Harald Junge, PhD

The major goals of my laboratory are to understand cell-cell signaling impinging on the CNS vasculature and use that knowledge to target pathways for pharmacological intervention. Areas of focus are regulation of the blood-retina barrier and blood brain barrier by neural signals, endothelial cell – pericyte interactions and CNS angiogenesis. We seek to understand how signaling pathways function at the molecular level, create genetic mouse models of disease, and test novel drug candidates for therapeutic intervention. We use integrated approaches including mouse genetics, cell-based assays, molecular manipulations (e.g., CRISPR/Cas9), scRNA-Seq, and proteomics to understand processes at molecular, cellular, developmental, and disease levels.