Anne Dejean

Professor at the Pasteur Institute and Research Director at Inserm, head of the Nuclear Organisation and Oncogenesis Unit at the Pasteur Institute, Anne Dejean is internationally renowned for her discovery of the oncogenic role of mutated retinoic acid receptors (RARs) in cancer. She first found such a mutation in Hepatitis B Virus-associated liver cancer. She then discovered the PML-RAR oncogenic fusion protein as the cause of acute promyelocytic leukemia. Anne Dejean and her team clarified the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying the complete cure of this leukemia by retinoic acid and arsenic, a treatment discovered in China and that remains a paradigm for oncogene-targeted cancer therapy. She found that therapeutic doses of retinoic acid restores the normal functions of the mutated RAR, inducing terminal differentiation of the leukemic cells. In parallel, A. Dejean discovered that nuclear organelles, which she named the PML Nuclear Bodies, are disrupted in PML-RARα leukemic cells but restored by retinoic acid, thus providing a cellular mechanism for the exquisite sensitivity of this leukemia to retinoids. She then demonstrated that arsenic triggers the attachment of the small SUMO protein to PML-RAR, which will ultimately lead to PML-RAR degradation. Most recently, she discovered a key role for SUMO in controlling chromatin function, innate immunity and establishment of cell identity. She is one of the world leaders in the fields of nuclear receptors and cancer and contributed pionnering concepts in the SUMO area. She is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), 1995, and the French Academy of Sciences, 2004. She has received many prestigious awards, including the Mergier-Bourdeix Prize of the French Academy of Science, 1997, the Gagna and Van Heck Prize, 2003, the Prize L'Oréal-Unesco for Women in Science, 2010, the Grand Prix Inserm, 2014, and the Sjöberg Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 2018.