ESDR Special Lecture
Title: Stem cells and skin cancer
Keynote speaker
Cédric Blanpain
Full Professor and Director of the Laboratory of Stem Cells and Cancer
Laboratory of Stem Cells and Cancer, Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
BIOGRAPHY
Cédric Blanpain is a Full Professor and Director of the Stem Cells and Cancer Laboratory at the Université libre de Bruxelles. His laboratory studies the role of stem cells during development, tissue repair, and cancer. He discovered stem cells and progenitor cells that control skin maintenance and repair. He identified stem cells of the mammary gland and prostate. His laboratory was also a pioneer in identifying the cellular origin of skin and breast cancers. He developed new approaches to understand the mechanisms regulating tumor growth, the development of metastases, and resistance to cancer treatments.
Cedric Blanpain received several prestigious and highly competitive awards including EMBO Young investigator award, ERC starting, ERC consolidator and ERC advanced grants, the outstanding young investigator award of the ISSCR 2012, the Liliane Bettencourt award for life sciences 2012, the Joseph Maisin Award for basic biomedical Science 2015, the Francqui prize 2020, the European Association for Cancer Research’s Mike Price gold medal 2022, the momentum award of the ISSCR 2023 and the Fondation ARC Léopold Griffuel Award for basic research 2024 . He has been elected member of the EMBO, the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine, the Academia Europaea, the French Academy of Science, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Top 5 selected publications
Defining the mode of tumour growth by clonal analysis
Driessens G, Beck B, Caauwe A, Simons BD, Blanpain C.
Nature. 2012 Aug 23;488(7412):527-30.
Highlighted by a preview and news and views in Nature, Science, Nature Biotech, Nature Methods, Nature Reviews Cancer.
Sox2 controls tumour initiation and cancer stem cell functions in squamous cell carcinoma.
Boumahdi S, Driessens G, Lapouge G, Rorive S, Nassar D, Lemercier M, Delatte B, Caauwe A, Lenglez S, Nkusi E, Brohée S, Salmon I, Dubois C, del Marmol V, Fuks F, Beck B & Blanpain C.
Nature 2014 Jul 10;511(7508):246-50.
Highlighted in Cancer Cell and EMBOJ.
Cell-Type-Specific Chromatin States Differentially Prime Squamous Cell Carcinoma Tumor-Initiating Cells for Epithelial to Mesenchymal Transition.
Latil M,…, Blanpain C.
Cell Stem Cell. 2017 Feb 2;20(2):191-204.e5
Highlighted by a preview in Cell Stem Cell
Citations : 182
Identification of the tumour transition states occurring during EMT
Pastushenko I, Brisebarre A, Sifrim A, Fioramonti M, Revenco T, Boumahdi S, Van Keymeulen A, Brown D, Moers V, Lemaire S, De Clercq S, Minguijon E, Cédric Balsat C, Sokolow Y, Dubois C, de Cock F, Scozzaro S, Sopena F, Lanas A, D’Haene N, Salmon I, Marine JC, Voet T, Sotiropoulou P and Blanpain C
Nature. 2018 Apr;556(7702):463-468.
Highlighted by a news and views in Nature.
Pharmacological targeting of netrin-1 inhibits EMT in cancer.
Lengrand J, Pastushenko I, Vanuytven S, Song Y, Venet D, Sarate RM, Bellina M, Moers V, Boinet A, Sifrim A, Rama N, Ducarouge B, Van Herck J, Dubois C, Scozzaro S, Lemaire S, Gieskes S, Bonni S, Collin A, Braissand N, Allard J, Zindy E, Decaestecker C, Sotiriou C, Salmon I, Mehlen P, Voet T, Bernet A, Blanpain C.
Nature. 2023 Aug;620(7973):402-408. doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06372-2.
Highlighted in Nature Review Drug Discovery
