Incentive grant for scientific research for Arnaud Blomme
Incentive grant for scientific research - MIS
Funding instrument to support young permanent researchers who seek to develop a scientific unit focusing on a future-oriented area within their university.
The research programme should be characterised by its originality and its innovativeness as well as by its scientific autonomy from the works of the laboratory where the applicant is involved. This programme should eventually enable the researcher to acquire their independence in a “flagship” laboratory.
The MIS is granted for a duration of three years for a total amount of 450,000 euros.
Thanks to this mandate, Arnaud will be able to hire 2 people to work in his team.
The project
In the TransMetTor project (Investigating the role of mTORC2-dependent control of mRNA translation in the reprogramming of lung cancer metabolism), Arnaud proposes to study in an original way the molecular links that underpin the mutual regulation of protein translation and cellular metabolism in lung cancer cells, so as to highlight vulnerabilities that can be exploited from a therapeutic point of view. To carry out this project, his team will develop a series of mouse models capable of faithfully representing different types of lung tumors. They will then characterize the metabolism of these tumors using complementary unbiased approaches. Finally, they will assess the impact of inhibiting specific metabolic pathways on the development of these lung tumors and their ability to inhibit the immune response.
Ultimately, this project will identify the molecular mechanisms responsible for the acquisition of a specific metabolic phenotype, potentially exploitable to develop new anti-cancer therapies.
About Arnaud Blomme
Arnaud Blomme holds a Master's degree in Biochemistry and Molecular and Cellular Biology from the Faculty of Science at the University of Liège. He completed his doctoral studies in Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the GIGA Cancer Research Centre in the ULiège Faculty of Medicine. Following his PhD thesis on the identification and characterization of novel breast cancer accessible biomarkers, Arnaud Blomme left Belgium for Scotland to perform a postdoctoral stay at the CRUK Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow. He returned to the University of Liège in 2020 and joined the GIGA Stem Cells as a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow (Arnaud Blomme gets a Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship for his TransMetTOR project) and developed a new line of research to study cancer cell metabolism in lung cancer. He will become a FNRS research associate in September 2023.
