Name: Partner 1 / Coordinator: Institut Curie (FR)

Address: 26 rue d'Ulm, 75248 Paris cedex 05 - France

Link: https://curie.fr/

Summary: A recognized public interest foundation since 1921, Institut Curie has worked to fulfil its three missions since its founding by Marie Curie, namely research, care and the preservation and transfer of knowledge. This multi-disciplinary approach, part of the bylaws of the foundation, is the DNA of Institut Curie.

Signaling and Neural Crest Development: Prof. Anne-Helene Monsoro-Burq, who has an independent group at Institut Curie, (division of Molecular Signaling in Neural Crest Development) is a principle contributing researcher from Partner 1.

The neural crest is a key embryonic cell population undergoing EMT. Despite a wide interest for the early steps of development of these cells and the identification of many secreted factors and genes involved in neural crest induction, our knowledge of how these signals are integrated and how these genes are organised into an epistatic cascade is poorly documented. Our aim is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the genetic network controlling early neural crest formation during development, from its induction to EMT. We focus on the genes (transcription factors mainly) and growth factors that control Snail1 and Snail2 induction, or the genes that cooperate with Snail 1/2 to complete the EMT process. By taking advantage of the multiple ways of manipulating embryogenesis in amphibian and avian embryos, we have provided the first epistatic and functional cascade of regulations upstream of Snail1/2 in neural crest induction. Our findings in amphibian embryos have provided a novel and useful framework, now confirmed in other vertebrate species. These findings will provide critical novel clues to understand neural crest formation and control of EMT on a fundamental point of view and will also identify new molecular candidates for a precocious diagnosis of tumour progression and potential therapeutic targets.

In the frames of NEUcrest project, Prof. Monsoro’s lab will be hosting the young researchers ESR1 and ESR2.

Click here for research team details