Alain Lacampagne, médaillé d’argent 2024 du CNRS, lance MYOccitanie. Midi Libre – JEAN-MICHEL MART
From January 31, Alain Lacampagne's unit will receive €4.9 million over five years. Enough to fuel research and give “a breath of fresh air” to this laboratory stamped Inserm, CNRS and University and based within the CHU.
AFM Téléthon has just designated you a “strategic hub”. What does that mean? ? How many of these hubs are there in France? ?
We are the fourth strategic pole labeled in France. There is one in Paris, one in Rhône-Alpes and one in Marseille. This is the highest level of partnership with the AFM-Téléthon. Every year, after the Téléthon, depending on the finances, they make an annual call for projects that allows funding for research projects or salaries of doctoral students or post-doctoral fellows, on two-year projects. Here, we have a five-year package with increased funding.
So concretely, you will benefit from the donations made as part of the Téléthon ? With you, we know where the money from these charitable operations goes…
Yes, donors know today that when they give to the Téléthon, there is a showcase in Montpellier and the region. They have an idea of what this money is for. In Occitania, we are the only ones to benefit from it.
It is a great recognition.
Yes, it is a project in which we tried to highlight a certain number of unique expertises that we have in the laboratory compared to all the other French sites. One of these expertises is: how to conduct, from the gene to the patient, research that goes from very fundamental research to very applied research.
And concretely ?
A Duchenne patient, which is the emblematic pathology of the Telethon, we know how to take care of them. Before, they died at the age of 20 from respiratory causes, having lost the ability to walk. Today, thirty years later, we know how to give them a life expectancy of around 40 years. And they die mainly from cardiac complications. They have a loss of locomotion, a loss of ventilatory function, cardiac dysfunction, often cognitive and digestive disorders… What the AFM liked is that we are able to understand all the major functions and have a global, holistic vision of the patient.
200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000When will you benefit from this budget?
We are holding the meeting on Friday, January 31, at the Institute of Botany. With Jean-François Malaterre, national vice-president of the AFM. We will officially launch MYOccitanie, since that is its name (for myopathy Occitanie), on this occasion. This money will allow us to bring a breath of fresh air to our lab and our research without having to worry too much about tomorrow. It's over five years, so pretty comfortable.
You were in a tricky situation ?
It’s always tense. Especially in terms of staff. We have about 200 people in total. We already have the prospect of recruitment. We are going to recruit about twenty people, including engineers, and doctoral and post-doctoral students. This €4.9 million is welcome. It comes in addition to the €406,000 that the Region gives us and the €196,000 from the University of Montpellier.
Why was the AFM interested in you? You offer them new solutions?
We didn’t sell the AFM a dream. We took stock of our skills and know-how, telling them that if they could help us, that would be great. This year, for example, there was talk of kids who were the subject of a clinical trial on the loss of a protein called dystrophin. This is gene therapy. We are proposing to be on gene therapy but also pharmacological therapy. This is not a new approach but the pharmacological approach had been left aside. And we, in the laboratory, are doing interesting things in this area. The Duchesne patient, we are going to try to give him back mobility but we are also going to try to understand why he has respiratory and digestive problems to improve his quality of life. These are subjects on which we know we are capable of providing answers. This is reassuring for the AFM. I don't claim to cure patients.
When will patients be able to benefit from real improvements thanks to your research?
Patients often ask us when they can expect to have a treatment. Unfortunately, biomedical research takes twenty years of work. At the end of the five years of budget that we will benefit from, there will be no direct benefits for patients but rather indirect ones for future patients.
What caught the attention of the AFM ?
Based in Arnaud-de-Villeneuve, the PhyMedExp laboratory, created in 2011, is stamped Inserm, CNRS and Université. Its purpose is to work on the physiology and pathophysiology of muscles. Alain Lacampagne, researcher, 2024 CNRS silver medalist, is its director: “We work on the major functions: cardiovascular, respiratory, motor, digestive. The lab works on chronic diseases, such as heart failure, diabetes, respiratory pathologies, etc. And we are also interested in diseases of genetic origin. Understanding one type of disease nourishes understanding of the other and vice versa."
So many essential skills for the AFM Telethon… "When I took over the management of the unit, I took stock that our laboratory could interest them in terms of the activities we carry out on genetic diseases, rare diseases. After evaluation, preparation of the file, which took time, the AFM selected us."
I subscribe to read the rest