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Centre for Cancer Biomarkers CCBIO
CCBIO international affiliated investigators

Jean Paul Thiery

Professor Jean Paul Thiery is a well-known researcher within the field of cancer therapeutics. Until July 2015 he was professor and head of the Department of Biochemistry of the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He also held a research director position at IMCB A*STAR and has been director of research at the Center National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris. Currently, he is a senior scientist at the Bioland Laboratory, Guangzhou, China, in addition to his affiliation to CCBIO.

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From 1995 to 2003, Professor Thiery established and headed the Cell Biology Department of the Institut Curie. Professor Thiery has made seminal contributions in the fields of cell adhesion, cell migration, morphogenesis and cancer, publishing more than 470 peer-reviewed articles in different areas of the life sciences. His influential works include pioneering studies in cell adhesion and migration in early embryogenesis and in elucidating the roles of growth factors and adhesion signaling molecules in Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transitions (EMT). Jean Paul Thiery is credited to be the first to propose that EMT controls carcinoma cell invasion and dissemination. Currently, his research focuses on oncogenomics and the creation of functional approaches to characterize bladder and lung carcinoma progression with the goal to apply EMT-based therapeutic approaches.

At CCBIO, Professor Thiery is collaborating with Professor James Lorens to unravel mechanisms driving immune escape in solid tumors. He is exploring the role of epithelial mesenchymal transition in carcinoma in the formation of defective immunological synapse. Together with Professor Lorens and colleagues, Professor Thiery is conducting experiments to assess the role of Axl tyrosine kinase in driving resistance of mesenchymal-like carcinoma cells to cytotoxic T lymphocyte lysis.