Title of the talk: “Cancer risk across the tree of life and the role of the immune system in shaping this” Abstract: Cancer is one of the leading causes of mortality in humans, and – while it’s seriously overlooked – it also represents a significant and frequent pathology of domestic and wild animals. Despite the latter knowledge, research on cancer still focuses on humans or laboratory model organisms (e.g. mice). This largely limits our ability to drive conclusions regarding the frequency, taxonomic distribution, risk factors or physiological defences against cancer in non-model organisms, or to define general rules about cancer. Studying cancer across multiple animal species is both an important source of knowledge and an untapped resource of inspiration for novel cancer treatments. In my talk, I’m going to present data on cross-species variability in cancer risk of vertebrates, their phylogenetic patterns and species characteristics that influence this, using high-resolution data on hundreds of species. Moreover, due to the prominent role of the immune system in cancer defence, and the known cross-species variability in immune physiology and cancer risk, we also aimed to test how species-specific immune physiology predicts cancer risk across the tree of life. I will present preliminary results on the latter explorations and present pioneering evidence for the cancer immunosurveillance hypothesis on a cross-species scale, highlighting the evolutionary link between cancer and the immune system.

TBA

Dr. Mathieu Mateo is a Pasteur Institute young researcher with a renowned expertise in virology and vaccinology. He leads a team at the Pasteur Institute of Lyon deciphering the molecular determinants of Lassa Fever Virus pathogenicity. His team has also been instrumental in the development of novel innovative vaccination strategies to prevent Lassa Fever virus epidemics, which is the topic that he will discuss during his seminar. ABSTRACT: “Lassa fever hits West African countries annually in the absence of licensed vaccine to limit the burden of this viral hemorrhagic fever. We developed MeV-NP, a single-shot vaccine protecting cynomolgus monkeys against divergent strains one month or more than a year before Lassa virus infection. Given the limited dissemination area during outbreaks and the risk of nosocomial transmission, a vaccine inducing rapid protection could be useful to protect exposed people during outbreaks in the absence of preventive vaccination. We recently vaccinated non-human primates with MeV-NP 8 days before the challenge. We also tested the short-term efficacy of a hyperattenuated Mopeia recombinant virus MOPEVACLASV that we previously showed to be protective when administered one month prior challenge. Both vaccines conferred full protection against Lassa fever after a single shot of vaccine given 8 days before challenge. For both vaccines, the protection was characterized by strong T cell responses against the Lassa virus antigens. Control animals all died within 15 days of fatal Lassa fever. Both vaccines therefore constitute ideal candidates for further development. MeVLASV has already shown promising results in first-in-human phase I clinical trial and MOPEVACLASV is expected to follow the same path in a near future”.

Hannah Kaminski is in charge of the HORUS project, granted by the EU for 5 years. Together with 16 teams, HORUS will focus on host-cytomegalovirus interactions, in the context oforgan transplant. More details: https://sbm.u-bordeaux.fr/actualites/un-projet-europeen-sur-le-cytomegalovirus https://www.u-bordeaux.fr/actualites/un-virus-passe-au-crible-du-projet-europeen-horus