CRCT LAUREATE WINS LAURETTE FUGAIN 2021 AWARD

The Laurette Fugain 2021 Prize was awarded during the Congress of the French Society of Haematology on Friday 10 September. Among the two winners, Dr. Morgane Gourvest was rewarded for her thesis work, carried out under the supervision of Dr. Marina Bousquet and Prof. Pierre Brousset (Team 7 CRCT), on the involvement of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in acute myeloid leukaemia (AML).

In this study, they describe the oncogenic role of a new lncRNA named LONA (LncRNA Overexpressed in NPM1 mutated AML) overexpressed in AML patients and carrying the NPM1 nucleophosmin mutation. The presence of the NPM1 mutant induces a delocalisation of LONA from the cytoplasm to the nucleus, which impacts its cellular functions. Loss- and gain-of-function strategies have shown that LONA exerts opposite effects on myeloid differentiation depending on whether it is nuclear or cytoplasmic by regulating the expression of crucial genes. In vivo, overexpression of LONA reduces the survival of transplanted mice, whereas its inactivation sensitises them to cytarabine treatment.

Published in Leukemia in June 2021, this study therefore highlights a new oncogenic process associated with the NPM1 mutation and shows the new LONA lncRNA to be an important player in leukemogenesis processes.

Since then, Morgane Gourvest is doing a post-doctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Kathryn Moore at the NYU Langone Health Institute (USA) and is pursuing the study of lncRNAs in the chronic activation of the immune system in atherosclerosis and cardiometabolic diseases.