History, structure and location of the unit

The Centre de Recherche UMR1231- LNC was originally created as UMR866 “Lipids, Nutrition, Cancer-LNC” on January 1, 2007, and grew out of a joint program by several groups that led to the signing of a four-year contract with INSERM, the University of Burgundy and EPHE. The founding teams of the LNC Research Center come from INSERM units U498 (“Intravascular metabolism of lipoproteins”), U517 (“Cell death and cancer”), and EPI-106 (“Epidemiology of digestive cancers”). This structure was created by Eric Solary, then Laurent Lagrost became the structure’s manager. Other groups from the UFR des Sciences de la Vie, CNRS and ENSBANA (now AgroSup) joined the unit for the 2007-2011 contract. During the second contract 2012-2016, the LNC Research Center comprised 8 distinct groups, with a total of 218 people (87 researchers/teaching-researchers + 68 technicians/engineers + 19 post-docs + 44 PhD students).On January 1, 2017, the unit became UMR1231. The EA4271 GAD headed by Laurence Faivre and an ERC team created by Lionel Apetoh then joined the LNC Center. The structure comprises 9 teams with 269 members (104 researchers/teaching-researchers + 87 technicians/engineers + 18 post-docs + 60 PhD students). On January 1, 2020, Professor François Ghiringhelli became the unit’s director.

This structure generates its scientific wealth through the diversity of its themes, involving top-level, internationally-recognized researchers in fields as varied as cancer biology (C Garrido), pulmonary fibrosis (P Bonniaud), TNF signaling (O Micheau) and tumor immunology (F Ghiringhelli), Lipid metabolism and stress (L Lagrost and D Masson), apolipoprotein pharmacokinetics and dynamics, digestive cancer epidemiology and hematology (C Lepage, M Maynadie), developmental genetics (L Faivre and C Thauvin), mouse neurogenetics (B Yalcin), translational hematology (M Callanan and L Delva).

The Center has been renewed for a further 4 years to January 1, 2024, and has changed its name to CTM: Center for Translational and Molecular Medicine. It comprises 9 teams, with the creation of a new team focused on death receptor signaling, headed by Olivier Micheau. The structure currently comprises 9 teams with a total of 337 staff (147 researchers/teaching-researchers, 110 technicians/engineers, 12 post-docs and 68 PhD students).