La thématique du laboratoire de l’équipe d’Adam Telerman porte sur la réversion tumorale, un processus rare au cours duquel les cellules cancéreuses perdent leur phénotype malin, et deviennent des cellules dites révertantes. Plusieurs protéines clefs impliquées dans cette transformation ont été mises en évidence, dont TCTP (Translationally Controlled Tumor Protein). La protéine TCTP est également impliquée dans la régulation de l’apoptose en interagissant et en renforçant l’activité anti-apoptotique de Mcl-1 et de Bcl-xl, deux protéines appartenant à la famille des Bcl-2. Ce projet s’attache à comprendre en termes moléculaires le mode d’action de TCTP au cours de l’apoptose. / Adam Telerman’s team research focuses on tumor reversion, a rare process in which cancer cells lose their malignant phenotype, and therefore become revertant. Many key proteins were showed to be involved in this transformation, including TCTP (translationally Controlled Tumor Protein). TCTP protein is also involved in apoptosis regulation by interacting and strengthening the anti-apoptotic activity of Mcl-1 and Bcl-xl, two proteins from Bcl-2 family.

Proteins from the Bcl-2 family are now for over 30 years widely studied mainly for their key role in apoptosis, a principal mode of regulated cell death. In the last ten years Bcl-2 proteins were also linked to the regulation of cellular signaling, mainly cellular metabolism and respiration. In this study we aimed to analyze non-apoptotic function of Bcl-2 proteins by their genetic elimination using the CRISPR-Cas12a approach and by the subsequent analysis of mitochondrial respiration, glycolysis and metabolic profiling. Our results confirmed that Bcl-2 proteins can modulate the level of mitochondrial respiration. The elimination of anti-apoptotic proteins Bcl-2, Bcl-XL and Mcl-1 decreased high respiration of cells lacking pro-apoptotic proteins Bax and Bak to the levels observed in parental U87-MG glioblastoma cells. Therefore, the loss of anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 proteins has greatly impacted mitochondrial respiration and it points to their role in a regulation of oxidative phosphorylation.