I am a postdoctoral researcher with a fellowship from the Fondation Arc pour la Recherche sur le Cancer. My work focuses on the understanding of the structure-function relationships of the human nicotinic receptors, and their role in lung cancer development.
I was trained during my PhD at the Institut Pasteur in electrophysiology and protein biochemistry, with which I could study a bacterial homologue of nicotinic receptors, GLIC. My work allowed the identification of a new conformation of those receptors, using mutagenesis and electrophysiology coupled to X-ray crystallography in collaboration. I then worked as a postdoc in London, where I learned X-ray crystallography and the associated structural biology techniques to study the secretion system of the pathogenic bacteria Legionella pneumophila.
The combination of those various techniques will help reveal the strutural and functional properties of nicotinic receptors, with the objective of a better understanding of their involvement in nicotine addiction and lung cancer.