Jacques Pouysségur


Jacques Pouysségur is a French engineer, researcher and Member of the Institute. He was born on November 10, 1943 in Toulouse.
He is an outstanding research director emeritus of exceptional class at the CNRS. He conducts his research at the Research Institute on Cancer and Aging, Nice, University of Nice. He also works from 2013 to 2021 in the Department of Medical Biology, Scientific Centre of Monaco. He is Head of the Tumor Hypoxia and Metabolism Team and Visiting Professor, Kyoto Medical University, Kyoto, Japan, since 2013.

Training and scientific career

Jacques Pouysségur was graduate as a biochemistry engineer, 1962-1966, from Institut National des Sciences appliquées . He completed his 2-years Civil Military Service as Professor of Biochemistry 1966-1968 at the Institute of Agronomy of Algiers. He then defended his PhD thesis in 1972 in genetic regulation of E.coli in the lab of François Stoeber, at INSA. He then joined the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, USA as a postdoctoral fellow between 1974 and 1976. He then joined in 1978 as a CNRS Research Group Leader the Centre de Biochimie University Côte d'Azur, followed by CNRS Institutes since 1978 and was Director of the ISBDC Institute, Signaling, Development Biology & Cancer, Nice between 1997 and 2007.

Scientific interests and achievements

After his training in bacterial genetics, Jacques Pouysségur combined genetics and molecular biology to identify the signalling mechanisms of growth factors controlling cell proliferation. This team has made a major contribution to the fields of glycoproteins and cell adhesion , metabolism, intracellular pH regulation and molecular identification of the human Na+/H+ exchanger. In addition, the team determined that intracellular pH and MAP kinase are essential for the activation of mTORC1 and for controlling cell entry into the cell cycle .
Over the past 25 years, the team has turned its interest towards another essential growth mechanism: through which mechanisms do cells control their nutrient intake? This key process led the team to study the mechanisms of HIF-proline hydroxylase signalling, HIF1 stabilization under hypoxia, angiogenesis, autophagy , nutritional stress and aberrant tumor metabolism.
The team is pursuing, at a fundamental, translational and pre-clinical level, the physiological role of key targets induced by nutritional stress and tumor hypoxia. The focus is on the metabolism of fermented glucose or oxidative glucose in tumours, the import of amino acids under the influence of HIF or oxidative stress. Numerous anti-cancer targets inactivated by Zinc Finger Nucleases and/or CRISPR-Cas9 were analyzed on tumor lines . These targets, often strongly expressed in aggressive cancers, contribute to "Darwinian" selection within the hypoxic, acidic, denutrient tumor microenvironment leading to metastatic spread. Some of these targets, with anticancer potential, are currently under pharmacological development.

Honours and awards

Prizes

440 articles published in peer-reviewed journals; 515 scientific conferences as guest speaker - Google Scholar citations: 63,091 - h-factor: 137.