news 2020

Sorbonne University Alliance Multidisciplinary research Mathematician Pascal Frey heads the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ISCD). Frey takes stock of ten years of interdisciplinary research and innovation around scientific computing, simulation and data analysis. The Institute is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year.

Alzheimer's disease is characterized by the presence of amyloid plaques 1 in the patient's brain. These plaques sequester copper, and contain approximately five times as much as a healthy brain. Two CNRS scientists from the Coordination Chemistry Laboratory recently developed, with their colleagues from the Guangdong University of Technology and Shenzhen University (China), a molecule that regulates the circulation of copper in the brain.

A procedure that may help personalise anticancer therapies has just been developed by the CNRS, INSERM, and Aix-Marseille University scientists at the Centre d'Immunologie de Marseille-Luminy, in association with colleagues from the University of California San Francisco and the Marseille Public University Hospital System (AP-HM), with support from Canceropôle Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur.

The Zika virus has spread around the world over the last decade, causing millions of infections, some of which have been associated with congenital abnormalities and neurological disorders. Scientists from the CNRS, the Institut Pasteur, and the IRD 1 turned their attention to the main vector of the virus, the mosquito Aedes aegypti .

A team of interdisciplinary researchers has demonstrated that convex optimization is an effective mathematical and numerical tool for a daily estimate of the evolution of the reproductive number for Covid-19, over time and across regions. Monitoring the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic is one of the major challenges of the global health crisis.

Since the late 1990s, immunotherapy has been the frontline treatment against lymphomas where synthetic antibodies are used to stop the proliferation of cancerous white blood cells. However, in the more than 20 years since their use began, the molecular mechanisms that underlie this therapy are still little understood.

The growth of global livestock farming is a threat to our biodiversity and also increases the health risks to both humans and domesticated animals. The patterns that link them are at the heart of a study published in Biological Conservation by a scientist from the Institute of Evolution Sciences of Montpellier (ISEM - CNRS/Université de Montpellier/IRD/EPHE) and the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development's (CIRAD) ASTRE laboratory.

Seasonal fluctuations drive the dynamics of many infectious diseases. For instance, the flu spreads more readily in winter. Two scientists from the University of Nantes 1 and the CNRS 2 in Montpellier have developed a mathematical model to predict the risk of the emergence of an epidemic, depending on the time of the year at which the pathogen is introduced.

Two exceptional strains of tuberculosis, isolated from East African patients with multi-resistant forms of the disease, have been discovered thanks to the use of a new molecular test, Deeplex-MycTB 1. These strains belong to a so far unknown bacterial lineage, apparently limited to the African Great Lakes region.

Scientists in the Sys2diag Laboratory (CNRS/ALCEN) and doctors from University Hospital (CHU) of Montpellier have presented the first results of a clinical trial on the EasyCov SARS-CoV-2 detection test. This shows satisfactory performance for a field test that solves a problem in situations where the RT-PCR test cannot be used.

The Mechanical Ventilator Milano (MVM), an open source ventilator to support patients severely ill with COVID-19, has moved from design to reality in six weeks, propelled by physicists specialised in dark matter who turned their attention away from unknown particles for this period. It has just been authorised by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as within the scope of the emergency use authorization for ventilators in intensive care.

While tracing the movement of Escherichia coli, a team of French researchers noticed that near solid surfaces, the bacteria run in circles. Loop after loop, the tracing almost looks like an Olympic figure skating rink before the Zamboni irons the sheet of ice smooth. Breaking down E. coli's routine step by step, the scientists identified a signature move-surface tumbling.

On April 10, 2020, ANR announced the funding of 86 projects concerning Covid-19. Six are associated with ENS de Lyon laboratories. The SARS-CoV-2 infection is a global emergency for human health. The interferon response is the body's first barrier to defending viral infections. This host response is initiated by the recognition of viral elements by receptor and leads to the production of molecules, including interferon, that alert surrounding cells.

Scientists at the Laboratoire des Maladies Neurodégénératives (CNRS/CEA/Université Paris-Saclay) and the Neurocentre Magendie (INSERM/Université de Bordeaux) have just shown that a metabolic pathway plays a determining role in Alzheimer's disease's memory problems. This work, published on 3 March 2020 in Cell Metabolism, also shows that supplying a specific amino acid as a nutritional supplement in a mouse model of Alzheimer's restores spatial memory affected early.