Genomics and Development of Childhood Cancers
Childhood cancer is the most common disease-related cause of mortality in children. Adult and childhood cancers are thought to arise from distinct mechanisms. Pediatric cancers arise from a dysregulation of the normal development thus resulting in a cell differentiation blockade. By hijacking these processes from normal development, cancer cells have time to develop and grow as pre-cancerous lesions then developing into a malignant tumor.
One of the main goals of our team is to identify these mechanisms in order to resolve the spatio-temporal origins of pediatric brain tumors using single-cell omics technologies and genome-wide data analyses. In addition, we investigate the transcriptional and post-transcriptional programs of the normal development that are hijacked by cancer cells in order to exploit these vulnerabilities and to propose new therapeutic strategies for these deadly cancers. We use computational biology and genomics to understand what are the normal differentiation programs driving cell differentiation and use this knowledge to better understand the mechanisms that are hijacked by cancer cells in children. Our main strengths are cancer biology, computational biology and genomics.
Spontaneous applications are welcome for a bioinformatics project, please contact me at olivier.saulnier@curie.fr
-
Promising results from Institut Curie presented at the AACR congressFrom April 5 to 10 2024 in San Diego (United States), the scientific community and medical community will be meeting for the annual congress of the American Association for Cancer Research. This is an opportunity for Institut Curie researchers and doctors to present their advances in the various fields of cancer research.05/04/2024 -
Arrival of Dr. Olivier Saulnier: a new team dedicated to genomics in pediatric oncologyOn October 19, Dr. Olivier Saulnier arrived at Institut Curie in Paris as a new Junior Principal Investigator at the Cancer, Heterogeneity, Instability and Plasticity unit (Inserm U830) headed by Dr. Olivier Delattre. Along with his team, Genomics and Development of Childhood Cancers, he will seek to understand how cancerous cells disrupt normal embryonic development programs for their own purposes.24/10/2023 -
Cancers de l’enfant : de nouvelles perspectives prometteuses en immunothérapieDes scientifiques de l’Institut Curie, de l’Inserm et du CNRS viennent de mettre en évidence une nouvelle activité d’un facteur de transcription caractéristique du sarcome d’Ewing : celui-ci induit l’expression de gènes hautement spécifiques à la tumeur. Une découverte qui pourrait ouvrir la voie à l’immunothérapie dans les sarcomes, et plus largement dans les tumeurs pédiatriques.11/05/2022 -
Two discoveries to better understand metastatic processes in Ewing sarcomaInstitut Curie researchers have revealed two basic mechanisms involved in the formation of metastases in Ewing sarcoma, a rare bone tumor that occurs in young people.21/05/2021