For this year 2021, the laboratory council of the Institut de Chimie de Toulouse has awarded its annual prize to Laure Gibot, a researcher in the IDeAS team since 2018, particularly appreciating her background and her work on electroporation.
Used since the 1980s in the context of electrochemotherapy, this technique is coupled with the injection of anti-cancer molecules to treat skin tumours. Applying an appropriate electric field locally and temporarily permeabilises the cells located between the electrodes and allows the molecules to enter the cells and tissues in large quantities. The doses injected into patients are thus reduced, as are their side effects.
Laure hypothesised that the electrical component of electroporation alone could modulate the behaviour of skin cells. The results of her research are promising and electroporation might be an interesting therapeutic tool for new biomedical applications.
Her usual research focuses on the delivery of therapeutic molecules at the tissue level, especially in the skin. She is particularly interested in photodynamic therapy, an anticancer and dermatological therapeutic approach based on the selective activation by light of photo-activatable molecules, which generate (when photo-activated) reactive oxygen species used as anticancer agents.
During the award ceremony on 10th September, she gave a lecture to present her work on these two subjects.
This prize will enable her to attend the 4th World Congress on Electroporation in Copenhagen (Denmark) in October 2022.