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Florent Petitprez

Principal Investigator

Centre for Reproductive Health, Institure for Regeneration and Repair, University of Edinburgh

Biography

I am a computational biologist with interests in studying the interplay between the immune system and cancer. Following studies in bioinformatics at Ecole polytechnique and biotechnology at AgroParisTech, I pursued a PhD at the Cordeliers Research Centre in Paris. During my PhD, I developed methods to accurately characterise immune infiltrates in tumours from bulk transcriptomics and I applied them to study the tumour microenvironment of different cancer types. With the group, we demonstrated the role of B cells and Tertiary Lymphoid Structures in favouring patients survival and response to immunotherapy. After a first postdoctoral position at the French League Against Cancer, I moved to the University of Edinburgh in 2020 to join the group of Professor Jeffrey Pollard, studying the phenotype and role of tumour-associated macrophages in various cancer types. I obtained in 2022 a Wellcome Early Career Award that allows me to study the role of macrophages in tertiary lymphoid structures in breast, ovarian and endometrial cancers, notably using spatially-resolved transcriptomics technologies.
My research interests focus on understanding how the composition and organisation of the tumour microenvironments - i.e. what cells, notably immune cells, are present in a tumour and how they are organised - affect the disease progression, the clinical outcome for patients, or can inform therapeutic decisions. In particular, I focus on understanding the functioning and impact of tertiary lymphoid structures, lymph-node like cell aggregates found in some tumours that are often associated with a longer survival and better response to immunotherapies. I also develop methodological approaches on how best to analyse and understand the microenvironments compositions using gene expression data - notably spatial transcriptomics.

Interests

  • Immuno-oncology
  • Cancer genomics
  • Translational studies
  • Spatial transcriptomics
  • Tumour microenvironment

Education

  • PhD in Immunology, 2018

    Cordeliers Research Center & French League Against Cancer

  • Bioinformatics engineer, 2015

    Ecole polytechnique

  • Biotechnlogy engineer, 2015

    AgroParisTech

Recent Publications

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Experience

 
 
 
 
 

Post-doctoral research Fellow

MRC Centre for Reproductive Health, The Queen’s Medical Research Institute, University of Edinburgh

Sep 2020 – Present Edinburgh, United Kingdom
 
 
 
 
 

Research scientist

Programme Cartes d’Identité des Tumeurs, French League Against Cancer

Dec 2018 – Aug 2020 Paris, France
  • Post-doctoral research scientist position at the Cartes d’Identité des Tumeurs program.
  • Cancer genomics on multiple tumor types, including lung or kidney tumors and soft-tissue sarcoma, with interests in tumor immunology and response to immune checkpoint blockade.
  • Experience with NGS data (whole exome and RNA sequencing), as well as pipeline design.
 
 
 
 
 

PhD student

Cordeliers Research Center & French League Against Cancer

Dec 2015 – Nov 2018 Paris, France
  • Ph.D. in immunology. My thesis, entitled “Integrated analysis and clinical impact of immune and stromal microenvironments in solid tumors”, was oriented around two main axes:
  • Methodological axis: development and amelioration of MCP-counter, a tool to assess the compostion of the immune and stromal tumor microenvironment from bulk transcriptomics.
  • Translational axis: application to solid tumor samples to decipher the relationship between the tumor and its microenvironment. My main contribution was an immune-based classification of soft-tissue sarcoma, strongly associated with patients’ survival and response to checkpoint blockade.

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