CIIL - NEWSLETTER , June 2026 - N° 19

Born and raised in Alsace, I have always been curious about understanding how the world around us works, particularly in relation to biology and health. After completing my scientific high school diploma, I spent two years studying Life Sciences at the University of Strasbourg before joining the Strasbourg Higher School of Biotechnology (ESBS), where I earned an engineering degree in biotechnology, a Master's degree in Molecular Biology, and a University Diploma in Eco-Responsibility.

Since my undergraduate studies, my curiosity has led me to undertake numerous internships in a variety of academic research laboratories, working in fields such as structural biology, molecular biology, immunology, enzymology, and drug development. In particular, during my first year of engineering school, I completed a three-month internship at CIIL in Ruben Hartkoorn’s team. There, I worked on a project aimed at understanding and optimizing combinations of prodrugs and booster compounds targeting transcriptional regulators to combat multidrug-resistant bacteria. This internship gave me my first insight into research on antibiotic resistance.

To experience a different environment from academia, I completed my final-year internship in industry at New England Biolabs in the United States under the supervision of Peter Weigele and Yan-Jiun Lee. My research project focused on the biochemistry of phage enzymes involved in DNA hypermodification, a defense mechanism against bacterial restriction enzymes. More specifically, I characterized the activity of the thymidylate synthase family and engineered these enzymes to alter their substrates or the types of hypermodifications they produce, with the goal of developing novel molecular tools.

At the same time, I prepared for and successfully passed the Lille Doctoral School competition, securing funding for a PhD position in Ruben Hartkoorn’s team. I therefore returned to CIIL to pursue doctoral research on a topic that is particularly important to me: antibiotic resistance.

For the past three years, I have been learning and training in drug development research while investigating, among other topics, resistance mechanisms in Klebsiella pneumoniae, the infectiology of clinical isolates, and drug pharmacology. I had the opportunity to establish a new infection model within our team using Galleria mellonellalarvae, which allows us to study both the virulence of clinical strains and the activity of our compounds, alone or in combination.

I also received training in animal experimentation alongside Laurye Van Maele from the Bacteria, Antibiotics & Immunity (BAI) team to evaluate the most effective therapeutic combinations in a murine pneumonia model. During my PhD, I identified promising combinations of efflux pump inhibitors (EPIs) and antibiotics capable of overcoming resistance in multidrug-resistant K. pneumoniae strains, both in vitro and in vivo, while also uncovering the underlying mechanisms involved.

After completing my PhD, I hope to return closer to the mountains, as one of my favorite activities—hiking—has largely been put on hold during my three years in Lille. Sorry, but the slag heaps of Northern France never quite managed to convince me…