A Snapshot seminar hosted by the School of Physiology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience

Abstract: The brain is the most complex and interconnected organ of the body. My laboratory uses the study of type-1 cannabinoid receptors (CB1) as a tool to try better understanding brain complexity. For instance, the impact of the balance between neuronal excitation and inhibition, of astrocyte activity, of sensory perception and, more recently, of mitochondrial and bioenergetic processes on brain functions and behavior were investigate through the CB1 receptors' lens. In this talk, I will present an excursus of these studies and, in particular, I will focus on the recent data about CB1 receptor-dependent control of brain metabolism and its impact on behavior.

Biosketch: Dr. Giovanni Marsicano is a tenured researcher at Inserm. He leads the group “Endocannabinoids and Neuroadaptation” at the NeuroCentre Magendie, an INSERM and University of Bordeaux Research Center devoted to neuroscience. Dr. Marsicano is a Veterinary Medicine Doctor as formation. After his diploma, he worked on research related to Embryonic Stem Cells from farm animals and to xenotransplantation models in Italy for 4 years. He then moved to the Max-Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich for a PhD student position with Beat Lutz, where he initiated the work on the role of type-1 cannabinoid receptors (CB1) and of the endocannabinoid system (ECS) in brain physiology, which has been his main research interest since. The subject of his PhD thesis was the generation of conditional mutants for CB1 and anatomical and functional studies on the mechanisms of action of the ECS. After PhD graduation in 2001, he made two post-doctoral periods in Germany and moved to Bordeaux in 2006 (recruited as Inserm senior scientist in 2007) to lead his independent research group. He is member of the SfN, the French Society of Neuroscience, the International Cannabinoid Research Society (ICRS), and he has been recently elected at EMBO and at FRM (Fondation de la Recherche Medicale). He received, among others, the IACM Young Investigator Award (2007), the Bettencourt-Schuller Price (2008), the Grand Prix Robert Debré (2015), and the prestigious Grand Prix Lamonica for Neurobiology (2021).