The I2MC is delighted to welcome 3 new researchers and assistant professor to its teams:
Marine ADLANMERINI (CRCN Team F. Lenfant/P. Gourdy),
Claire LAURENS (MCU Team C. Moro/D. Langin),
Natalia SMIRNOVA (CRCN Team M. Laffargue).
Marine ADLANMERINI (Researcher INSERM)
After a master’s degree in Physiopathology in Toulouse, I started my academic career in Jean-François ARNAL’s lab doing my PhD from 2012 to 2015 on membrane-initiated Estrogen Receptor signaling, revealing its function in female fertility and vasculature.
From February 2016 to December 2020, I continued my journey in nuclear receptor signaling in Mitch LAZAR’s lab at UPenn as a postdoctoral researcher. There, I studied the role of REV-ERBs in circadian physiology and developed tissue-specific mouse models to study their roles in brown-adipose tissue as well as in hypothalamus demonstrating their key function in leptin signaling and circadian sensitivity to diet-induced obesity.
In 2021, I came back to my roots in Toulouse and was happy to be promoted at the position of CRCN (tenured researcher) at the INSERM. In Françoise LENFANT’s research group, I will combine my expertise in nuclear receptors, epigenetic regulation, gender-effect, metabolism and circadian physiology to build my career in France
Claire LAURENS (Associate Professor)
My PhD research topics focused on the study of the role of muscle lipids on energy metabolism and insulin sensitivity. I continued my post-doctoral research at the IPHC (Strasbourg), where I carried out clinical research projects in which we investigated the impact of physical inactivity on muscular and systemic metabolic flexibility, using physical deconditioning models mimicking microgravity and developed by space agencies.
I am now developing research projects focusing on understanding the inter-organ communication between skeletal muscle and other metabolic organs, in particular adipose tissue, in response to muscle contraction induced by exercise. I am also interested in muscular metabolic and anabolic disorders induced by physical inactivity and aging as well as their systemic consequences on the regulation of energy metabolism.
Natalia SMIRNOVA (Researcher INSERM)
My career in academic research started in 2009 here, in Toulouse, where I uncovered the role of T cell-expressed PI3K-gamma in arterial stenosis (intimal hyperplasia) in response to arteriel injury during my PhD thesis under the supervision of Dr. Muriel Laffargue. I then studied the hormonal processes of the same disease during a postdoc in Pr Jean-François Arnal’s lab.
In 2014 I left to Munich, where I worked as a postdoc at the Helmholtz Zentrum München with Pr. Oliver Eickelberg. There, I developed a new mouse model of chronic dysfunction of the lung graft, and used a translational approach to unravel new B cell determinants driving this dysfunction. At the University of Colorado, where I worked as an Assistant Professor, I established a cell atlas of the rejected murine lung graft using single cell RNA-sequencing, with the hope that this work will help identifying new targets to prevent chronic rejection of the lung graft, as it remains a major unmet medical need.
Back to Toulouse late 2020, I was happy to be promoted at the position of CRCN (i.e. tenured researcher) at the INSERM. I will combine my expertise in vascular disease and graft dysfunction after transplantation to build my career: my projects will study the contribution of B cell subsets and their antibodies to intimal hyperplasia of solid organ graft arteries. I am excited to work in this fulfilling environment where my project is embedded in the research group of Dr Muriel Laffargue and benefits from the support of internationally recognized clinical partners from the Department of Nephrology and Organ Transplantation, directed by Pr Nassim Kamar at the CHU (University Hospital) of Toulouse.
