2024-03-09 16:00:13
Raphaël Rodriguez, November 21, 2023. WILLIAM BEAUCARDET/BETTENCOURT FOUNDATION
“Iron Man.” The nickname seems forged for him – and not just for his iron motivation. Firstly because Raphaël Rodriguez, chemist and biologist at the Institut Curie (Paris), unfailingly explores, in the crucible of our cells, the role of iron and copper. How do these two metals participate in the development of cancers or inflammatory diseases? This is the question he pursues with fervor. Then because in June 2009, under a blazing sun, he finished the Ironman in Nice “in 13 hours and 30 minutes”, he specifies. A crazy challenge, which combines 3.8 kilometers of swimming, 180.2 kilometers of cycling and a marathon (42.2 kilometers), and brings together 3,000 of the world’s best athletes each year. “I wanted to participate in this competition in support of Amnesty International, he says in a voice where there is still a hint of a sunny accent. And then, research involves a lot of failures, sometimes linked to circumstances beyond our control. By participating in this event, I had the feeling of regaining a little control over my destiny. »
Raphaël Rodriguez is there was prepared alone, in one winter, in Cambridge (United Kingdom), where he was finishing his postdoc. That’s ten to twenty hours of training per week. “I learned a lot about myself, about discipline and rigor, about effort management. » With nothing more than the book of advice from a coach, Joe Friel, Going Long (VeloPress, 2009, untranslated). “Go far”: a whole program, which he will happily follow.
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On February 15, the CNRS announced that the researcher, already winner of the 2023 Liliane Bettencourt prize for life sciences, will receive this year, at age 45, his famous silver medal. For the time of a ceremony, he will therefore have to abandon his two favorite metals, iron and copper. Already in 2019, he received the Tetrahedron prize for young researcher in bio-organic chemistry.
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How do some of our cells become inflammatory? Why do some cancer cells metastasize? To these two questions he answered in the magazine Naturein May 2023, highlighting the role of “guilty” molecular. It is the overabundance of a protein (CD44) on the surface of cells that will trigger a cascade of harmful effects. Iron and copper ions then enter the cell en masse. Copper ions, in particular, are channeled to the mitochondria, these mini-factories that produce cellular fuel. They trigger a chain reaction which ends up activating, in the nucleus, the genes responsible for an inflammatory storm or a metamorphosis of cancer cells… which then metastasize.
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