Principal Investigators
Doctoral candidates
Supervisory board
EURECA has received funding from the European Union’s (EU) Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA) Grant agreement No 101226733.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or Horizon Europe MSCA-DN. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
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Alexandre David
Our goal is to advance the emerging fields of epitranscriptomics and translational control in cancer biology. We aim to redefine our understanding of gene expression regulation at the post-transcriptional level and translate these discoveries into novel clinical opportunities for personalized medicine. Each project begins with a clinical question and is dedicated to developing solutions for cancer detection, patient stratification, and treatment. As part of the S.M.A.R.T. consortium*, the TRANSLACORE European network and the GDR «RNA», we combine disciplines -such as chemistry, biology, bioinformatics and physics- and develop unique tools and techniques to produce innovative research at the crossroads of basic, applied and clinical sciences.
*SMART encompasses several teams from Montpellier: A. David (IRCM, epitranscriptomics), E. Rivals (LIRMM, bioinformatics), C. Hirtz (PPC-IRMB, analytical chemistry), M. Smietana (IBMM, oligo chemistry)
Dr Eva Maria Novoa Pardo
A current major challenge in biology is to understand how gene expression is regulated with surgical precision in a tissue-dependent, spatial and temporal dimension. Historically, genome-wide studies of gene expression have typically measured mRNA abundance rather than protein synthesis, in large part because such data are much easier to obtain. However, the correlation between mRNA levels and protein abundance is as low as r=0.35-0.40, suggesting that transcriptional regulation alone is not sufficient to unveil the complex orchestration of gene expression. In the last few decades, the scientific community has started to acknowledge the pivotal role that post-transcriptional regulatory mechanisms play in gene expression, however, we are still far from understanding how gene expression is finely tuned and regulated across tissues and conditions, suggesting that we are missing variables in the equation.
In our laboratory, we want to understand how gene expression is regulated with surgical precision, in a tissue-dependent, spatial and temporal dimension. To this end, we are employing a combination of experimental (RNASeq, polysome profiling, mouse/cell knockouts, Oxford Nanopore direct RNA sequencing) and computational techniques (NGS data analysis, algorithm development, machine learning), to unveil the secrets of three post-transcriptional regulatory layers: the epitranscriptome, RNA structure and ribosome specialization.
Our laboratory has pioneered the use and development of direct RNA nanopore sequencing technologies to study RNA modifications. Specifically, we have pioneered the development of novel algorithms to map and quantify RNA modifications (Liu et al., Nat Comm 2019, Begik et al., Nat Biotech 2021; Cruciani et al., Genome Biol 2025), we have optimized the library preparations to make the technology applicable to low-input samples (Pryszcz et al., Genome Res 2025) and we have expanded its applicability beyond coding mRNAs (Begik et al., Nature Methods 2022; Lucas et al., Nature Biotech 2024). We are now applying this technology to: i) decipher the role that RNA modifications play in sperm formation, maturation and intergenerational inheritance; ii) dissect how RNA modification dysregulation leads to human disease; and iii) bring this technology to the next level to apply it for rapid diagnosis of cancer, and classification of cancer types.
Prof Mark Helm
The Helm Group’s research focuses on RNA modifications of natural or synthetic origin. We integrate disciplines from chemistry, biology, physics, bioinformatics, and pharmacy to advance analytical and biosynthetic research on naturally occurring and therapeutic RNA.
Dr Virginie Marcel
The “Ribosome, Translation and Cancer” team led by Jean-Jacques Diaz is composed of 18 permanent members. The team has challenged the role of ribosomes in cancer, studying both quantitative alterations (i.e., hyper-activation of ribosome biogenesis) and qualitative alterations of ribosomes (i.e., alteration in ribosome composition). The main objectives of the RTC team were to study the role of ribosomes and translation in cancer by focusing on:
In this context, V Marcel’s group (EURECA partners: V Marcel, C Moyret-Lalle, S Durand) has developed a basic to translational research program that contributes to the establishment of the concept of ‘ribosome heterogeneity’ in the context of cancer by focusing on the main chemical modifications of rRNAs, the 2’O-ribose methylation (2’Ome). Our current objectives are to develop an integrative approach to decipher the combined role of all rRNA chemical modifications in translational regulations and in cancer progression, and thus to:
