The Lille Centre for Infection and Immunity has a unique atomic force microscopy (AFM) platform attached to the "Cellular Microbiology and Physics of Infection" research team, both under the responsibility of Frank Lafont. This platform is composed of 6 AFM microscopes allowing topography measurements of biological samples at the nanometer scale, quantification of mechanical properties and molecular and cellular adhesion properties.

- Bruker Catalyst coupled to a TIRF videomicrocope 2 Zeiss lasers in LNSB2

- Bruker Resolve coupled to a Zeiss Elyra PALM (super-resolution)

- Bruker FastScan Bio

- Bruker Multimode 8

- JPK Nanowizard 3 Ultra coupled to a STED/RESOLFT Abberior Instr. (super-resolution)

- JPK BioMat coupled to a Zeiss inverted microscope

The latter system features FluidFM technology for nanomanipulation and nanoinjection into biological objects. A Formlab 2 3D printer is also available on this platform.

The major original technical advances made thanks to this equipment and the know-how of the CMPI team are

- The introduction and validation of Stiffness tomography, which allows the determination of elasticity differences in biological objects such as cells (Roduit et al. Biophys J 2008, 2009; Janel et al. Nanoscale 2017);

- Correlative microscopy including electron and photon microscopy (including super-resolution) and atomic force microscopy (called CLAFEM, Janel et al., Methods Cell Biol 2017);

- The automation of force measurements in AFM (Dujardin et al. PLoS One 2019);

- The standardization of cell-based elasticity measurements (within the European consortia EU-COST AFM4NanoMed&Bio and EU-ITN Phys2BioMed, Schillers et al., Sci Report 2017).

As for the scientific findings, we can note:

- The identification of the adhesion receptor in N meningitidis (in collaboration with S Bourdoulous, Bernard et al. Nat Med 2012; Maïssa et al. Nat Comm 2017; Denis et al. Nat Microbiol 2019) ;

- Characterization of macroaperture formation in endothelial cells following cellular exposure to anthrax edematous factor or S aureus Edin (in collaboration with E Lemichez, Maddugoda et al., Cell Host &Microb 2011; Gonzalez-Rodriguez et al. Phys Rev Lett 2012; Stefani et al., Nat Comm 2017) ;

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THE CIIL NETWORK

The CRB-EPLS (Centre de Recherche Biomédicale - Espoir Pour La Santé) is a Senegalese non-profit clinical research structure created in 1995 in Saint- Louis in Northern Senegal. This sub-saharian institution is attached to the CIIL as a clinical research field facility and is associated with the Institute Pasteur in Lille as part of the International Network of Pasteur Institutes. The activities of the CRB-EPLS are carried out by more than 40 employees on nearly 2000 m2 of premises. The Center has accessed to rural as well as urban areas in the Senegal River Basin and works in close collaboration with local health authorities. It focuses its investigations on major infectious diseases such as schistosomiasis, malaria or tuberculosis and the associated immune responses. The CRB-EPLS also carries out research on undernutrition among children and non-communicable chronic diseases such as hypertension, obesity and diabetes. CRB-EPLS is renowned for providing a high quality service for the management of clinical trials from Phase 1 to Phase 3 on public health issues specific to sub-Saharan countries.

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