Insights into the disruption of gene regulatory programs in cancers – Workshop by Anthony Mathelier

On October 20 from 11 to 12, Dr Anthony Mathelier from the Molecular Medecine Norway Center will give a workshop at the Toulouse Research Center in Cancerology

Abstract:

Most cancer somatic alterations occur in the noncoding portion of the human genome, which contains important cis-regulatory regions acting as genetic switches to ensure gene expression occurs at correct times and intensities in correct tissues. However, the identification of critical noncoding cancer driver events has been mostly limited to a few examples with high recurrence or high functional impact. Transcription factors (TFs) are key proteins binding to cis-regulatory regions at their TF binding sites to modulate the rate of gene transcription. As cancer is a disease of disrupted cellular regulation, it is critical to analyze these regions to highlight patient somatic mutations and epigenetic modifications altering the gene regulatory program of the cells. In this talk, I will present our recent works on the interplay between TF binding, somatic mutations, and DNA methylation alteration that shifts the gene regulatory program in patients cancer cells.

If you are willing to attend this event online, please join here.

HUMAN GENE THERAPY: FROM BASIC PRINCIPLES TO APPLICATIONS IN THE MUSCULOSKELETAL SYSTEM

On Thursday, October 12th, at 9AM, Magali Cucchiarini, Professor of Molecular Biology & Vice-Director, Center of Experimental Orthopaedics at the Saarland University Medical Center is giving a workshop at RESTORE lab on human gene therapy.

Magali Cucchiarini, PhD, is a Professor, Group Leader, and Vice-Director of the Center of Experimental Orthopaedics, Saarland University Medical Center, Homburg/Saar, Germany, involved in the teaching activities of the Medical Faculty of the Saarland University (Biochemistry and Molecular Biolo-gy). She graduated from the University of Nice-Sophia Antipo-lis, France (PhD, summa cum laude), worked at the University Hospital Inselsspital, Bern Switzerland, and was a senior scientist at Harvard Medical School. Her research interest is to generate innovative cell-, gene-, and tissue engineered-based systems to treat musculoskeletal diseases.

If you want to join online, click here

1st Young Scientist Cancer Congress (YS2C) -New Research for cancer therapy- from bench to bedside

October 5th, 2023

The CRCT postdocs association was created in 2022 by Benoît Aliaga, Chloé Bessière and Steffen Fuchs. It gathers the 31 postdocs who are currently present in the Cancer Research Center of Toulouse. They decided to organize the 1st Young Scientist Cancer Congress of the Cancéropôle Grand Sud Ouest (GSO) on the 5th October 2023 at the Oncopole, Toulouse.

Aim: The main goals of this day are to promote the work of the GSO postdocs and young clinician scientists, to network, and to optimize their career paths.
Public: To achieve our goals, we decided to open the conference to the whole scientific community of the GSO, which are researchers and clinicians of all career levels.
Organization: This day will alternate presentations by internationally renowned keynote speakers, presentations by postdocs from the GSO, an application-focused presentation by a leading single-cell sequencing company and a presentation from an editor of Nature Communications about scientific publishing and peer-reviewing.

Lifelong orchestration of animal physiology by the circadian clock

On Thursday, September 21st, at 1PM, Frédéric Gachon, Associate Professor at the University of Queensland is giving a workshop at the RESTORE lab on the circadian clock.

To improve their adaptation to the changing environment presents on Earth, organisms from bacteria to mammals have evolved a timing system that anticipates these changes. This endogenous timing system, called the circadian clock, orchestrates most aspects of physiology and behavior. The mammalian circadian clock is hierarchically organized. A central clock localized in the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus (SCN) of the hypothalamus is daily synchronized by the light via the retina-hypothalamus tract and coordinates the peripheral clocks localized in peripheral tissues. The SCN synchronizes most aspects of circadian physiology throughout the life and is required to keep phase coherence between the different peripheral organs. While new data shows that this circadian clock is disrupted in many human pathologies and during aging, the impact of this disruption on these conditions is it still unclear.

TEAMS

RNA & cancer

CARe’s upcoming workshop will be held on Friday, May 12th, 2023, at the IUCT-Oncopole in Toulouse. National and international specialists, as well as CARe PhD students, will analyze the links between ribonucleic acid and cancer.

“Oncogenic pathways in cancer” Workshop

On Friday, March 31st at the Toulouse Center of Research in Cancerology (CRCT) international speakers and PhD students will give lectures on oncogenic pathways in Cancer.






Participate online here!

Alternative lenghthening of telomeres in cancer: diagnosis and therapeutic perspectives

On Thursday, March 23rd, Annabelle Decottignies, Research Director of the National Funds for Scientific Research (FNRS) at the Duve Institute will give a lecture at RESTORE at 1 PM. Annabelle Decottignies is the Leader of the research team TELOMERES in the Unit “Genetic & Epigenetic Alteration of Genomes and Professor at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.

Her research focuses on the mechanisms used by cancer cells to acquire the “eternal youth” that allows them to divide without limit.

Participate here

 

 

Lessons from the melanoma ecosystem

On Friday, February 3rd, Pr Florian Rambow from the Institute for AI in Medicine (IKIM) University Hospital of Essen will give a lecture about resistance in Immune Checkpoint blockade in melanoma.at the Center of Research in Cancerology of Toulouse from 11 am to 12 pm.

Primary resistance drastically limits the clinical success of immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) in melanoma. Resistance to ICB may also develop when tumours relapse after targeted therapy. To identify cancer cell-intrinsic mechanisms driving resistance to ICB, we generated single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) data from a prospective longitudinal cohort of patients on ICB therapy, including an early time point obtained after only one cycle of treatment. Comparing these data with murine scRNA-seq datasets, we established a comprehensive view of the cellular architecture of the treatment-naïve melanoma ecosystem, and defined 6 evolutionarily conserved melanoma transcriptional metaprograms. Spatial multi-omics revealed a non-random geographic distribution of cell states that is, at least partly, driven by the tumour microenvironment. The single- cell data allowed unambiguous discrimination between melanoma MES cells and cancer-associated fibroblasts both in silico and in situ, a long-standing challenge in the field. Importantly, two of the melanoma transcriptional metaprograms were associated with divergent clinical responses to ICB. While the Antigen Presentation cell population was more abundant in tumours from patients who exhibited a clinical response to ICB, MES cells were significantly enriched in early on-treatment biopsies from non-responders, and their presence significantly predicted lack of response. Critically, we identified TCF4 (E2-2) as a master regulator of the MES program and suppressor of both MEL and Antigen Presentation programs. Targeting TCF4 expression in MES cells either genetically or pharmacologically using a bromodomain inhibitor increased immunogenicity and sensitivity to targeted therapy.”