Florence Janody

F. Janody was awarded her Ph.D on December 1999 by the Mediterranean University (France), before joining the laboratory of J. Treisman at the Skirball Institute, USA in 2000 as a Postdoc. During these trainings, her main interest has been to understand how signal transduction cascades regulate gene expression. She established her independency in 2006 at Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC) in Portugal before moving to i3S (Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde)/ Ipatimup (Instituto de Patologia e Imunologia Molecular da Universidade do Porto) early 2018, where she is leading the CYTOSKELETAL REGULATION & CANCER group. Her lab contributed to unveil mechanisms by which the cytoskeleton governs the location, duration, and intensity of cancer signalling pathways activation through diverse mechanisms, ranging from force generation to the spatial distribution of signalling regulators [2011 Dev., 2011 Dev. Biol., 2014 Oncogene, 2014 PLoS One, 2015 Curr. Biol., 2017 Nat. Comm.; 2019-Sci. Rep.; 2023-DMM]. Her lab has also revealed a role of the co-repressors Dachshund in coordinating signalling outputs [2015 Dev., 2016 PLoS Genet.] and developed computational model of large biological networks [2020 Can. Res.; 2021-IJMS] to ultimately define the downstream cytoskeleton-dependent cancer signalling network. Building up on their findings, the Janody´s lab is currently using multi-disciplinary approaches, combining experimental models (Drosophila melanogaster, inducible mammalian epithelial cell models, TNBC patient-derived organoids) and computational modelling to answer four specific questions: How cell shape, a direct readout of intrinsic forces exerted by the cytoskeleton on the cell membrane, constrains the signalling network to predispose for or to hamper tumour initiation? How cytoskeleton-adhesions scaffolds orchestrate the signalling network instructing benign lesions to progress to malignant cancer cells? How the cytoskeleton and forces by the extracellular matrix propel TNBC cell invasion? How cytoskeleton-adhesions scaffolds supervise chemoresistant signalling networks in TNBC? Her work is expected to shed light into the rationale behind cancer signalling network. This knowledge should guide awareness on mechanisms by which the transcriptional programme is supervised by cell architecture to control cell fate decision during normal and disease development. Importantly, it may ultimately translate into tools that are relevant for the therapeutic intervention of cancer.