Chantal M. Boulanger: Exploring the Endothelium.

Abstract

The scientific evolution of Chantal M. Boulanger, PharmD, PhD, has taken her from a French village’s one-room schoolhouse to the Mayo Clinic to a leadership position at the Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale (Inserm) in Paris. Chantal M. Boulanger While completing pharmacy studies at the Universite de Lorraine, Boulanger leapt at the chance to spend summers in research laboratories with the aim of pursuing a PhD. Her molecular pharmacology doctoral work, on the intracellular mechanisms associated with vascular smooth muscle relaxation, was conducted at the Universite de Strasbourg in the program headed by Jean-Claude Stoclet. Boulanger’s research career has focused on the role of endothelial cells as a key player in vascular disease development and as a target of cardiovascular risk factors. While she was a research associate at the University Hospital of Basel, Switzerland, Boulanger and T.F. Luscher demonstrated that production of the vasoconstrictor endothelin is downregulated by nitric oxide1 and stimulated by oxidized lipids2 in isolated endothelium, findings that were later confirmed in intact animals and provided new pharmacological targets to address endothelial dysfunction. In a change that required a major shift in laboratory techniques and models, since 2000 Boulanger’s research team at Inserm has investigated the extracellular microvesicles produced by endothelial cell activation. The team demonstrated that circulating microvesicles from patients with myocardial infarction triggered endothelial dysfunction, even in angiographically normal arteries.3 They identified microvesicles in human atherosclerotic plaque as potent prothrombogenic mediators that might represent a major determinant of plaque neovascularization and vulnerability.4 Later, they showed that circulating endothelial microvesicles were associated with cardiovascular and metabolic risk factors in participants in the Framingham offspring study who had no history of cardiovascular disease.5 Currently, Boulanger’s research addresses the regulation of micro-RNA packaging in extracellular vesicles and resulting …