Molecular and Cellular Perturbations and Xenobiotics (MCPX)
Leader: Fernando RODRIGUES LIMA (PR UPCité)
2025
December 2025 – Florent Busi and Fernando Rodrigues Lima helped organise the joint conference of the ‘Enzymes’, “Proteolysis” and ‘Metabolism’ thematic groups of the French Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (SFBBM) at Paris Cité.
October 2025 – Thesis defence by Safaa MAWAS on 14 October 2025: Toxicological evaluation of exposure to nanoplastics alone or coated with benzo(a)pyrene on a 3D model of human bronchial epithelium – Oral congratulations from the jury.
September 2025 – Filming for the M6 television programme ‘Zone Interdite’ on plastic pollution at our premises with the participation of Sonja Boland, Kamel Maouche and Safaa Mawas (broadcast scheduled for January or February 2026).
July 2025 – Thesis defence by Guiling CUI on 2 July 2025: Structural and functional characterisation of CREBBP histone acetyltransferase mutants in human lymphoma and study of CREBBP propionyltransferase activity.
June 2025 – HDR defence by Kamel Mouche on 23 June 2025: Lung and Endocrine Pancreas, two target organs of the Exposome.
March 2025 – Assia Touzani, a doctoral student at the University of Coruña, came in March for three months to prepare a European thesis on the toxicity of platinum nanoparticles.
February 2025 – Mayu Kawakami, a pharmacy student working at the Ichihara Lab at TUS (Tokyo University of Science), came at the end of February 2025 for a two-month stay to strengthen our collaborative ties with her laboratory in Japan.
January/February 2025 – Francelyne Marano, Stéphanie Devineau and Sonja Boland from the PMCX team organised a series of six conferences on this highly publicised topic in January/February 2025. These conferences, which were very well received by the general public, will be offered again at the UPC Open University in 2025/2026.
January 2025 – Sonja Boland from the PMCX team gave an interview to Radio Canada for the programme ‘Les Années lumière’ which was broadcast in February 2025: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/ohdio/premiere/emissions/les-annees lumiere/segments/rattrapage/1993628/defis-etudier-microplastique-dans-cerveau.
January 2025 – Sonja Boland takes over as head of the ‘Evaluation of the pulmonary toxicity of atmospheric pollutants using in vitro models’ group following the retirement of Professor Armelle Baeza.
2024
- February 2024 – Sonja Boland was invited to take part in the radio programme ‘Plastique astic astic, aïe aïe aïe’ on Radio Campus Paris’ “Happy hour scientifique” to talk about the health effects of plastics. The podcast of the live show is available at
https://www.radiocampusparis.org/emission/vQV-happy-hour-scientifique/vQWL-33-plastique-astic-astic-aie-aie-aie
- February 2024 – Francelyne Marano is appointed chair of the RATP’s External Stakeholders Committee (CPPe) for the improvement of air quality in railway stations. F Marano is also vice-chair of the ‘Health, environment, work’ expert committee at Santé publique France.
- January 2024 – Kamel Maouche (MCF UPCité) joins our team to contribute his expertise on the plasticity of the respiratory epithelium under normal and pathological conditions using in vitro and in vivo models.
2023
Oct. 2023 – Stéphanie Devineau carries out a week of experiments on the MISTRAL light line at the ALBA synchrotron in Spain, in collaboration with the IBPC.
Sept. 2023 – Victor Alcolea-Rodriguez, a PhD student at CSIC in Madrid, visits our laboratory for a fortnight.
July 2023 – The new inverted confocal Raman microscope was installed on the Raman imaging platform for the observation of cells and tissues without labelling.
June 2023 – A two-week visit to our laboratory by Michael R. Green, associate-professor at MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, USA.
February 2023 – Stéphanie Devineau will spend a further 6 months in Katsumasa Fujita’s laboratory at Osaka University (Japan), in the Applied Physics Department.
2022
- July 2022 – Francelyne Marano, Professor Emeritus, is promoted to the rank of Officer in the National Order of the Legion of Honour.
