Francoise Helmbacher
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fhelmbacher.bsky.social
Francoise Helmbacher
@fhelmbacher.bsky.social
880 followers 1.4K following 18 posts
Developmental Biologist, #CNRS researcher, studying morphogenesis, muscle regeneration and pathologies, and curious for all life sciences.
Lab website: https://helmbacherlab.org/
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fhelmbacher.bsky.social
Establishment of a mouse hepatocellular carcinoma tumoroid panel recapitulating inter- and intra- heterogeneity for disease modelling and combinatorial drug discovery
biosignaling.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....
another big milestone from the Maina lab @crcm.bsky.social ! Contratulations!
Figure 1 : Schematic representation of the overall study. (A) Spontaneously generated tumours from the Alb-R26Met mouse model were monitored by PC-CT using the PIXSCAN-FLI imaging system. Dissected tumours: 1) were characterized by Haematoxylin and Eosin staining (HES) histological analyses; 2) underwent both mechanical and enzymatical cell dissociation. (B) Dissociated cells were seeded in 2D culture conditions. Primary HCC cells were characterized morphologically and molecularly by RT-qPCR and Western Blots (WB), then used for drug testing. (C) Primary HCC cells were secondarily cultured in 3D condition into Matrigel after few passages in order to generate tumoroids, which were further characterized
October 3, 2025 at 10:21 AM
fhelmbacher.bsky.social
Derivation and analysis of human somatic sensory neuron subtypes facilitated through fluorescent hPSC reporters
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Fantastic preprint from Joriene de Nooij and colleagues
Legend Figure 4 from Malka-Gibor et al., biorxiv: Generation and validation of hESC reporter lines for low threshold mechanoreceptors and proprioceptors. (A) Schematic of ESC differentiation protocol to bias neurons toward a mechanoreceptor and/or proprioceptor sensory identity. (B) Expression of BRN3A and ISLET in DIV11 EBs derived from MAFA:tdT (mechanoreceptor) and RUNX3:tdT (proprioceptor) hESCs. (C) Expression of tdT in DIV18 and DIV30 “mechanoreceptor” sensory neurons derived from MAFA:tdT hESCs. (E) MafA:tdT+ neurons co-express ISLET and cMAF at DIV30. (F) Expression of tdT in DIV21 and DIV39 “proprioceptor” sensory neurons derived from RUNX3:tdT hESCs.
March 9, 2025 at 2:39 PM
fhelmbacher.bsky.social
Another amazing milestone from Flavio Maina & Colleagues Floriane Cannet and Celia Sequera et al. 🎉👏 !

Tracing specificity of immune landscape remodelling associated with distinct anticancer treatments: iScience www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

@crcm.bsky.social @borgjp.bsky.social
Graphical abstract. Top part: Similarity of molecular/Immune profiles and heterogeneity between HCC Mouse models and HCC patients, with positive correlation of mouse and patient-derived omic datasets. Bottom Part: The distinct action of anticancer drugs on the tumoral immunity highlights its plasticity. The authors have examined evolution and remodeling of the tumour immune landscape of tumours before and after distinct treatments (treatment 1: MEK-I + BCL-XL-I; treatment 2: Decitabine), and found different profiles of remodelling in responding tumours, leading to partially flattening the immune heterogeneity of pre-treatment tumours.
February 28, 2025 at 1:33 PM
fhelmbacher.bsky.social
New review on FAPs by @jyotijaiswal.bsky.social and colleagues
Exploring the therapeutic potential of fibroadipogenic progenitors in muscle disease

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
Figure 2. Cellular choreography during acute repair stages of injured healthy and dystrophic muscle. The schematic shows the contrast between the well-coordinated regenerative response following a bout of acute injury in healthy muscle vs dysregulation of this process in dystrophic muscle.
February 18, 2025 at 1:22 PM