Research and technological innovation ( eRIT)
The role of the eRIT is to provide expertise and technological support to I-Stem’s research programs. Areas of expertise include: pluripotent cell culture techniques, genome editing, sequencing, molecular screening, bioproduction and imaging.
The eRIT is organized around 6 areas of expertise or platforms: cell biology, bioproduction, NGS, high throughput screening, cell imaging, and genome editing. The eRIT brings its expertise to I-Stem’s research teams by implementing new technologies in the laboratory or by developing them on demand if they do not exist.
Each platform has a service activity but above all builds its own technological research work. The “Cell Biology” platform evaluates new techniques for the culture of pluripotent stem cells (PSC) and cytogenetics. It develops very high quality cell lines for modeling and cell therapy programs with a focus on the development of lines that are invisible to the immune system (ANR Ghosting the Cell – GTC program).
The “Bioproduction” team develops automated protocols for large-scale culture and clinical programs. More particularly, within the framework of cell therapy projects, it develops protocols for the culture and differentiation of PSCs in a closed circuit, compatible with a so-called “GMP-like” production before transfer to pharmaceutical establishments. Its research axes also concern 3D mass culture using bioreactors. To support its projects, it is constantly evolving cell qualification tests, in particular by developing and implementing new flow cytometry approaches.
The genome editing platform creates tool lines for genetic disease modeling using CRISPR techniques.
The high-throughput screening platform develops the miniaturized assays, automation and data mining required to select pharmacological compounds during screening as well as tools to identify combinations of repositionable molecules to potentiate their therapeutic effect.
The sequencing platform (NGS) proposes the development of new approaches such as single cell sequencing, sequencing of nucleic acids contained in extracellular vesicles and spatial transcriptome.
The imaging platform implements AI in high-throughput image analysis processes to improve their performance in pathology modeling or therapeutic compound identification and tests different strategies to image 3D organoid cultures.
To support the various research projects of the laboratory, the eRIT manages the collection of I-Stem cells that it keeps in a secure manner in the biobank. This collection is intended to support the development of the future biological resource center (BRC).
The platforms have been accredited by Genopole since 2022 and are open to Genopolitans.
https://www.genopole.fr/
Team members
Alexandra Benchoua
Responsible for the platforms
Karine Giraud-Triboult
Manager Cell Biology
Olivier Chose
Manager Bioproduction
Margot Jarrige
Manager NGS
Johana Tournois
Manager HTS
Jérôme Polentes
Manager Cell Imaging
Sandrine Baghdoyan
Manager Genome editing