2021
- Nov. 2021 – Stéphanie Devineau spends two weeks in Séamus Fanning’s laboratory at the Centre for Food Safety, University College Dublin, Ireland.
- June 2021 – Armelle Baeza elected to the Environmental Health Section of the French National Academy of Pharmacy.
2020
- Sept. 2020 – Sonja Boland begins a new 3-month scientific stay in Sergio Moya’s laboratory at the CIC biomaGUNE in San Sebastian, Spain.
- Sept. 2020 – Fernando Rodrigues-Lima will spend a week in Michael R. Green’s laboratory at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, USA. Green’s laboratory at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, USA.
- Feb. 2020 – From February 2020, Sonja Boland will be spending 6 months in Sergio Moya’s laboratory at the CIC biomaGUNE in San Sebastian, Spain, as part of the European BIORIMA project. This collaboration will enable the development of organoid models to assess the toxicity of nanobiomaterials in the respiratory system in vitro.
https://www.biorima.eu/
https://www.cicbiomagune.es/
- Feb. 2020 – From February 2020, Stéphanie Devineau will be spending 6 months in Professor Katsumasa Fujita’s laboratory at the University of Osaka (Japan), in the Applied Physics Department. This assignment will enable the Laboratory to develop approaches using Raman spectroscopy
2019
- Dec. 2019 – Florent Busi and Fernando Rodrigues-Lim
- Dec. 2019 – Stéphanie Devineau is taking part in the ICBME conference (17th International Conference on Biomedical Engineering), which takes place from 9 to 12 December 2019 in Singapore. She will be presenting her work at the Symposium on Biomedical Nanotechnology. The visit is part of a collaboration with James Kah of the National University of Singapore (NUS).
http://www.icbme.org/
Nov. 2019 – Armelle Baeza presents the results of the toxicological assessment of African particles carried out as part of the DACCIWA programme at the international seminar on Air Quality in French-speaking African cities. The conference is organised by GUAPO (Global Urban Air Pollution Observatory), 28-29 November 2019, Paris.
https://www.dacciwa.eu
Oct. 2019 – Francelyne Marano gives a lecture as part of the Fête de la Science 2019: ‘Faut-il avoir peur des nanos? Le vrai du faux’, 11 October 2019, Paris.
Sept. 2019 – Sonja Boland presents alternative models for the study of respiratory pathophysiology in humans at the FRANCOPA seminar ‘Use of alternative methods for the study of physiology and pathology’, 24 September 2019, Paris.
http://www.francopa.fr
Sept. 2019 – Pascal Roussel and Valentina Sirri-Roussel’s study on the maturation process of precursor ribosomal RNAs is published in the Journal of Cell Science. This study shows the involvement of sirtuin 7 in the cleavage of site 2 of the 45S precursor ribosomal RNA.
http://jcs.biologists.org/lookup/doi/10.1242/jcs.228601
Sept. 2019 – Maxime Willart is completing his first-year BTS Biotechnologies (ESTBA) internship in our team. He worked with Oliver Brookes and Armelle Baeza on an in vitro model of the lung alveolus.
Jul 2019 – Qing Nian defended his PhD thesis from Université Paris Diderot on 16 July 2019. Her thesis topic focused on the inhibition of the protein tyrosine phosphatase PTN2 by the quinone etoposide and the functional characterisation of a pathological mutant. Qing Nian was enrolled in the BIO-SPC doctoral school (specialising in Biomolecules, Structural Biology, Pathology and Biotherapy). Her thesis was funded by the China Scholarship Council.
June 2019 – Jérémy Berthelet is defending his PhD thesis at Université Paris Diderot on 14 June 2019. His thesis topic focused on the effects of reactive benzene metabolites and an oncogenic mutation on SetD2, a histone methyltransferase. Jérémy Berthelet was enrolled in the BIO-SPC doctoral school (specialising in Biomolecules, Structural Biology, Pathology and Biotherapy). His thesis was funded by the Cancéropôle IDF.