Francoise Helmbacher

Warm congratulations to The Brain Prize winners 2026, Professor David Ginty and Professor Patrik Ernfors, for their pioneering work on how the nervous system detects and processes touch and pain.

Karolinska Institutet
HHMI

#Neuroscience #BrainPrize2026

Impaired stem cell migration and divisions in Duchenne muscular dystrophy revealed by live imaging - Nature Communications Using live-imaging in vivo and ex vivo, Sarde et al. show that dystrophic muscle stem cells have precocious differentiation through symmetric divisions and impaired migration, with differential impact...

Bravo Liza, Brendan and colleagues for the elegant work on multiple live imaging strategies to untangle mechanisms of muscular dystrophy! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Two funded PhD positions investigating the evolution of sarcomeres @ibdm.bsky.social in @biancah0406.bsky.social and our lab, together with @cnidevo.bsky.social - Interested to explore how similar or different Jellyfish sarcomeres are to Drosophila or human ones?
www.ibdm.univ-amu.fr/ibdm_job/2-a...

Tumours aren’t just a messy mix of cells—they’re highly organised and hierarchical societies!
Just like in all societies, small chats between individuals can drive collective emergent behaviours - we reveal how these sustain tumour growth and cellular heterogeneity. 🧵👇

#LivingArchitectures
We put cells and cytoskeleton filaments on the architecture of the musée d'Orsay.
www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/agenda/ev...
Scientists of the #CytoMorphoLab adapted their protocols to illustrate the questions that keep them awake at night.
-> Two shows on the 24th and 25th of January.

Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb2) This was a terrific discussion with Eric about my new biography of Francis Crick.

Now live, and thanks to @erictopol.bsky.social for organising this!

📣 Paper alert!

I am delighted that our paper exploring the impact of Neanderthal-derived variants on the activity of a disease-associated craniofacial enhancer has been published in Development today!
journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Huge congrats to the team of project "PatCorg" for the prestigious ERC Synergy grant dedicated to studying organoids to uncover mechanisms underlying cortical development: A Pierani (@ipnp.bsky.social), S Nedelec (Institut Monod), S Descroix and B Sorre (Institut Curie), and A Baffet (Inst Curie).

Dan Perez founded the #FSHD Society to foster research & help patients w this painful & debilitating muscular dystrophy. It was a privilege to have known this brave, caring, smart person who was instrumental in getting research money for FSHD, a strange epigenetics-related disease. Melanie Ehrlich

It was a privilege to have known Dan, a brave, caring, loving, & extremely smart person who was instrumental in getting research money for FSHD, a strange epigenetics-related disease. My deepest sympathy for his lovely and loving wife Sue & for his many devoted friends. Melanie Ehrlich #Epigenetics

BMP signaling-dependent dorsal-to-ventral gradient of PAX3/7 transcriptional activity revealed by the P34::tk::LacZ reporter. Left: expression patterns of neural progenitor (NP) and interneuron (IN) TF markers in the developing spinal cord. Right: Immunostaining for β-galactosidase (β-gal; red/grey), GFP (blue/grey) and either OLIG3 (green/grey) or pSMAD1/5/9 (green/grey) on transverse sections of E9.0 (bottom) and E9.5 (top) P34::tk::LacZ; Pax3+/GFP spinal cords at brachial level. Black and white panels show magnified views of the boxed region.

How do pleiotropic TFs generate organized diversity in developing tissues? @spinalorga.bsky.social shows that PAX3 & PAX7 organize #SpinalCord by acting as both repressors & pioneer activators, regulated by #morphogens to ensure precise neural subtype specification @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4qumsla

Intussusceptive angiogenesis: bridging in vivo and in vitro observations

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Thanks, Dr. Steven Mentzer and Dr. Maximilian Ackermann🙏 for this insightful highlight of our recent PNAS paper on #IntussusceptiveAngiogenesis😁

www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

(Neuro)biologie et société Voir l’article pour en savoir plus.

🎂 Mon blog (Neuro)biologie et société (neurobiologieetsociete.org) associé au @cafe-sciences.org a 10 ans en ce mois d'octobre 2025 !

neurobiologieetsociete.org

Les 5 billets les plus populaires au cours de ces 10 ans 👇 :

#CultureScientifique #vulgarisationscientifique

Nobel Laureate Professor Sir John Gurdon dies aged 92 It is with great sadness that the University shares the news of the death of Professor Sir John Gurdon, founder of the Gurdon Institute.

So sad to hear the news - John truly was an inspiration to so many, and one of a kind.

www.cam.ac.uk/research/new...

Figure 1 : Schematic representation of the overall study. (A) Spontaneously generated tumours from the Alb-R26Met mouse model were monitored by PC-CT using the PIXSCAN-FLI imaging system. Dissected tumours: 1) were characterized by Haematoxylin and Eosin staining (HES) histological analyses; 2) underwent both mechanical and enzymatical cell dissociation. (B) Dissociated cells were seeded in 2D culture conditions. Primary HCC cells were characterized morphologically and molecularly by RT-qPCR and Western Blots (WB), then used for drug testing. (C) Primary HCC cells were secondarily cultured in 3D condition into Matrigel after few passages in order to generate tumoroids, which were further characterized

Establishment of a mouse hepatocellular carcinoma tumoroid panel recapitulating inter- and intra- heterogeneity for disease modelling and combinatorial drug discovery
biosignaling.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....
another big milestone from the Maina lab @crcm.bsky.social ! Contratulations!

