Organisation
Laboratory for Extracellular Vesicle Research
Division
Our scientific interests are to reveal how membrane-associated scaffold proteins and lipids participate in cell signaling and multicellular organization/homeostasis. We provided major contributions to our understanding of the importance of membrane trafficking for the biology of heparan sulfate proteoglycans, the role of phospholipids in the function of PDZ proteins and more recently the molecular mechanisms of exosome biogenesis. Our current focus is to clarify the role of syndecan-PDZ molecular networks in extracellular vesicle function and diversity, the role of the syntenin pathway (a viral-like exosomal pathway) in tumor-host relationships during leukemia progression and relapse, and to contribute to the rational development of small chemical inhibitors of PDZ proteins. We therefore work in close contact and collaboration with the Centre de Recherche en Cancérologie de Marseille. For the future we aim to develop front-line projects related to the transfer of non coding RNA via exosomes and their implication in cell-cell communication and tumor host interactions.