-Cytosolic PLA2-targeting drug reduces vascular calcification-  Endothelial dysfunction is a hallmark of cardiovascular disease (CVD) that ultimately leads to thrombosis and vascular occlusion. Despite being a leading cause of death worldwide, there has been a paucity of promising drug targets to prevent and/or minimize CVD. Joost Schanstra, Trang Luong, Manousos Makridakis, Sophie Van Linthout and colleagues evaluated the arterial proteome of patients with advanced and early CVD to identify a CVD-associated signature with potential to be targeted by bioactive small molecules. Of the candidate drugs, cytosolic phospholipase A2 (cPLA2) inhibitor AACOCF3 was a top candidate to reverse in-silico the proteomic signature of advanced CVD, asRead More →

The “midterm” meeting of the CaReSyAn project was held in Aachen and was a great succes. Both Julie and Ana gave an excellent presentation.

The RF-lab presented 3 very interesting posters at the local Occitanie Cardiovascular Disease meeting. Please check out the reactions of the different people discussing with the presenters of the posters.

Together with partners from Spain, Germany and the CEA in Paris, the RF-lab and the Toulouse hospital obtained a European grant for joint-research for implementation of Personalized Medicine in acute kidney disease. In our lab the project is coordinated by Stanislas Faguer, Julie Klein and Joost Schanstra.   The project includes research involving >1600 patients scheduled for cardiac surgery and at risk for acute kidney injury and development of novel treatments based on systems biology.   Here the official announcement of the study: Acute kidney injury (AKI) kills 2 million people every year. In AKI, kidney function fails suddenly and may later recover spontaneously. HoweverRead More →

This year our research center celebrated Halloween with the Halloween cake contest. Our team was again represented by Ophélie Lescat who gave us, again (!!), a victory. Bravo Ophélie !!!   Here the picture of the winner with the first prize in hand…

In a project driven by Inserm and the CHU of Toulouse, Bénédicte presented in Lille a novel approach to improve the management of fetuses with developmental renal disease. Using clinical proteomics focusing on amniotic fluid peptides, she showed that high definition, omics based, medicine allows accurate prediction of postnatal renal survival in developmental renal disease, not attainable by the currently available clinical workup. The study was performed in a specifically designed observational prospective multicenter cohort of 178 patients with bilateral CAKUT, the largest prospective cohort ever in this rare disease. This amniotic fluid peptide signature was independently validated in hold-out sets, in geographically different settings,Read More →

Friday evening September 28, 2018 the RF-lab was again present at “La nuit des chercheurs” (the night of research). The event was held this time at the Space center in Toulouse. Many people, both adults and children, visited the stand and learned about the kidney, its function and its malfunction. Here is the video of the event:   What happened here Ben?????    

On september 20 Julie Klein presented an excellent update on the pathophysiology of diabetic kidney disease in the town of Carcassonne close the world famous “Cité”. This included the  presentation of our original approach to humanise the readout of drug testing in animal diabetic models (see here for the link or here for the paper).

Valérie got her PhD degree!!! Another PhD from the RF-lab. Valerie obtained her PhD after defending her thesis entitled “Identification of biomarkers using omics-approaches for the early detection of chronic kidney disease and its complications”.   In the evening this was celebrated in down-town Toulouse in the Glastag restaurant. Congratulatons Valerie and good luck for the next steps!

Ana, who will start her PhD on the CaReSyAn project (https://www.caresyan.eu/) in September in the lab gave here first scientific pitch at the CaReSyAn summer school in the Lufthansa conference center in Frankfurt. She also presented a poster on her futur project.   We are aiming at a very succesful PhD project! …and welcome Ana to the RF-lab