Renaud Poincloux

Renaud Poincloux is a cell biologist working as a PI in Isabelle Maridonneau-Parini’s group at the IPBS, Toulouse. He obtained his PhD in cell biology at the University of Toulouse in 2006. His thesis work focused on podosome formation and characterization of macrophage migration in three-dimensional environments (Cougoule et al. 2010 Blood; Van Goethem et al. 2010 J. Immunol.; Poincloux et al. 2007 J. Cell Physiol.). He then joined Philippe Chavrier’s laboratory at the Institut Curie for two years, where he worked on the mechanisms involved in the formation of cancer cell invadopodia and on the mechanisms used by breast cancer cells to invade 3D matrices (Hawkins et al. 2011 Biophys. J.; Poincloux et al. 2011 PNAS USA; Poincloux et al. J. Cell Science 2009; Lizarraga#, Poincloux# et al. 2010 Cancer Res.; Steffen et al. 2008 Curr. Biol.). In 2008, he was recruited as a permanent research engineer by the CNRS to develop new imaging approaches dedicated to solving cell biology problems. With Isabelle's team, he has made an important contribution to the field of macrophage migration by demonstrating that macrophages have the unique capacity among leukocytes to use two different migration modes depending on the architecture of the extracellular matrix, and they have begun revealing the role of podosomes in mesenchymal migration of macrophages (Gui et al. 2018 Cancer Immunol. Res.; Vérollet et al. 2015 Blood; Guiet et al. 2012 J. Biol. Chem.). Recently, his lab designed the first and only method to evaluate the protrusion forces of podosomes and started investigating the molecular mechanisms of protrusion force generation (Labernadie et al. 2014 Nat. Commun.; Proag et al. 2015 ACS Nano; Bouissou et al. 2017 ACS Nano; Cervero et al. 2018 Nat Commun.). Renaud will officially lead his own team at the IPBS, with Christel Vérollet, CR INSERM, from January 2021.