Coraline Chéneau
Passionate postdoctoral fellow at Nantes Université, working to improve health and stop climate change.
I am a postdoctoral scholar at Nantes Université, where I work to develop a proximal tubule cell model that can enable us to better understand viral infection mechanisms. The role of the kidney is to act as a filter that removes waste from the blood, releasing it through the urine. We mimic this by placing selected cells in a dynamic environment that lets them perform the same function. Our goal is to make it possible to accurately study biological processes in the kidney and remove the need for tests on animals.
Creating human organ models that let us get rid of animal testing and study disease in new ways is a strong motivator for me.
A deep-rooted interest in biology
As far as I can remember, I have always been interested in biology. When I was a teenager, I used to receive a monthly newspaper on “sciences for juniors”. When I finished high school, it was therefore obvious to me that I wanted to go to university to specialize in biology, and when it became time to choose a specialty for my master’s degree, I had become fascinated by cell biology.
Today, my everyday work involves performing multiple tests on the cells we use in our model to ensure that we are close to the physiological conditions, evaluating whether the cell has a corresponding morphology and functionality. The work as a researcher also includes reading other researchers’ work, writing reports, and discussing with colleges to get their advice. Also, like a lot of us, I am filling out paperwork and still have time to take coffee breaks…
Motivated by major healthcare challenges
I recently read that 90% of drug candidates fail in clinical trials. This means that a part of the research will not be clinically relevant. And even if some interesting data can be obtained from this, the main goal of improving human health is not reached and a lot of energy and resources is wasted.
Finding easy and reproducible ways to model human organs that let us answer fundamental biological questions and safely tests new drugs, and that can help us get rid of animal testing are strong motivating factors for me.
One thing that we want to achieve in BIRDIE is to find better ways to test antiviral agents that can improve kidney graft success rates. During kidney grafting, a virus called the BK polyomavirus can reactivate and induce graft rejection, something that occurs in 5% of the grafted patients. The BK polyomavirus infection process is still largely a black box that needs to be investigated. Furthermore, the fact that the virus is species-specific and that non-humans can’t be infected with the human virus strain, highlights the need for more complex human kidney models.
Cycling for change
Biking is one of my big joys and is something I do every day. During the pandemic, it was not recommended to leave France during the summer, so I planned my first itinerant biking vacation in the south of France. I discovered that traveling by bike makes me go to places I wouldn’t have discovered otherwise. Since then, I have been doing it twice a year. I have cycled from Montpellier to Marseille, Amsterdam to Bruges and would like to go to Italy soon!
After the pandemic, I also jumped into climate activism. Trying to improve human quality of life by being a scientist is inspiring and motivating and it makes a lot of sense in my personal and professional life. But every discovery we made that could be applicable in a few years to improve personalized medicine or increase knowledge has no sense if life substantiality is not ensured in a world running into climate chaos and waning biodiversity. Recently a friend told me the following sentence, which still resonates with me: “Is our research shaping a world aligned with our values?”. I don’t have the answer yet, but I am working on it!
BIRDIE Project Website 