CV Science

cecile Rochette-Egly Nuclear retinoic acid receptors phosphorylation and cross-talk with signaling pathways

Course and current status

Pharmacist 1974 University Paris V

Prize winner at the University of Pharmacy

Residency in Pharmacy Paris

PhD 1978 University Paris VI

Doctor ès sciences 1980, Université Louis Pasteur Strasbourg

Recruited at INSERM in 1979, DR1 since 2007

Council Member of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB)

Contrat “interface avec l’hôpital”  2007-2012

Today team leader at the IGBMC, in the department of functional genomics and cancer

Scientific summary

We work at the interface of cellular and molecular biology focusing on retinoic acid, the active metabolite of vitamin A, which controls cell proliferation and differentiation through nuclear receptors. These receptors, RARs, work as ligand-dependent transcriptional regulators but complexity came with the finding that RARs are targets for post-translational modifications such as phosphorylations, which turned out to be crucial for their transcriptional activity. Our goal is to dissect the mechanisms and consequences of RARs phosphorylation. We analyze how phosphorylation controls the dynamics of RAR-target genes? transcription. We also focus on how phosphorylation interferes with ubiquitination for RARs transcriptional activity and degradation. Given that many tumoral processes are characterized by aberrant kinase signaling pathways, we are engaged in a large analysis of RARs phosphorylation in cancer cell lines and tumor samples in correlation with their sensitivity to retinoic acid. The final important focus of our studies is to define how phosphorylation controls the activity of RARs during cell differentiation and embryonic development.