Gonçalo Castelo-Branco

Portrait of Gonçalo Castelo-Branco in Biomedicum.

Prof. Gonçalo Castelo-Branco is the Professor of Glial Cell Biology at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. Prof. Castelo-Branco received his PhD in Medical Biochemistry in 2005, working on development of dopaminergic neurons and neural stem differentiation. He completed post-doctoral fellowships first at the Karolinska Institutet and then at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, working in neural and pluripotent stem cells and chromatin. Prof. Castelo-Branco started his research group in 2012, focusing on the molecular mechanisms defining the epigenetic state of cells of the oligodendrocyte lineage. The main focus of Prof. Castelo-Branco's research group is to investigate how distinct epigenetic states within the oligodendrocyte lineage are established, by identifying key transcription factors, chromatin modifying complexes and non-coding RNAs that are involved in epigenetic transitions, using technologies such as RNA-Seq (single-cell and bulk), quantitative proteomics and epigenomics, among others. The long term aim of this research group to design epigenetic based-therapies to induce regeneration (remyelination) in demyelinating diseases, such as multiple sclerosis. Prof. Castelo-Branco has received many prestigious awards and grants, including the European Research Council Consolidator Grant.

Selected Publications

Jäkel, S., Agirre, E., Mendanha Falcão, A., van Bruggen, D., Lee, K. W., Knuesel, I., Malhotra, D., Ffrench-Constant, C., Williams, A., & Castelo-Branco, G. (2019). Altered human oligodendrocyte heterogeneity in multiple sclerosis. Nature, 566, 543–547. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-0903-2

Falcão, A. M., van Bruggen, D., Marques, S., Meijer, M., Jäkel, S., Agirre, E., Samudyata, Floriddia, E. M., Vanichkina, D. P., Ffrench-Constant, C., Williams, A., Guerreiro-Cacais, A. O., & Castelo-Branco, G. (2018). Disease-specific oligodendrocyte lineage cells arise in multiple sclerosis. Nature Medicine, 24, 1837–1844. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-018-0236-y

Marques, S., van Bruggen, D., Vanichkina, D. P., Floriddia, E. M., Munguba, H., Väremo, L., Giacomello, S., Falcão, A. M., Meijer, M., Björklund, Å. K., Hjerling-Leffler, J., Taft, R. J., & Castelo-Branco, G. (2018). Transcriptional Convergence of Oligodendrocyte Lineage Progenitors during Development. Developmental Cell, 46(4), 504-517.E7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.devcel.2018.07.005

Marques, S., Zeisel, A., Codeluppi, S., Van Bruggen, D., Falcão, A. M., Xiao, L., Li, H., Häring, M., Hochgerner, H., Romanov, R. A., Gyllborg, D., Muñoz-Manchado, A. B., La Manno, G., Lönnerberg, P., Floriddia, E. M., Rezayee, F., Ernfors, P., Arenas, E., Hjerling-Leffler, J., … Castelo-Branco, G. (2016). Oligodendrocyte heterogeneity in the mouse juvenile and adult central nervous system. Science, 352(6291), 1326–1329. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaf6463

AW
Content reviewer:
03-01-2024