Steeve Boulant,

Fun Fact: I speak English and French and used to be a chef in a restaurant in Lyon, France. We study how the intestinal epithelium combats enteric pathogens. We believe that to gain a comprehensive understanding of the molecular mechanisms regulating gut homeostasis (finely tuned balance between response against enteric pathogens vs. tolerance of commensals), an integrative system approach needs to be implemented and exploited. To achieve this, we combine stem cell biology, virology, genomics, bioengineering, and cell biology to dissect host-pathogen interactions at the intestinal mucosa surface. Our long-term goal is to develop technologies and cross-disciplinary pipelines to tailor pharmacological interventions to both the host (patient specific, cell type specific, or pathology specific) and the pathogen (norovirus, coronavirus, rotavirus, astrovirus). Our work satellites around three axes: impact of the gut specific microenvironment on host-pathogen interactions, single-cell approach to define host-enteric pathogen interactions in tissue and tissue-like environments, and molecular definition of cellular polarity and its impact on intestinal epithelium functions and host-pathogen interactions.

We study how enteric viral pathogens (rotavirus, norovirus, astrovirus…) infect and replicate in the human gastro-intestinal tract. We aim at defining how host/enteric pathogen interactions is coordinated at the molecular level in space and time and how these complex interactions can either lead to pathology development or resolution of viral infection. Our goal is to exploit these mechanisms to develop novel antiviral therapeutic approaches and pharmacological interventions to treat inflammatory bowel diseases. We use a multidisciplinary approach combining molecular and cellular biology, state-of-the-art live single molecule imaging, bio-engineering (to simulate the physiological microenvironment) and single cell transcriptomic approaches. Our integrative research approach allows us to address within a tissue how individual cell types communicate together to coordinate different antiviral strategies to ultimately lead to viral clearance while maintaining tissue homeostasis.

See more at: https://www.boulantlab.com/