Dr. Danijela Vignjevic, Institute Curie, Paris, France

Host: Johanna Ivaska (johanna.ivaska@utu.fi)

Dr Vignjevic leads the Cell Migration and Invasion group in the INSERM/Institut Curie. She obtained her PhD degree in 2003 in Gary Borisy’s lab at the Northwestern University Medical School (Chicago, US). Following a very successful postdoctoral fellowship in Daniel Louvard’s lab at Institut Curie (Paris, FR), she then started her own independent research group at the same institute.

The broad objective of Dr Vignjevic’s research is to understand how epithelial cells interact with their microenvironment during migration, focusing on the mechanism of cell migration and the role of the actin cytoskeleton in this process. Danijela’s group uses the gut as a model system to understand cell migration in homeostasis, wound healing and cancer invasion. Their research strategy combines molecular and cell biology techniques with live-cell imaging. In particular, her group uses 2D and 3D in vitro cell cultures, ex vivo tissue cultures, and different transgenic mouse models to study cell migration in detail.

For more information and for some beautiful examples of the group’s imaging capabilities, please visit their website.

Selected (recent) publications:
Barbazán J, Vignjevic DM (2018) Cancer associated fibroblasts: is the force the path to the dark side? Curr Opin Cell Biol, 56:71-79

Baschieri F, Dayot S, Elkhatib N, Ly N, Capmany A, Schauer K, Betz T, Vignjevic DM, Poincloux R, Montagnac G (2018) Frustrated endocytosis controls contractility-independent mechanotransduction at clathrin-coated structures. Nat Commun. 9(1):3825

Clark AG, Simon A, Aizel K, Bibette J, Bremond N, Vignjevic DM (2018). 3D cell migration in the presence of chemical gradients using microfluidics. Methods Cell Biol, 147:133-147

Alexandros Glentis, Philipp Oertle, Pascale Mariani, Aleksandra Chikina, Fatima El Marjou, Youmna Attieh, Francois Zaccarini, Marick Lae, Damarys Loew, Florent Dingli, Philemon Sirven, Marie Schoumacher, Basile G Gurchenkov, Marija Plodinec, Danijela Matic Vignjevic (2017) Cancer-associated fibroblasts induce metalloprotease-independent cancer cell invasion of the basement membrane. Nature communications: 924

Koceila Aizel, Andrew G Clark, Anthony Simon, Sara Geraldo, Anette Funfak, Pablo Vargas, Jérôme Bibette, Danijela Matic Vignjevic, Nicolas Bremond (2017) A tuneable microfluidic system for long duration chemotaxis experiments in a 3D collagen matrix. Lab on a chip: DOI: 10.1039/c7lc00649g

Youmna Attieh, Andrew G Clark, Carina Grass, Sophie Richon, Marc Pocard, Pascale Mariani, Nadia Elkhatib, Timo Betz, Basile Gurchenkov, Danijela Matic Vignjevic (2017) Cancer-associated fibroblasts lead tumor invasion through integrin-β3-dependent fibronectin assembly. The Journal of Cell Biology, 216(11):3509-3520

Jorge Barbazan, Lorena Alonso-Alconada, Nadia Elkhatib, Sara Geraldo, Vasily Gurchenkov, Alexandros Glentis, Guillaume van Niel, Roberta Palmulli, Beatriz Fernandez, Patricia Viaño, Tomás García-Caballero, Rafael López López, Miguel Abal, Danijela Matic Vignjevic (2017) Liver metastasis is facilitated by the adherence of circulating tumor cells to vascular fibronectin deposits. Cancer Research, 77(13):3431-3441

Youmna Attieh, Danijela Matic Vignjevic (2016) The hallmarks of CAFs in cancer invasion. European Journal of Cell Biology, 493-502

Andrew G Clark, Danijela Matic Vignjevic (2015) Modes of cancer cell invasion and the role of the microenvironment. Current Opinion in Cell Biology, 13-22