Team description

Keywords: 

Our team studies the importance of the microenvironment in physiological and pathological conditions, in particular the role of oxygen level, and the impact on cellular activities such as oxidative stress, tumor angiogenesis, invasion mechanisms and selection of tumor stem cells.

Within tumors, hypoxia induces the production of pro-angiogenic factors that stimulate endothelium and lead to selective recruitment of vicinal and circulating endothelial cells. This leads to uncontrolled vascularization with misshapen and non-functional vessels (poor oxygenation, permeability, ...) which is characteristic of the tumor microenvironment. Our team recently demonstrated the fundamental importance of the normalization of tumor vessels to compensate intratumoral hypoxia and reverse the expression of many genes involved in the resistance of tumor cell (genes governing anaerobic glycolysis, response to hypoxia, oxidative metabolism, as well as resistance and dedifferentiation genes such as ABCG, MDRS, ALDH, CD133, CD271 ...), genes that are directly related to the selection of tumor stem cells. Compensating hypoxia plays directly on the number of tumor stem cells.

Our team works mainly on the model of melanoma but also on different models (breast carcinoma, lung cancer non-small cell, gliomas). We study and have shown the role of hypoxia and oxidative response resulting in the recruitment of cells from bone marrow, in particular circulating endothelial cells. We study the impact of the partial pressure of oxygen (hypoxia), and the microenvironment that results, on tumor niche, especially on the selection of tumor stem cells and on the recruitment of circulating cells induced by tumors. The molecular mechanisms related to oxygen content, such as the production of ROS, are studied in the laboratory by conventional methods as well as new techniques based on the reaction of specific fluorescent markers to identify different types of ROS.

Collaborations

- Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France

- Université de Strasbourg, Normoxys, France

- GREMI, Université d’Orléans, France

- Medical biotechnology, Faculty of biochemistry, Biophysics and Biotechnology, the Jagiellonian University, Poland

- IITD, Institut L Hirszfeld, PAN, Wroclaw, Poland

- Cancéropole Grand Ouest, Ligue contre le cancer

- Pôle de compétitivité « Cosmetic Valley »

- Neurosciences Paris-Seine, UMR 8246, Equipe Plasticité gliale, Paris

- Laboratoire d’innovation thérapeutique, Strasbourg Laboratoire Neuroprotection et Neurorégénération : Molécules neuroactives de petite taille – UMR 788 INSERM-Université Paris Sud, Kremlin-Bicêtre

Centre Biophysique Moléculaire - CNRS UPR4301

Rue Charles Sadron