Engineer in Immunology (M/F)

Poirier team (https://institut-curie.org/team/poirier)

 The Innate Immunity in Physiology and Cancer team belongs of the Immunity and Cancer Unit (INSERM U932) of Institut Curie. The first goal of the team is to identify and study novel immune mechanisms of defence in mammals, with a focus on innate immunity. We are currently working on 1) understanding the protective roles of the RNA interference pathway and 2) identifying immune proteins conserved between bacteria and humans, in collaboration with the team of Aude Bernheim (Institut Pasteur). Equipped with this knowledge, we then engineer innovative anticancer immunotherapies, in link with translational researchers and MDs of Hospital Curie. The Poirier team is currently funded by an ERC Starting Grant, as well as by national and international funding.

Project: Deciphering the modules of ancestral immunity

Context

Innate immune mechanisms protect mammals from pathogen infection and play a role against tumors. Recent work documented that a subset of innate immune proteins encoded by mammals, including humans, originate from bacterial defence proteins (1, 2). Bacteria indeed utilize antiphage systems to fight off viruses named phages. There is currently a dozen examples of antiphage proteins that were conserved during evolution, and gave rise to prominent members of innate immunity, including cGAS/STING and gasdermins. In collaboration with the team of Aude Bernheim (Institut Pasteur), we coined the notion of ancestral immune modules, which correspond to the proteins and protein domains playing an immune role in bacteria and eukaryotes (3). We demonstrated that exploring ancestral immunity allows to discover novel immune proteins in eukaryotes. By combining protein sequence analysis and phylogeny, we were able to identify human homologs of recently-discovered antiphage proteins of bacteria, and document their antiviral potential (4).

The project

We identified a protein pivotal for the activation of innate immunity in mammals. The successful applicant (M/F) will be tasked with studying a knock-out mouse of this protein in multiple autoimmune models.

References

1.            F. Rousset, Trends Immunol. 44, 945–953 (2023).

2.            H. E. Ledvina, A. T. Whiteley, Nat Rev Microbiol (2024), doi:10.1038/s41579-024-01017-1.

3.            A. Bernheim, J. Cury, E. Z. Poirier, PLoS Biol. 22, e3002717 (2024).

4.     J. Cury et al., Cell Host & Microbe, S1931312824002890 (2024)