The research group consists of about forty people, including scientists (CNRS and INSERM), lecturers, teaching hospital readers, pharmacists, post-doctoral fellows, post-graduate students, engineers and technicians.

 

Director: Dr Jean-François RENAUD DE LA FAVERIE
 
Secretariat: +33 (0)1 40 94 25 12
 
UMR 8162 Internet site: http://www.ccml-umr8162.u-psud.fr/

Since its creation in 1953, the Centre Chirurgical Marie Lannelongue (CCML) has provided a home for both highly specialised medical and surgical teams as well as academic research groups, all with common interests in terms of integrated research.

 

The original wish of the founders was to help patients, in particular children suffering from cardiovascular disease. When the hospital first opened, the research focused on developing surgical techniques and investigating disease-related functional mechanisms-a diversity of research interests. However, the intimate dissection of any pathological process necessitates an understanding of normal physiological mechanisms so the CCML switched towards programmes designed to investigate how certain specific cells function in the normal physiological context as well as in the pathology in question-thereby following a trend seen throughout biology research.

 

Bringing together scientists from public research institutions (CNRS, INSERM) and university-based researchers in a hospital centre affords them access to human tissue specimens, a considerable advantage which helps avoid premature conclusions based exclusively on data from a single animal model. At the behest of the CCML and Professor Jacques DURANT, we have hosted a whole series of scientists who, under the aegis of the Human Physiology Department (1977-1992), set out to elucidate cellular, molecular and immunological mechanisms in fields as diverse as heart failure, myasthenia, the role of the thymus, and tolerance of allografts. In parallel, the laboratory undertook to investigate pulmonary circulation as well as the roles of tracheal and bronchial smooth muscle tissue in pulmonary arterial hypertension. To ensure balance between the various CCML protagonists, a Molecular & Cellular Cardiology group was set up in 1992, under the direction of Dr. Jean-Jacques MERCADIER (taking over from Professor Jacques DURANT). Its main focus was investigation of molecular and cellular changes in heart failure. In 1996, on the departure of Dr. Jean-Jacques MERCADIER, the Research Unit was taken over by Professor Claude PLANCHE, the Head of the CCML Pediatric Heart Surgery Department. In 1997, Professor PLANCHE asked Jean-François RENAUD de la FAVERIE to take over direction of the Research Unit and oversee the accreditation of the CCML Unit by the CNRS and the Ministry of Education. On January 1 1998, both these institutions granted the laboratory accreditation as a CNRS Associate Research Group (Equipe de Recherche Associée; ERS) with the remit of working on tissue remodelling in pathogenic situations. On this occasion, CNRS scientists joined the team. Over the subsequent four years (1998-2001), an application was processed for the creation of a CHRS Mixed Research Unit (Unité Mixte de Recherche; UMR 8078) and, in 2006, the CCML was accredited as a research institution with the same status as the CNRS and universities (UMR 8162). In 2008, Professor Marc HUMBERT was asked to take over from J-F Renaud de la Faverie and he began directing the Research Unit on January 1 2010. The CNRS unit is one of the founders of the INSERM Federative Research Institute (Institut Fédératif de Recherche; IFR13) of Paris-Sud University (of which J-F Renaud de la Faverie is Deputy Director).

 

 

UMR 8162 focuses on three topics. The first centres on the molecular and cellular mechanisms involved in signalling and structural and functional remodelling in cardiovascular disease; an associated programme focused on homeostatic changes in ion levels in normal and pathological cardiac adaptation as relates to the pathogenesis of arrhythmia. The second focus-initiated for the 2006-2009 period-is on communication and signalling at the immunological synapse, especially glutamergic transmission in calcium signalling pathways that control T lymphocyte function. This research topic is a direct offshoot from studies on the relationship between T lymphocytes and myasthenia. The third focus is on physiological and pathogenic mechanisms involved in thymic function and myasthenia, with a view for improving the diagnosis and treatment of different types of myasthenia. This research was based on identifying and characterising molecules and cells that play a role in pathogenic mechanisms in the thymus and skeletal muscle.

 

 

Many technological resources have been developed in the Unit, in physiology, electrophysiology, cell biology, biochemistry and molecular biology. Moreover, structural and functional cell imaging tools have been developed to study intracellular ion trafficking and fluxes of sodium, calcium, potassium and chloride ions, using the patch-clamping technique. These resources could be put at the disposal of external users.