Jean-Baptiste Vannier, leader of the CSC’s Telomere Replication and Stability Group, has been awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant of €1.5 million for five years. He was selected from 3,273 applicants (9 % success rate).
ERC Starting Grants aim to support up-and-coming scientists who are about to establish a new research team and start conducting independent research.
Jean-Baptiste’s group will investigate the role of telomeres in DNA replication. Telomeres are the physical ends of chromosomes that consist of repetitive nucleotide sequences, which act as disposable buffers to protect downstream genes from degradation.
They are not only linear in structure, but can also adopt a loop and a layered structure called a G-quadruplex. When telomeres fail to fold into these structures, the genome becomes unstable, which is a hallmark of every cancer. Telomeres can also be problematic for cells during DNA replication because they form barriers to replication machinery and must be opened by specific enzymes. If these enzymes are absent, the structures will fail to open, which can result in the development of rare diseases including Werner syndrome, Dyskeratosis congenita and increased cancer risk.
“It is crucial to improve our understanding of the dynamics of telomere formation in order to help us develop better targeted anti-cancer drugs,” says Jean-Baptiste, who joined the CSC in September last year from Cancer Research UK.
“I’m really excited. Getting an ERC Starting Grant is a tremendous achievement. It acknowledges the fact that the project is good enough to be financed externally, while, at the same time, it enables us to build our group much more quickly,” he adds.
The grant money will enable Jean-Baptiste to increase the size of his independent group, established with a MRC Career Development Award. He will hire two post-doctoral researchers for five years and buy anAxio Imager.M2 microscope for transmitted light and epi-fluorescence microscopy.
Altogether 4 CSC researchers have been awarded one of the highly endowed ERC grants. Besides Jean-Baptiste Vannier, these are Irene Miguel-Aliaga, Till Bartke and Amanda Fisher.
Established in 2007 by the EU, the ERC in Strasbourg is the first pan-European funding organisation to support investigator-driven cutting-edge research on the basis of scientific excellence. Since 2007, the ERC has funded over 4,500 projects across Europe. More information on ERC funding and statistics here.
