Typologie d'actualités: Team Cell Biology, Molecular Targets and Innovative Therapies

Septuce Zin, a PhD student at the CBM, has completed a parabolic flight aboard the A310 ZERO-G!

During the week of 14 April 2025, Septuce Zin, a PhD student in the CBM's ‘Skin Biology and Microenvironment’ team, took part in a parabolic flight campaign with GREMI scientists. The subject of his thesis is innovative atmospheric cold plasma therapy for the healing of acute wounds in space. During this parabolic flight campaign, on board the A310 ZERO-G operated Novespace, a subsidiary of the French space agency CNES, skin cells were exposed to different phases of weightlessness in order to study the effect of microgravity on these cells.

See the video of the flight on LinkedIn

Septuce Zin (first left) and the GREMI team ready to board the A310 ZERO-G

Collaboration with Béatrice Vallée, co-leader of the Team Cell Signaling and Neurofibromatosis

Bojan Žunar, assistant professor at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Food Technology and Biotechnology in the Laboratory for Biochemistry is visiting the team Cell Signaling and Neurofibromatosis for 2 months.

Bojan is well known at the CBM as he used to be a post-doc fellow in 2020-2021 in the same team.

Now, he is a group leader, and he was awarded a European Grant (https://croestro.eu/, NextGenerationUE), allowing him and members of his group to come to the CBM to perform experiments and to take advantage of Mo2Ving imaging facilities.

His fields of interest concern synthetic biology and yeast engineering in order to design humanized biosensors and innovative microbial factories for research, environmental and manufacturing purposes.

A new anticancer therapeutic strategy targeting the protein kinases LIMKs via new innovative chemical compounds

These last years, significant advances have been obtained in oncology leading to an increase of patients’ lifespan and improved life conditions. However, several cancers remain difficult to treat with mitigated results, and more and more resistances are observed. It is then vital to go on developing new therapies.

LIM kinase proteins are overproduced in many cancers and constitute interesting therapeutic targets. All over the world, small chemical molecules targeting their kinase activity have been developed these 15 last years, but failed to reach clinical trial stage. In collaboration with chemists from ICOA Institute, we developed a new category of innovative small molecules, called PROTACs, which aims to decrease or even to totally shut down the production of LIM kinase proteins. Our first results are really promising as 2 of the molecules synthesized by the chemists are very active: they totally shut down LIMK production and exhibit drastic effects on cells. We have to go on with the characterization of these molecules especially their cellular effect to open the path towards a new innovative efficient therapeutic strategy targeting the LIM kinase proteins for cancer treatment.