Laureates of the interdisciplinary call 2019

Funded projects in 2019

• Gilles Gasser (Chimie ParisTech), Didier Decaudin (Institut Curie) and Christophe Thomas ( Chimie ParisTech) - Biodegradable Nanocarriers, Chemotherapy Resistance, Medicinal Inorganic Chemistry, Ovarian Cancer, Patient-Derived Xenografts, Ruthenium Complexes | To help understanding the exact role of the biopolymers used in targeted drug delivery, we propose to use fluorescent, biocompatible carriers that will be visualized by confocal microscopy. Their in vitro and in vivo efficacy against high-grade epithelial ovarian cancer will be assessed.

• Julien Heuvingh (ESPCI) and Matthieu Piel (Institut Curie) - Dynamical and mechanical characterization of the cell cortex during migration and mitosis | The actin cortex is a network of filaments present just below the plasma membrane giving the cell its shape. We are developing a method using micro-magnets to measure accurately its characteristics. We aim at understanding the role of the cortex in cell motility and division.

•  Pierre Leopold, Roshan Kumar Vijendravarma and Pierre Sens (Institut Curie) - Physical mechanisms underlying precise specification of bilateral organ size during development in Drosophila | Earth’s gravity has been constant during the evolution of life. Fruit flies reared under perturbed gravity develop asymmetric wings, we investigate in this proposal the mechanisms underlying of this causal relationship.

• Jean-François Léger and Rémi Monasson (ENS) - Functional connectivity in large neuronal networks: benchmarking new generation of inferred large-scale models with direct experimental measurements | To understand the link between a neuronal network architecture and its ability to perform computations, modern approaches inspired from statistical physics have been developed. Our project proposes to calibrate experimentally these theoretical approaches to assess their reliability and widen their use.  

•  Alice Meunier (ENS) and Romain Koszul (Institut Pasteur) - Nature and raison d’être of mitotic oscillator induced chromosome condensation in post-mitotic multiciliated cells | Chromosomes must condense when the cell divide to allow efficient partitioning between daughter cells. Here we propose to test whether a mild condensation of chromosomes can be used by non-cycling cells to drive a differentiation process.