We are delighted to welcome Dr Lina Benajiba (MCU-PH, ATIP-Avenir & ERC-Starting grant team leader, Université Paris Cité, INSERM U944, IRSL-Paris) who will be presenting a seminar :
JAK-STAT pathway inhibition in cancer: a double edged sword
Bio: As part of the “INSERM School’s MD-PhD program”, Lina conducted her PhD training at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, focusing on the identification and characterization of new therapeutic targets in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Lina also trained as a physician and obtained her MD from the Paris Cité University with a specialization in both hematology and pharmacology. Her clinical efforts are currently focused on early drug development in myeloproliferative neoplasms and AML. In 2020, Lina started her own research group in Saint-Louis Research Institute in Paris, as part of the “CCA-INSERM-Bettencourt” physician-scientist program. Her team unraveled the role of the ATPase VCP as a novel dependency involved in AML DNA repair (Roux et al. Science Translational Medicine, 2021) and is currently developing large-scale descriptive and functional translational approaches to better understand myeloid leukemogenesis and decipher innovative therapeutic strategies, with a particular focus on the niche-leukemic crosstalk and environment driven oncogenic signals. Her talk will focus on the hematopoietic and cutaneous paradoxical oncogenic effects of JAK-STAT pathway inhibition, highlighting myeloid malignancies clonal plasticity under targeted therapies on one hand, and exploring the intrinsic and extrinsic effects of JAK inhibition on aggressive skin squamous cell carcinoma development on the other hand.
