Our research topic, in the field of obesity and metabolic diseases, focuses on the characterization of tissue and cellular dysregulation and inter-organ dialogues arising from weight changes and metabolic status.
Using biological samples obtained from patients suffering from metabolic disease at different stages of disease progression, we develop large-scale approaches and new bioinformatic methods for the data integration and analysis.
The hypotheses generated from these approaches are tested in translational and clinical studies.
In the past five years, we achieved the following key milestones:
increased knowledge of alterations in immunity and inflammatory status associated with obesity in human adipose tissue deposits, circulation, and intestine
demonstrated the importance of fibrosis in the alterations of obese adipose tissue and to identify the cellular contributors and
identified major dysbiosis in human obesity and mediators that can link the imbalance of intestinal bacterial species and organ alterations.
This collective work was published in 106 original articles and approximately fifty journals or book chapters and led to the team obtaining the FRM label. We will capitalize on the results obtained over the next five years by pursuing this translational approach and developing mechanistic aspects.
Moving forward, the role of the microbiota and intestine will be explored in the context of obesity progression and related complications, as well as the consequences of adipose tissue remodelling.
A bioinformatics approach using systems biology and data integration will be developed. An axis led by physicians in liaison with the clinical services associated with the team will aim to improve new therapeutic strategies by testing the relevance of the identified biomarkers/predictors in patients.