Yvonne Couch

My primary research field is neuroimmunology, specifically how the brain communicates injury or illness to the systemic immune system, and vice-versa. I undertook a PhD in Pharmacology at the University of Oxford studying the role of the serotonergic system in mediating sickness behaviours. During this time I developed a keen interest in the elusive mechanisms of brain-immune communication and chose to pursue this in the field of stroke research. I obtained a prestigious Carlsberg Research Fellowship at the University of Southern Denmark to work with Prof. Kate Lambertsen on post-stroke depression. As a side project during my time in Odense I worked on the potential for extracellular vesicles (EVs) to play a role in distant organ communication.

I moved back to Oxford to work in the group of Prof. Alastair Buchan, obtaining a number of independent grants which allowed me to explore the role of EVs in stroke. I worked under an ARUK fellowship to study how EVs might act as injury signals to escape the brain after a stroke, and to what degree they affect vascular function. EVs are lipid vesicles of varying sizes, shed from cells all the time, and thought to be a novel mechanism of cell to cell communication. This remains a significant interest within my research group and we are always looking for new collaborations on the topic.

In 2024 I was awarded a BHF Transition Fellowship by the Oxford Centre for Research Excellence to use metabolic imaging to study the long term effects of stroke on the brain and brain metabolism. The overall goal of my group is to study what the long term consequences of stroke are and how they affect brain health, whether that is the role of EVs in vascular reactivity or the decline in metabolic health in the CNS. Preventing cognitive decline post-stroke remains our ultimate aim.