BiCiCle SIGNED

Project "BiCiCle" data sheet

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 Project objective

The major cause of cancer-associated mortality is tumor metastasis, a complex multistep process where cancer cells spread within the patient’s body. There is an emerging realization that the fearsome vectors of this cancer dissemination are clusters of so-called circulating tumor cells (CTC) that travel together in the bloodstream where they are subjected to important mechanical forces. Nevertheless, the current knowledge of how these cells are held together is extremely limited. This proposal aims at unravelling the biophysical properties of CTCs clusters from the molecular level to the multicellular level. The applicant Dr Valotteau proposes to use her experience in atomic force microscopy (AFM) to carry out this project under the supervision of Dr Rico who has well-established expertise in high speed force spectroscopy (HS-FS), in collaboration with Dr Pannequin who is a specialist of CTC. This project will be hosted by INSERM in the Laboratoire Adhesion & Inflammation (LAI) which is one of a very few laboratories worldwide equipped with HS-FS, enabling to correlate the characterization of the cell-cell adhesion with the study of the viscoelastic properties of single CTC and CTC clusters over a wide dynamic range physiologically relevant. By gathering complementary resources at the crossroad of cell biology, biophysics and nanotechnology, this BiCiCle project will fill an important knowledge gap about CTC cluster and greatly benefit to the career development of Dr Valotteau. Indeed, this fellowship will provide her a stimulating multidisciplinary environment and topic to set the basis of her own independent research project to become an academic researcher leading in the interdisciplinary field of biophysics.