Over the past 20 years, the Foundation Bettencourt Schuller has awarded the Prix Coup d’élan to two CNRS and two INSERM researchers to support them in creating their team or new research unit.
This year, our newly recruited group leader Pamela Schnupf is one of the recipients of this prestigious French research prize. This prize will help her to set up her laboratory of Host-Microbiota Interaction at the Institut Necker Enfants Malades by providing funding for critical equipment needed for her project “Unique attributes of a gut commensal relevant in health and disease”. Pamela’s team aims to characterize and better understand the unique life cycle of the unusual commensal bacterium Segmented filamentous bacteria (SFB) and how this bacterium is able to potently stimulate the postnatal maturation of the gut immune system and induce a unique homeostatic immune environment that protects the host from pathogens in and outside of the gut. The team then aims to apply their insights gained through this fundamental research to develop this unusual immunostimulatory commensal as a novel vaccine delivery platform.