Congratulations to Aubert Alexander (best talk) and Yiling Tsang (best poster) that win SBMEC prizes at the Youth@MBE2024 in Lyon (France), Awarded from Carine LE-GOFF, new SFBMEc President, and Florence RUGGIERO, MBE Organizer Conference Chair and SFBMEc Honorary President.

Alexandre carried out his thesis at the LBTI (Lyon, France) in the team of Prof. Ulrich Valcourt, during which is studied the involvement of Tenascins, a family of large glycoproteins of the extracellular matrix, in the activation of latent TGF-b. In 2022, Alexandre joined Dr. David Granville’s team at the University of British Columbia (UBC, Vancouver, Canada) as a post-doctoral researcher in order to study Granzyme B: a serine protease and an emerging mediator of matrix remodeling in pathological conditions Alexandre’s main project is to characterize the involvement of Granzyme B in matrix remodeling during rheumatoid arthritis, and in keloids and hypertrophic scars also. His career goal is to come back to Europe in order to develop his own academic research team extracellular matrix remodeling.

Portrait et Abstract Alexandre AUBERT

Yiling Tsang started her PhD in 2021 at the University of Münster, working in Lydia Sorokin’s lab on a project titled « Modeling the Cellular and Basement Membrane Constituents of the Blood-Brain Barrier. » Her research focuses on the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and the roles of its cellular and basement membrane components. She is developing a 3D BBB model using a dextran-hydrogel system. In this model, induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived brain endothelial cells (iBECs) are combined with astrocytes and perivascular cells within the dextran gel, enabling the study of the basement membrane’s role in leukocyte transmigration.

Portrait et Abstract Yi Ling TSANG