Our teams: HERA
| I am the leader of the HERA vitro group, which has developed and validated a tool, called EpiTox, which is highly applicable to the issue of environmental exposure and health. To our knowledge, we are one of the few teams to have such a mature, original and promising tool for studying the effects of environmental aerosols, or aerosols used for therapeutic purposes, on the biological response of various physiological barriers. The strength of our model lies in its great flexibility, allowing us to vary the nature of the pollutants studied (gaseous, particulate or biological), exposure levels, times and frequencies, as well as cellular or tissue models depending on the health impact under study: respiratory tree, skin, ocular surface, as well as co-cultures recreating cellular interactions such as ocular and nasal epithelial cells or respiratory epithelia and immune cells (THP1). The Epitox tool helps establish the biological plausibility of epidemiological observations. |
Key publications
- Seurat E, Verdin A, Cazier F, Courcot D, Fitoussi R, Vié K, Desauziers V, Momas I, Seta N, Achard S. Influence of the environmental relative humidity on the inflammatory response of skin model after exposure to various environmental pollutants. Environ Research 2021;196:110350. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2020.110350.
View publication - Fitoussi R, Faure MO, Beauchef G, Achard S. Human skin responses to environmental pollutants: A review of current scientific models. Environmental Pollution 2022;306:119316. doi: 10.1016/j.envpol.2022.119316.
View publication - Despréaux P, Jeanton C, Desaulle D, Al Zallouha M, Verdin A, Momas I, Achard S. Innovative graph analysis method to assess gene expression modulation after fine particles exposures of 3D human airway epithelia. Environ Research 2023;221:115296. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2023.115296. Epub 2023 Jan 12. PMID: 36642119.
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