein (1984 Nobel laureate, the discovery of
monoclonal antibodies). This interaction started while
Claudio Cuello was a member of the MRC Neurochemical
Pharmacology Unit at Cambridge (England). In collaboration
with Cesar Milstein, the Oxford Cuello lab reported the
first monoclonal antibody for Neuroscience application (
anti-substance P) , engineered the first “bi-specific”
monoclonal antibodies and described “internally
radio-labeled monoclonal antibodies”. Dr Cuello and one
trainee spent time in the laboratory of Dr Francisco Baralle
at the ICGB (International center for Genetic Engineering
and Biotechnology), Trieste , Italy, for a sabbatical stint
to practice recombinant DNA techniques and to generate
mutations in new cDNA constructs intended for transgenesis.
In past years our lab collaborated closely
with the lab of Karen Duff, when she was at the Nathan Kline
Institute, in the study of the transmitter-specific
alterations occurring in the cerebral cortex as consequence
of the progressive AD-like amyloid pathology; using
transgenic mice models developed by Dr Duff or bred in her
facility. These studies resulted in a number of well cited
papers.
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