Research laboratories

There is an ongoing dialogue in the digestive tract between microbiota and the host. Any imbalance in this symbiosis leads to many diseases, such as chronic inflammatory bowel diseases, colorectal cancer, obesity, metabolic syndrome. For the last ten years, the research unit “Microbes, Intestine, Inflammation and Host Susceptibility”, has been studying the relationship between intestinal microbiota and the host, particularly the involvement of pathogenic Escherichia coli in chronic inflammatory bowel diseases, focusing on Crohn's disease and the role of enterohemmoragic E. coli involved in acute diarrhea and hemolytic uremic syndrome. This research unit is pioneer in demonstrating that the ileal mucosa of patients with Crohn's disease was abnormally colonized by pathogenic adherent-invasive Escherichia coli due to genetic susceptibility of Crohn’s disease patients with increased expression of intestinal receptor allowing E. coli colonization and/or with defects in autophagy, a cellular process allowing host cells to eliminate any intracellular pathogens. In addition, due to the strong link between chronic inflammation and cancer, this research unit also studies the link between modifications of the intestinal microbiota and colorectal cancer.

This unit is currently developing three areas of research:

• exploration of the virulence of Escherichia coli responsible for chronic inflammatory bowel diseases and colorectal cancer,
• analysis of the host susceptibility to develop Crohn's disease or colorectal cancer,
• design of new specific therapies.