Aurélie Tchoghandjian a soutenu son Habilitation à Diriger les Recherches (HDR) devant un jury d'experts composé de cliniciens : Pr. Nicolas André, Pr. François Ducray, Pr. Dominique Figarella-Branger; et de chercheurs : Dr. Emmanuelle Huillard et Dr. Monique Dontenwill.

As part of her PhD, Sylvie Carmona investigated the beneficial effects of NV669, an aminosterol derived from squalamine on human pancreatic and hepatic cancer models. In vitro results exposed in this paper showed that NV669 inhibited the proliferation of cancer cells, induced cell cycle arrest and subsequent apoptosis. Moreover, NV669 inhibited PTP1B activity and impacted adhesion molecules expression. This suggests that NV669 by inhibiting PTP1B would affect cell contacts and would induce apoptosis.

L'équipe 8 (GlioME) a le plaisir d'accueillir deux étudiants en Master 2, Anaïs Arathni étudiante en Master Biologie Santé et Emmanuel Snacel-Fazy étudiant en Master Neurosciences. Anaïs travaillera avec Aurélie Tchoghandjian sur la caractérisation des cellules immunitaires recrutées sur le site tumoral suite au traitement par mimétiques de Smac. Emmanuel travaillera avec Chiara Bastiancich sur le microenvironnement de la résection tumorale du glioblastome.

Christophe Leterrier, leader of the NeuroCyto ATIP team, wrote a Spotlight in the Journal of Cell Biology highlighting a nice recent paper from the group of Pei-Lin Cheng in Taiwan. In this article, Lee et al. showed how degradation of the chloride transporter NKCC1 by proteasomes anchored at the AIS have a key role in lowering the intracellular chloride concentration, leading to the perinatal reversal of GABA effect from excitatory to inhibitory.

Thanks to her expertise in the diagnosis of central nervous system tumours arising in children and young adults, Dominique Figarella-Branger from the GlioME team (Team 8) was involved last year in 5 articles published in high-impact factor journals (>18). These articles are becoming references in this field:

- The molecular landscape of ETMR at diagnosis and relapse. Nature. 2019 Dec;576(7786):274-280. PMID: 31802000

- EANO-EURACAN clinical practice guideline for diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up of post-pubertal and adult patients with medulloblastoma. Lancet Oncol. 2019 Dec;20(12):e715-e728.PMID: 31797797

First work of 2020 work is out for the NeuroCyto team! A collaboration with Matt Rasband’s lab in Nature Communications. This is a significant paper for the axon initial segment field: Matt’s lab used BioID of key AIS proteins for mapping AIS components. Dozens of new candidates for future studies! We performed super-resolution microscopy of several of the newly identified AIS components. IN particular, we showed that Mical3, a protein linking microtubules and actin, forms clusters along the AIS that are not periodically organized along the actin/spectrin scaffold.