Julie Siegenthaler

Dr. Julie Siegenthaler completed her undergraduate degree in Neuroscience & Behavior at Mount Holyoke College and her PhD in Neuroscience studying the impact of prenatal alcohol exposure on brain development at SUNY Upstate University in Syracuse, NY. Dr. Siegenthaler began studying the development of the meninges and brain vasculature while a postdoctoral fellow at University of California, San Francisco and started her laboratory at the University of Colorado in 2012. The Siegenthaler laboratory studies the interplay between the CNS and its vital support structures, the meninges and the brain vasculature. The meninges surround the brain and spinal cord providing a protective covering. However, the meninges and in particular meningeal fibroblasts are an important source of developmental cues that regulate neuronal migration, neurogenesis, CNS vascular development and development of the calvarium. CNS disease and injury are frequently accompanied by breakdown of the meninges and vascular instability, and recently the Siegenthaler laboratory generated a single cell transcriptome atlas of the embryonic mouse meninges. This together with ongoing work has opened the door to a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying CNS meninges development and function. In particular, they study how meningeal and perivascular fibroblasts populations are established and act locally in the immature CNS to control blood vasculature and CNS macrophages at brain borders. Further, the lab focuses on CNS barriers in the meninges and vasculature, their development and instability in disease, specifically ischemic stroke, viral encephalitis and bacterial meningitis.