Scientists at the Institut Pasteur and Inserm have identified the group of cells within the immune system that make immunotherapy treatment (therapeutic antibodies) effective. Immunotherapy is frequently used to treat breast cancer. In animal models they showed that neutrophils, the most common white blood cells in the body, are not only necessary but suffice on their own to eliminate tumor cells.
A work performed by the teams headed by Benoit Schneider and Odile Kellermann (INSERM Unit 747, team “Stem cells, Signalling and Prions”, Université Paris Descartes) as well as Jean-Marie Launay’s team (INSERM Unit 942 Hôpital Lariboisière and the FondaMental Foundation) was published this week in the magazine Nature Medicine. The article revealed that in neurons, an enzyme, the kinase PDK1, is involved in the accumulation of the pathological proteins...
A research team from Toulouse has just elucidated the mechanisms behind the differences in iron absorption between men and women. The team used mice to demonstrate how the action of testosterone can be “countered” with a drug already used in the treatment of some bronchial cancers.
A team of researchers from Inserm led by Pierre Szepetowski (INMED: "Institut de Neurobiologie de la Méditerranée" combined inserm/ University of Aix-Marseille unit) has just succeeded in identifying a gene whose mutations are responsible for a wide spectrum of epilepsies and epileptic encephalopathies with language dysfunction in children.
Christophe Bernard, Inserm research director, and his team within the "1106 Institut de Neurosciences des Systèmes" unit (Inserm/Aix-Marseille University), have recently described certain harmful effects after caffeine consumption by female mice during pregnancy on the brains of their offspring.
A team from INSERM Mixed Research Unit 966 “Morphogenesis and Antigenicity of HI and Hepatitis Viruses” headed by Martine Braibant and Francis Barin in Tours, has confirmed, with the support of the ANRS, that the AIDS virus has gradually adapted itself to the immune response of the human population during the course of the epidemic.
Teams from CNRS, the Université de Strasbourg and Inserm, led by Daniel Riveline1, Jean-Marie Lehn2 and Marie-France Carlier3, have synthesized molecules capable of causing rapid growth of actin networks, one of the components of the cytoskeleton.
When the male genome carried in the spermatozoid leaves the male body to reach the egg, it undergoes numerous transformations. A team led by Saadi Khochbin in Mixed Research Unit 823 at the Institut Albert Bonniot Research Centre (Inserm/Joseph Fourier University) in Grenoble has described the molecular mechanisms that enable the transmission of the male genome to the egg.
Researchers at IGS, the genomic and structural information laboratory (CNRS/Aix-Marseille University), working in association with the large-scale biology laboratory (CEA/Inserm/Grenoble Alpes University) have just discovered two giant viruses which, in terms of number of genes, are comparable to certain eukaryotes, microorganisms with nucleated cells.
Une nouvelle cible pharmacologique permettant d'améliorer le fonctionnement du muscle vient d'être découverte chez la souris par l'équipe d'Hélène Duez, chargée de recherche à l'Inserm dans l'unité 1011 "Récepteurs nucléaires, maladies cardiovasculaires et diabète" (Inserm/Université Lille 2 droit et santé/Institut Pasteur de Lille) dirigée par Bart Staels.
Des chercheurs ont mis en évidence chez la bactérie Escherichia coli des interactions complexes entre les voies de biosynthèse de divers facteurs de virulence : la colibactine, une génotoxine potentiellement cancérigène, et les sidérophores, molécules impliquées dans la captation du fer qui est essentiel à la survie des bactéries.
