What is your academic background?

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I initially studied Agricultural Engineering at the University of Ghent, in Belgium, because it was difficult for me to choose one single field of interest (such as chemistry, physics, mathematics, biology, etc), but the studies in agricultural engineering had all these different disciplines included, thus, I did not really need to make a choice. After a short stay in Spain as a post-graduate student, I became research assistant to mount European projects back at the University of Ghent. By coincidence, I took a course on microscopy in Heidelberg (Germany), where I got to know a dear friend of mine, who convinced me to do a PhD at the Helmholtz Institute in Braunschweig (Germany) about “marking of specific genomic loci using retroviral vectors”, which was my first contact with the tools I am still optimizing today. After that, in 2000 I moved to a different country again, and started my post-doctoral fellowship in Lyon (France), where I shifted from retroviral vector to lentiviral vector development for gene therapy and where I finally obtained my Research Director position.

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Which have been your main research topics and contributions during your career?

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For 24 years I have been optimizing and engineering new lentiviral vectors for more efficient gene modification of blood cells in vitro and in vivo. Additionally, in 2014, I also started a shared research activity in a lab in Nice, where I worked on the development of new cancer therapies relying on cancer cell metabolism, which merged me in a completely different field of research, unknown to me but fascinating. From the beginning of 2024, I again shifted my shared research interest in Nice toward a new research field on infection and inflammation, while always continuing my commitment in the gene therapy research. I have also been trying to support this field as president of the French and member of the European Society for gene and cell therapy. I would also like to underline that I have to really thank Europe for being able to establish a career in gene gherapy: without the many fellowships that I obtained (EU training and mobility for the PhD, Marie Curie for the post-doc, gene therapy consortia funded by the EU), I would not have been able to accomplish my research.

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How did you get close to this topic?

 

I think that the real reason why I shifted to the gene therapy field during my post-doc is that purely fundamental research (although this is a very important aspect) was not catching enough my interest. I needed to see - at least in the long-term future - a translation into the clinic. When I started in this field no patients were treated with gene therapy vectors yet. Now, 20 years later, we can be proud that many patients have been lifelong cured and we have many gene therapy products, such as the CAR T cells, accepted and being used to cure patients.

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What is something about your career you are proud of?

 

My proud is that the tools I have developed are now used world-wide and facilitate others’ research, allowing to develop new gene therapies that hopefully will treat a lot of patients in the future. The best reward a researcher can receive is that his/her original invention or discovery leads to a medication for patients.

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Do you feel that your career as a researcher has impacted your personal life? What advice can you give to try to manage both? Do you think that, in general, finding this balance has been harder since you are a woman?

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Yes, without any doubt. First, the change between different countries often goes with our job, which means that you always leave behind precious friends and colleagues. I never lost contact with them but of course you certainly will not see them every day as you were used to. In my case, sometimes I had to put in long hours and weekends, but since I see my research more as a “hobby” this was not a problem for me. It of course helped that my partner is also a scientist, so we both knew that our job required sometimes stress and sacrifice of personal time (I must admit that he was the one that insisted and helped me to find a balance between work and private life). My advice would be, if stress gets the better of you or sometimes you are stuck in a project, to take couple of days to resource yourself and then start with new energy. And - of course - to surround yourself with people that are passionate by research and on which you can rely to delegate some of the workload. As a woman, I think it is important that you can rely on and have the understanding of your partner, family or friends to help you with home tasks including taking care of children. This support is precious if as a woman you want to aspire higher positions.

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Have you ever had a role model or someone that inspired and helped you most during your career?

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I actually have been working with a lot of brilliant male and female colleagues and students in my field of research that are very dear to me. However, my mentor is definitely Naomi Taylor. She is a PhD MD working as a research director at IGMM in Montpellier (France) and principal investigator at the NIH in the field of T cell immunotherapy. She inspired, supported and trained me at the start of my career although I was not in her lab but only collaborating with her, and we remained collaborators over the years. She especially advised and trained me for the very competitive exams in France to obtain a fixed position as a researcher. Among all the different advices she gave to me, especially two things still stuck in my head: she has always emphasized how in every design of an experiment the secret lies in the details and how each publication should tell a story, easy to understand by everyone, which means that you need to be selective in the results you will show. Now it is my turn to support the next generation of researchers with the same dedication.

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In the STEM field, unfortunately, gender inequality still exists, and very few are the cases of women holding the higher academic positions. Looking ahead, what changes would you like to see in the scientific community in terms of gender equality and support for women?

 

Actually, it might be a natural evolution in our field that women get more on the forefront, as now at the university, especially for biology and medical studies, in most of the cases female students count much more than 50% of all the students. Additionally, science is never performed alone, it is important to have a reliable network of fellow scientists to get faster to a more robust result. After living in several countries, I really must admit I realized that some EU countries give much more support to women when they have children (day care, shared nannies, after school care), while other countries really do not make enough effort and women are forced to give up their career at least for some time, which gives them a disadvantage for reaching higher positions. This should be better organized and be supported by a political will to change this.​

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What advice would you give to the people approaching to a STEM career, especially to women?

 

I think it is important to get more information when you would like to join a new lab on how the atmosphere, the management and the working conditions are. Accomplishing your research will bring you disappointment, stress and a lot of work load. To be able to retain your motivation you need to be surrounded by the right colleagues that can guide you and give you advice. And especially, as a woman, you should build up your own network of fellow researcher at the national and international level by actively promoting your research through lecturers, meeting participations, accepting invitations from other institutions to build up collaborations or to try to gain visibility by getting involved in evaluation committees (PhD jury member, grant evaluations, meeting organization).