Ventricle position can be remodeled after heart looping!
In a model of heterotaxy we uncovered a new asymmetric morphogenesis process during which the heart reorients its chambers.
So grateful to all the authors for their expertise and input during this long (but fun) ride 💪
Read more here ⬇️

✨ Post-doc opportunity in axon biology, funded by #ATIP-Avenir!

👀 We are looking for an enthusiastic post-doc to join our team at @ibdm.bsky.social to explore translation dynamics in axon regrowth, using live imaging approaches.

Apply at: emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/U...

Thank you for sharing! 👋 🙏

OpenEMMU: A versatile, open-source EdU multiplexing methodology for studying DNA replication and cell cycle dynamics Biochemistry; Cell biology; Developmental biology; Computational bioinformatics

Thrilled to share our new paper: "OpenEMMU: A versatile, open-source EdU multiplexing methodology for studying DNA replication and cell cycle dynamics"!

We've developed a new resource that make this crucial research more accessible, accurate, powerful and low-cost.

www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

Congrats Osvaldo, very cool work, stunning images and super useful!

DUX4 at 25: how it emerged from “junk DNA” to become the cause of facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy - Skeletal Muscle Double Homeobox 4 (DUX4) is a potent transcription factor encoded by a retrogene mapped in D4Z4 repeated elements on chromosome 4q35. DUX4 has emerged as pivotal in the pathomechanisms of facioscapulo...

DUX4 at 25: how it emerged from “junk DNA” to become the cause of facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy

skeletalmusclejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

#FSHD, #DUX4, #Myoblue #SkeletalMuscle

The HDAC inhibitor romidepsin renders liver cancer vulnerable to RTK targeting and immunologically active - Nature Communications Targeting histone deacetylases (HDACs) alone has shown limited success in solid tumours. Here, authors report that the HDAC1/2 inhibitor romidepsin confers responsiveness to receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors, with enhanced therapeutic effects in models of hepatocellular carcinoma, leading to tumour regression and an immune-stimulatory profile.

The HDAC inhibitor romidepsin renders liver cancer vulnerable to RTK targeting and immunologically active
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Fantastic new paper from Flavio Maina, Celia Sequera, Margherita Grattarola and colleagues at the @crcm.bsky.social

#CancerResearch, #CRCM, #LiverCancer

🧠 Position still opened! Don't hesitate to apply if you want to use human pluripotent stem cell based models to understand the evolution of human cerebellar neurons and disorders!

Neurotrophin-3 produced by motor neurons non-cell autonomously regulate the development of pre-motor interneurons in the developing spinal cord https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.27.665825v1

Intramuscular adipose tissue restricts functional muscle recovery With age and disease, skeletal muscle is progressively lost and replaced by fibrotic scar and intramuscular adipose tissue (IMAT). While strongly corr…

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Kicking off the lab BlueSky with this picture of a happy hairy growing #axon!
Looking forward to connecting with science chats and to growing research ideas 🧠🔬✨

SARCOMERES divide! Mechanism how muscles grow while contracting - daughter sarcomeres appear everywhere. Seen live, registered on our cover. Pioneered by @clementrodier.bsky.social @friedrich-group.bsky.social Ian Estabrook @ibdm.bsky.social $ by @hfspo.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🚨 PLF : Les préconisations de l’IGF/IGESR menacent directement notre santé et celle de nos enfants !

📣 Les principales fondations et associations de recherche biomédicale expriment leur profonde inquiétude

bit.ly/44u3aSR

Wissenschaftliche*r Mitarbeiter*in/ Postdoc (m/f/d) Chromatin ist nicht unbeweglich. Es handelt sich um ein hochdynamisches Material, dessen 3D-Struktur zentrale genomische Prozesse – von der Transkription bis zur DNA-Reparatur – steuert. Doch wie verhält sich Chromatin als Material – als Flüssigkeit, Feststoff oder viskoelastisches Gel –, um diese Funktionen in lebenden Zellen auszuführen? Ohne eine Antwort auf diese Frage können wir nicht vollständig verstehen, wie Chromatin bei Krankheiten gestört wird.

Postdoc🚨!

Come join our HFSP team to uncover how chromatin moves in cells and what this means for genome function! Great opportunity to combine single-cell genomics, live imaging and polymer physics in the unique mammalian retina with @andersshansen.bsky.social, Davide Michieletto & Sandra Tenreiro

A meme-style comic panel with three parts. Left: A stylized enhancer with a mutation, surrounded by colored blocks representing functional motifs, a neural network diagram, chromatin accessibility signal traces, and a sequence motif. Two cartoon mouse embryos below show different LacZ reporter activity patterns. Top right: A hand hovers anxiously between two red buttons labeled “Experiments” and “AI,” with the caption “HOW DO ENHANCERS REALLY WORK?” Bottom right: A sweating superhero wipes his forehead, looking stressed about the difficult choice.

Textbooks: “Enhancers are just a bunch of TFBSs”

But how do they REALLY work?

New paper with many contributors here @berkeleylab.lbl.gov, @anshulkundaje.bsky.social, @anusri.bsky.social

A 🧵 (1/n)

Free access link: rdcu.be/erD22

This is so heartbreaking 💔! You are a model of courage and resilience that I sincerely admire. I hope the precious time ahead remains as enjoyable and happy as ever, with family and people who matter to you around you.