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INSERM U618 - Faculty of Medicine
10, boulevard Tonnellé
37032 Tours cedex
Phone: (+33) 02 47 36 60 49, Fax: (+ 33) 02 47 36 60 46
Director: Francis Gauthier
 - Team 1: Proteases and lung diseases (Lalmanach G. and T. Moreau)
- Team 2: Vectors, Viruses and Vaccines (P. Coursaget)
- Team 3: Aerosols and lung cancer (Diot P. and Y. Gruel)
Our INSERM research unit (U618) entitled “Proteases and Lung Vectorization” was created in 2004 following the EMI-U 00-10, created in 2000.
It involves fundamental scientists, clinicians and industrial researchers to develop a transversal research program that extends from the conception of molecules of therapeutic interest and the understanding of their mechanism of action, up to their in vivo administration in human using new technological approaches, i.e. aerosolization.
Targeted pathologies include inflammatory lung diseases (COPD, cystic fibrosis,...) and lung cancer.
Molecular targeting mainly deals with pulmonary proteases produced locally or released from recruited inflammatory cells involved in lung tissue degradation. Targeting these proteases by synthetic inhibitors is a specificity of the unit.
Pulmonary vectorization is another major topic developed in the unit. It concerns gene transfer using recombinant viral capsids specially raised for a preferential targeting of pulmonary cells
Aerosoltherapy is the center of preclinical, clinical and technological studies developed by the unit. The technological development of new aerosol generators allowing an oriented targeting of aerosolized drugs, has resulted in new applications for fighting infectious diseases, inflammatory lung diseases and lung cancer. This research closely associates industrial partners, the animal housing (rodents /primates) platform for experimental studies, the department of pneumology at the Tours regional hospital and the Clinical Investigation Center (CIC202) for clinical studies.
Staff members on 01/10/2010 :
- 23 teachers / researchers
- 5 scholars and - 2 Hospital Practitioners
- 11 engineers, technicians
- 17 PhD students and 3 Post-Doctoral fellows
- 10 fixed-term contracts (FEDER, ANR, contracts Region Centre ...)
- Teams 1 and 3 are also associated to the federative research institute (IFR 135) entitled « Functional Imaging » and Team 2 is part of the IFR 136 «Transmitted Agents and Infectiology»
Our research unit participates in 3 Masters level courses:
- in the graduate school of Tours "Health, Science, Technology" – specialty : « Physiology, Biomolecules, Therapeutics, Cellular » and « Molecular Infectious Diseases, Vaccinology »
- in the graduate school of Angers, entitled "Biology, Health"– specialty : « Signals and Images in biology and medicine »
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