Dr Frédéric Bost obtained his PhD at the University of Rouen, in 1994 and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center in San Diego, where he studied the role of the Jun-N terminal Kinase in cancer cell proliferation.

Back in France he returned to the INSERM laboratory of Dr Yannick Le Marchand-Brustel in Nice with a position of Junior researcher at CNRS. He studied the role of MAPK in adipocyte differentiation and the development of type 2 diabetes. Thanks to his expertise in cancer and diabetes, he did the pioneering discovery of the anti-tumoral action of metformin, a drug prescribed for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, in prostate cancer.

During the last decade, his team at the Centre Méditerranéen de Médecine Moléculaire (INSERM U1065) in Nice has made important discoveries in the field of cancer cell metabolism. He is one of the co-founders and the co-organizer of the Cancer Metabolism meeting since 2016.

Alice Carrier is teaching in Aix-Marseille University, Master 1 and 2 Oncology and Master 1 and 2 Development-Immunology, giving 4 lectures per year on the topic “Inflammation, oxidative stress and Cancer”. 

She also teaches in Paris-Descartes University, European Master in Genetic, giving 1 lecture per year on “Metabolism and Cancer”. Since 2018, she has been working as a researcher at CNRS where she has been leading the group “Energetic metabolism and oxidative stress” in the Pancreatic cancer team.  

Her group is interested since many years in the link between inflammation, oxidative stress and cancer. This led them to the study of mitochondrial energetic metabolism, the main cell source of energy and free radicals. In that context, their current project aims at deciphering the alterations of mitochondrial metabolism and inflammation in pancreatic cancer, towards the improvement of the knowledge and the development of novel clinical avenues in prevention and therapy. 

Laurent Le Cam is a Principal Investigator at Montpellier Cancer Center (Montpellier, France). Dr. Le Cam received his PhD in molecular biology from Montpellier University where he studied the importance of E2F transcription factors in the transcriptional regulation of cell cycle genes.  He then moved to the DANA Farber Cancer Institute in Pr Sicinski’s laboratory where he started to use genetically engineered mouse models to study cell cycle progression. He moved back to France and joined Montpellier Cancer Center in 2006 to start an independent group in the context of the ATIP-AVENIR program. The major focus of the Le Cam lab is to decipher the role of the p53 pathway in metabolism. In the past years, they identified atypical functions of several key components of the p53 pathway (p53, E4F1 and MDM2) in pyruvate, lipid and amino-acid metabolism and showed that deregulation of these metabolic networks influences normal tissue homeostasis, aging and cancer progression. They also found that some of these metabolic activities represent promising targets for new anti-cancer strategies.

Nathalie Mazure is a senior scientist and research director at the CNRS at the Centre Méditerranéen de Médecine Moléculaire (C3M) in France. Since 1994, she has contributed to the field of hypoxia by understanding the mechanisms of gene regulation under hypoxic conditions. As hypoxia is more a stimulation for the survival of tumor cells, she focused on the resistance to cell death of hypoxic cancer cells. She found that different mechanisms, such as autophagy or microfusion between mitochondria and endolysosomes, confer such a resistance. She has been working for many years now on hypoxic mitochondria and more specifically on voltage-dependent anion channel protein 1 and its truncated form. VDAC1 is the major protein of the mitochondrial outer membrane of all eukaryotes. Because of its membrane situation, VDAC functions as a kind of Heimdall guardian of the Bïfrost controlling the entry and exit of metabolites from the cytoplasm to the mitochondrion and vice versa. Although VDAC1 has not always been recognized as a valuable target, it now seems that it has its place as a potential therapeutic target for both cancer and other diseases.

Jean-Ehrland Ricci, DR1 Inserm, received his PhD in 2000 in Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, France, where he studied Fas- and T-Cell Receptor-mediated apoptosis in human T cells. Then from 2000 to 2004 he joined Dr. Douglas R. Green Laboratory in San Diego for his post-doctoral training where he studied the metabolic regulation of caspase dependent and independent cell death. Since 2006, he leads the “Cancer, Metabolism and Immune Response” team at Inserm U1065 (Mediterranean Center for Molecular Medicine Research, C3M), Nice, France. His research focuses on how metabolism and metabolic enzymes controls signaling pathways, cell death and immune responses in lymphomas – going from pre-clinical models to clinical studies.

Stéphane Rocchi is Research Director at INSERM and co-heads team 12 of the Mediterranean Centre for Molecular Medicine in Nice (INSERM U1065), France. The main theme of his team is the study of molecular and metabolism mechanisms involved in melanoma development using biological and clinical translational approaches. Recently, the team have discovered and characterized new anti-melanoma compounds with an original and innovative mechanism of action involving cell metabolism. The close relationship of the team with the clinic allowed to test these molecules on biopsies of melanoma patients and confirmed their great effectiveness. The work of the team has led to number publications and number funding.

Dr. Rodrigue ROSSIGNOL is a research scientist hired by the French National Institute for Science and Medical Research (INSERM). He performed doctoral studies in Bordeaux on the tissue-specificity of mitochondrial diseases (rare disorders) and a postdoc at the University of Oregon (Roderick Capaldi’s group) from 2000 to 2003. His scientific project is now focused on the plasticity of energy metabolism in physiology and pathology, as well as the drug modulation of mitochondrial functions. Dr. Rossignol is member of the directing committee of the Laboratory of Rare Diseases, Metabolism and Genetics (MRGM) in Bordeaux at the University of Bordeaux where he published more than 100 articles in the field of cellular bioenergetics. His group recently revealed the central role of fatty acid oxidation in lung tumors biology (J Clin Invest. 2021 Jan 4;131(1):e133081.), the metabolic reprogramming induced by a supressor of superoxide production (Antioxid Redox Signal. 2020 Nov 1;33(13):883-902.) or the role for EIF3F-STAT3 interaction in the genetic control of cell migration and metastasis (Oncogene. 2020 Jan;39(3):617-636.). In 2015, Dr. Rossignol founded CELLOMET, a contract research organization that provides support to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.

Jean-Emmanuel Sarry is a Team Leader and a Principal Investigator in Hemato-Oncology at Inserm. Dr. Sarry received his PhD degree in Biochemistry from the University of Montpellier.  He also completed his postdoctoral training in Plant and Yeast Metabolism at the Department of Plant Physiology (CEA, Grenoble, France) and the Department of Biology (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia). After studying the phenotypic heterogeneity of leukemic stem cells at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, he joined the Cancer Research Center of Toulouse. The major focus of the Sarry lab is studying the role of oncometabolism and mitochondria in drug resistance in acute myeloid leukemia using a combination of biochemistry, omics approaches and innovative preclinical models.

Sophie Vasseur, Research Director (DR2), obtained her PhD in Cell Biology and Microbiology at the University of Marseille in 1999 and got a position as a junior scientist at INSERM in 2002. Until 20002 she studied the role of p8, a protein involved in the stress response of pancreatic acinar cells in condition of acute pancreatitis. From 2004 to 2007 she joined Dr. T.W. Mak’s laboratory at the Campbell Family Institute for Breast Cancer Research (Ontario Cancer Institute, Toronto, Canada) where she studied the role of DJ1 in cancer cells in response to hypoxic stress. Since 2009 she leads her own research group focused on metabolic changes associated with pancreatic cancer at the Cancer Research Center of Marseille. Her group is dedicated to highlight the metabolic reprogramming occurring during the progression of the pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma towards a metastatic disease. Dr. S. Vasseur by exploring the metabolic flexibility of pancreatic tumor cells aims at identifying metabolic targets to limit pancreatic tumor aggressiveness.