I am a Professor of Medicine at University Claude Bernard Lyon I and a medical oncologist at the Léon Bérard (CLB) Cancer Center. I lead a team called Integrated Analysis of the Dynamics of Cancer and I am co-director the Department Tumor Escape Resistance and Immunity at the Cancer Research Center of Lyon. My training as a postdoctoral and clinical fellow and my first faculty position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, led me to focus most of my research in the head and neck (HN) field. My team is focusing on the oral mucosa from preneoplasia to established squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), before and after systemic therapy. Our ultimate goal is to reduce the incidence of HN cancer by intercepting the transformation of oral premalignant lesions or by preventing the development of second primary tumors (SPTs), and by improving the treatment efficacy of established tumors. Our scientific objective is to understand the longitudinal and spatial molecular and spatial dynamics to develop clinically relevant preventive and treatment strategies at specific time points of the natural history. We integrate clinical, pathological, cellular and molecular profiles both in human samples and preclinical models (4-NQO model) to unravel the dynamic changes during early stages of tumorigenesis and under the selective pressure of therapy, to reveal vulnerabilities that may in turn translate into new treatment and prevention strategies.

My work is translational and multidisciplinary, and my team combine the crossed expertise of basic and translational scientists and physicians. We are strongly involved in the training of biologists, physicians and pharmacists. The team is actively collaborating with number of teams at CRCL, nationally and internationally. We have developed expertise in analyzing, integrating high-throughput and clinical data, and mining of publicly available genomic data, which is often the basis of productive collaborations with other teams. Our work also involves socio-economic interactions through collaborations with pharmaceutical companies (ancillary studies) and biotechnology companies.