news 2025

Lyon's research stands out in the new post-quantum era. Two algorithms designed by Damien Stehlé are among the 3 standards published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2024.

A new class of molecules capable of killing the cancer cells that are refractory to standard treatments and responsible for recurrence has just been developed by scientists at Institut Curie, the CNRS, and Inserm. This crucial advance in the fight against metastatic cancer is based on identifying the cellular site for ferroptosis initiation, a natural process, catalysed by iron, that sparks the oxidative degradation of cell membranes.

Characteristic depressive episodes are the most common mental disorders worldwide. One in five people will suffer from depression in their lifetime, with suicidal risk responsible for several thousand deaths a year in France.

Human fibroblasts observed by fluorescence microscopy. Mitochondria are marked in red, fibroblast core DNA is marked in blue © Nivea Dias Amoedo/Inserm A deterioration in skin quality, its ability to heal, and its normal aging, is often observed in people with chronic hyperglycemia. A team of researchers from Inserm, the University of Bordeaux and LVMH Recherche has investigated how hyperglycemia alters the human dermis, and in particular the cells involved in its healing, the fibroblasts.

While glioblastoma is a highly aggressive brain tumor that currently offers little hope of cure, researchers at the CANTHER laboratory (CNRS / Inserm / University of Lille / Lille University Hospital / Pasteur Institute of Lille) and the Laboratoire de Bioimagerie et Pathologies (CNRS / University of Strasbourg) have succeeded in identifying different forms of this tumor and mapping them precisely by analyzing the activity of gene regulatory factors.

Food additive mixtures are an everyday feature of our diets, especially through ultra-processed foods. Until recently, safety evaluations of these additives have been conducted substance by substance due to a lack of data on the effect of them ingested together. In a new study, researchers from Inserm, INRAE, Sorbonne Paris Nord University, Paris Cité University and Cnam, as part of the Nutritional Epidemiology Research Team (CRESS-EREN), examined the possible links between exposure to mixtures of commonly consumed food additives and the onset of type 2 diabetes.

A French team coordinated by a CNRS 1 scientist has highlighted the harmful impact of chronic exposure to tebuconazole, one of the fungicides most widely used in agriculture in Europe, on sparrow reproduction. The results of this research, published in the journal Environmental Research , reveal a direct link between exposure to this fungicide and abnormal growth in sparrow chicks, as well as higher mortality in these young birds, particularly females.

Many cases of sudden cardiac death could be avoided thanks to artificial intelligence. As part of a new study to be published in European Heart Journal, a network of artificial neurons imitating the human brain was developed by researchers from Inserm, Paris Cité University and the Paris public hospitals group (AP-HP), in collaboration with their colleagues in the USA.

The longest organic molecules identified to date on Mars have recently been detected by scientists from the CNRS 1 , together with their colleagues from France, the United States of America, Mexico and Spain. These long carbon chains, containing up to 12 consecutive carbon atoms, could exhibit features similar to the fatty acids produced on Earth by biological activity 2 .

Twenty-seven standardised bone tools dating back more than 1.5 million years were recently discovered in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania by a team of scientists from the CNRS and l'université de Bordeaux 1 , in collaboration with international and Tanzanian researchers. This discovery challenges our understanding of early hominin technological evolution, as the oldest previously known standardised bone tools date back approximately 500,000 years.

The report on the interdisciplinary research carried out by researchers from Aix Marseille University and CNRS at the Laboratoire méditerranéen de préhistoire Europe (AMU/CNRS/Ministère de la Culture) and the Anthropologie bio-culturelle, Droit, Ethique et Santé laboratory (AMU/CNRS/Etablissement francais du sang), and froma laboratory at the University of Reading, UK (National Centre for Atmospheric Science, Department of Meteorology), has just been published on February 26, 2025 in the prestigious journal PLOS ONE .

Mouse macrophages visualized using confocal microscopy, showing the nuclei (blue) and the actin network (orange). Mónica Fernández Monreal, Bordeaux Imaging Center Macrophages, key cells of the immune system, play a central role in cleaning the body by ingesting and destroying pathogens (bacteria, viruses, etc.) and damaged cells.

Since 2000, the world's glaciers have lost 5% of their initial volume, and 273 billion tonnes of ice are disappearing every year - the equivalent of 3 Olympic swimming pools per second. These are the results of an in-depth study of the global evolution of glaciers (excluding the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets) between 2000 and 2023, based for the first time on a combination of field measurements and satellite observations.

An extraordinary event consistent with a neutrino with an estimated energy of about 220 PeV (220 x 1015 electron volts or 220 million billion electron volts), was detected on February 13, 2023, by the ARCA detector of the kilometre cubic neutrino telescope (KM3NeT) in the deep sea. This event, named KM3-230213A, is the most energetic neutrino ever observed and provides the first evidence that neutrinos of such high energies are produced in the Universe.

In response to a request from the French government, and following a diagnostic study carried out in 2017, which revealed numerous flint remains, Inrap and Chartres Métropole carried out an excavation at the Enclos site (1500 m²), in Mainvilliers, west of Chartres.

Motoneurones (stained by immunohistochemistry for ChAT) of the lumbar section of the spinal cord in ALS mouse models. Scale 100 mm © Simon J Guillot, Daniel Beckett ,Matei Bolborea Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Charcot's disease, or Lou Gehrig's disease is a severe neurodegenerative disease that leads to progressive paralysis of muscles involved in voluntary movement.

5 km west of Soissons, in the commune of Pernant (Aisne), an excavation carried out from August to December 2024 uncovered part of an ancient villa .

A researcher from the Physics Laboratory at ENS de Lyon "unravels knitwear" to turn it into a research subject. This article made the front page of the latest Pop Sciences newsletter. Written by Martin Koppe for the CNRS, the article honours Audrey Steinberger and her subject, which might be considered "exotic": knitwear.

Light, soft, resistant, deformable and sometimes ugly, knitwear is not just an everyday object; it's also a metamaterial whose extraordinary properties are of great interest to physicists. While physics research is often associated with such gigantic technical infrastructures as the LHC, it also sometimes takes an interest in everyday objects.

The Remember project provides new insights into post-traumatic stress disorder © Inserm Following a shocking, dangerous or frightening experience, such as a terrorist attack, many people develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In order to improve its management, numerous scientific studies are examining the neurobiological processes underlying the development of this disorder.