Erasmus MC : Catherine Robin

Catherine Robin received her PhD in Cell Biology in 2000 from the Paris VII University in Paris (France), where she identified lympho-myeloid stem cells in human cord blood, adult bone marrow, mobilized peripheral blood and human embryos by using in vitro clonal cultures and NOD-SCID xenotransplantation assays. Subsequently, she was awarded by a French fellowship (“La ligue nationale contre le cancer”) followed by a Marie Curie long-term fellowship for a post-doctoral training period in the laboratory of Prof. E. Dzierzak, in the Cell Biology Department of the Erasmus MC. There, her research focused on understanding the precise localisation and regulation of the first hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) as they emerge in the mid-gestation mouse embryo in the aorta-gonad-mesonephros (AGM) region. She notably identified new signalling molecules involved in the survival and expansion process of embryonic HSCs, including the well-known adult hematopoietic cytokine IL-3 and the developmental signaling molecule, BMP-4. In 2006, she received a VIDI award from NWO that allowed her to start her own research group. By combining time-lapse confocal imaging and new dissection procedures, she visualized the deeply located aorta in the mouse embryo. She imaged, for the first time, the dynamic de novo emergence of the first HSCs directly from aortic endothelial cells that have a hemogenic potential. Her long term goals are to characterize, in the embryo, the direct HSC precursors and the mechanisms implicated in the transition hemogenic endothelium to HSCs, the HSC niches composition and function during ontogeny, the inter-relationship between HSCs and their niches, the cellular and molecular signature of the intra-aortic clusters and the HSC fate determination mechanisms.

• Carayol et al. (1998) Eur J Immunol 28:1991-2002
• Robin et al. (1999) Br J Haematol104:809-819
• Robin et al (1999) J Exp Med 189:1601-1610
• Debili et al. (2001) Blood 97:2023-2030
• Tavian et al. (2001) Immunity 15:487-495
• de Bruijn et al. (2002) Immunity16:673-683
• North et al. (2002) Immunity 16:661-672
• Ravet et al. (2002) J Hematother Stem Cell Res11:327-336
• Robin et al. (2003) Oncol Res13:315-321
• Mendes et al. (2005) Development132:1127-1136
• Robin et al. (2005) Methods Mol Med105:257-272
• Durand et al. (2006) Haematologica 91:1172-1179
• Robin et al. (2006) Developmental Cell 11:171-180
• Durand et al. (2007) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 104:20838-843
• Robin et al. (2009) Cell Stem Cell 5:385-395
• Boisset et al. (2010) Nature 2010;464:116-120