FL Lagarrigue

Since the beginning of my career, I have been interested in better understanding diseases at the molecular and cellular level. I obtained my doctorate in cancer biology at the University of Toulouse in 2011. My thesis work in the laboratory of Bernard Payrastre at the Physiopathology Center Toulouse Purpan focused on the cellular function of the phosphoinositides in the context of Shigella flexneri infection, which causes dysentery in humans, and invasive anaplastic large cell lymphoma. I then joined the laboratory of Mark Ginsberg at the University of California, San Diego, where I conducted work on the signaling events that control the affinity of integrin adhesion receptors for their cognate ligands, an event central to their function in blood cells. My studies have helped establish the emerging paradigm that signaling events in leukocytes operate in both cell-type and integrin-specific ways, thus providing unique pathways to manipulate the recruitment of particular leukocytes into specific tissues. In 2019, I was recruited at the CNRS as a permanent researcher to develop a research program on integrin-mediated adhesion in immune cells at the Institute of Pharmacology and Structural Biology (IPBS) in Toulouse. In 2021, I obtained the ATIP-Avenir funding program in partnership with the ARC Foundation to launch my own research team on the dynamic regulation of immune cell integrins and the interaction with cancer pathogenesis and chronic inflammatory diseases at IPBS.