Dr. Jean-François Côté
Professor, Clinical Research Institute of Montreal (IRCM)
Adjunct Professor, Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology
Adjunct Member, Department of Medicine, Division of Experimental Medicine
The research team of Dr. Côté is focused on the proteins that transmit signals within cells. They are studying the cellular and molecular processes that contribute to the spread of breast cancer to understand how breast cancer cells behave during metastasis. Ultimately, their work will yield important information about the signalling networks that contribute to normal cell biology and cancer metastasis and could lead to innovative treatments to limit the spread of cancer.
1. Molecular mechanisms controlling breast cancer metastasis. We are currently interested to uncover the contributions of the kinase AXL to metastasis. Our hypothesis is that AXL intracellular trafficking and compartmentalized signalling are required for metastatic progression.
2. Defining the regulators of tumor dormancy. We are interested to define genes that control breast cancer dormancy. A technical obstacle in studying dormancy is the immunogenicity of fluorescent markers and/or Cas9-based tools in in vivo settings. We aim to bypass this challenge by generating a Cas9-tolerant mouse that can be exploited for screening and validating candidate regulators of BC dormancy in an authentic patient-mimicking setting.
3. Cellular and molecular control of myoblast fusion. Cell-cell fusion is essential for the formation of muscles. How the muscle cells, myoblasts, fuse together to form multi-nucleated fibers remains incompletely defined. We identify a pathway composed of Elmo-Dock and Rac proteins as essential for myoblast fusion. Now, the question is to define the downstream and upstream components to gain mechanistic insights. The knowledge gained will be important to devise novel therapies aiming at increasing fusion in muscle diseases.