"During this two years fellowship I have been able to follow two trainings, one in mice experimentation at the Ecole Vétérinaire Nationale d’Alfort (2018) and one in Data analysis with R, at the INRA Institute, Jouy-en-Josas (2018).
Moreover, I have participated to 2 international conferences: one poster presentation at the Keystone Symposium “Manipulation of the Gut Microbiota for Metabolic Health"", Banff, Canada (2018), and one oral presentation ‘Microbe-derived factors as regulators of the mucosal immune system’, at the Symposium 214 “IBD: From Pathophysiology to Personalized Medicine”, Oxford, UK (2019).
I also gave a talk at an international workshop: ‘Writing a successful Marie Curie Fellowship application’, UEG Week, Vienna, Austria (2018).
Concernig our project, innovative approaches are crucial to decipher mechanisms behind the exaggerated inflammation observed in IBD. Supported by Horizon2020, our work provides key information on cell types that mediate this chronic intestinal inflammation (that we cannot yet disclose). We plan to validate our mouse results using human samples, taking advantage of a biobank available at the Saint-Antoine Hospital (Paris). Indeed, my supervisor, the Pr. Harry Sokol decided to renew my contract for a supplemental year funded by the French ANR funding agency. This will be necessary to finish the experiments related to the MSCA funded project, to submit two manuscripts and to make the necessary revisions. Moreover, our scientific findings will be reported at national and international conferences during this additional year of funding to ensure their wide dissemination. We will also look for collaborations with industrial partners that are crucial to transfer the latest advancements from bench-to-bedside but also to disseminate knowledge and inventions in society for healthier diets and lifestyles. The overall objective of our work is to develop new preventive and therapeutic strategies for IBD patients.
This project enabled to synergise collaborative and creative research between scientists from different but complementary fields, especially from “wet” and computational sciences, in order to further dissect microbiota-driven human diseases. Personally, I have learned a lot in the fields of transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics. I have acquired new skills in mouse experimentation, and developed several functional assays in vitro. I have been able to lead my own project independently with the full support of my supervisor, the Pr. Harry Sokol, and the help of the technicians and engineers of my research team. I have supervised a student for an internship, which helped me to develop my management skills; and I am about to receive a new one when the covid crisis is over.
In addition, the extra year gave me the opportunity to write a review on a new project related to Fecal microbiota Transplantation (FMT). My future plan is to keep working on FMT, with the goal to obtain a permanent position of researcher in the team of my actual supervisor at the INSERM Institute in Paris, in 2021 or 2022."
