Sandrine Etienne-Manneville

Sandrine Etienne-Manneville is Directrice de Recherche at the CNRS and heads the Cellular dynamics in Physiology and Pathology CNRS department as well as the Cell Polarity, Migration and Cancer lab. She obtained her PhD in Immunology in 1999, working on the regulation of leukocyte infiltration in the central nervous system. PhD work, under PO Couraud supervision, provided new insight into the role of adhesion molecules in the control of cytoskeletal rearrangements (J. Immunol 1998, 1999a, 1999b, 2000). During her four years of postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Prof A.Hall at the MRC-LMCB in London, she studied the role of Rho GTPases in astrocyte migration, before joining the CNRS at the Curie Institute (Paris, France) in 2003. In 2006, she moved to the Pasteur Institute (Paris, France) to become group leader and pursue her study of cell polarization and migration. Sandrine Etienne-Manneville is an EMBO member and has received several awards for her work. Her demonstration that adhesion molecules activate conserved polarity pathways, such as the Cdc42-Par6-aPKC pathway, has been a major breakthrough in the field (Cell 2001, Nature 2003, JCB 2010a). Her study of polarity signaling in migrating astrocytes revealed the role of major tumour suppressors (APC(Adenomatous Polyposis Coli), LKB1, PTEN, Scrib and Dlg) in the control of cell polarity, leading to the now commonly accepted hypothesis that loss of polarity could directly promote oncogenesis (JCB 2005, Curr Biol 2006, Hum Mol Gen 2008, EMBO 2011, Elife 2015). More recently, she revealed that cadherins control front-to-rear polarization to direct astrocyte migration, broadening the role of adherens junctions in polarity and migration to non-epithelial cells (JCB 2009, JCS 2011). SEM also described a novel treadmilling phenomenon controlling the maintenance and plasticity of adherens junctions during collective migration (NCB 2014). The astrocyte model, that SEM has developed, has proven to be ideal to demonstrate the essential role of microtubules and intermediate filaments in cell polarization and directed migration (Cell 2001, JCS 2012). This model) has paved the way to a better characterization of cytoskeletal interplays (JCB 2005, JCB 2010b, JCB 2013, JCB 2017, JCB 2018).