PhD position – Therapeutic immunology
Contact
Philippe Georgel : pgeorgel@unistra.fr or Sylviane Muller : sylviane.muller@unistra.fr
Offer details
Context
The proposed MASH-Flow program is supported by the French National Research Agency (ANR). It is a multidisciplinary project that combines the expertise of several laboratories in Strasbourg (Sylviane Muller), Reims (Sébastien Blaise and Eric Courot), and Paris (Etienne Jacotot).
This offer is open for a thesis contract starting at the end of 2025 or beginning of 2026 for a period of 36 months. The University of Strasbourg is one of France’s leading universities, welcoming more than 55,000 students from many different countries, and is internationally recognized in the fields of biology and chemistry. Strasbourg is the capital of the Alsace-Champagne-Ardenne-Lorraine (Grand Est) region in northeastern France. It is also the official seat of the European Parliament.
Thesis title: Autophagy in MASH, a deregulated cellular pathway and therapeutic target
Acronym: MASH-Flow
University: University of Strasbourg, Doctoral School 414 Life and Health Sciences
Research unit: Biotechnology & Cell Signaling (BSC), Ecole Supérieure de Biotechnologie de Strasbourg (ESBS), UMR 7242, CNRS and Université de Strasbourg
Team: Neuroimmunology & peptide therapy;
Team leaders: Philippe Georgel & Sylviane Muller
Laboratory address: Institut de science et d’ingénierie supramoléculaire (ISIS), 8 allée Gaspard Monge, 67000 Strasbourg (Esplanade campus). Director: Guy Zuber
Thesis supervisor: Philippe Georgel, HDR; pgeorgel@unistra.fr
Thesis co-supervisor: Sylviane Muller, HDR, sylviane.muller@unistra.fr
Summary of thesis topic: Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) is a major global health challenge due to its strong correlation with obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. This serious chronic liver disease affects around 4-6% of the world’s adult population. Current treatments, including lifestyle modifications and therapies targeting inflammation and fibrosis, show limited efficacy. The MASH-Flow project aims to offer an innovative therapeutic option by simultaneously targeting autophagy, metabolic imbalance, and hepatic stress. The consortium believes that triple therapy, combining new resveratrol-derived phytostilbenes with a caspase-2 inhibitor and an autophagy modulator, will have a synergistic effect in slowing the progression of MASH. Our results in Strasbourg show that P140, an immunomodulatory peptide that targets chaperone-mediated autophagy and blocks the migration of pro-inflammatory cells to inflamed organs, slows the progression of MASH in mouse models (PhD thesis by D. Mastrippolito, March 2026; article to be submitted).
Challenges: The proposed fundamental studies will extend our knowledge of autophagy in healthy and pathological contexts. Furthermore, the data acquired in vivo in mice and ex vivo with patient’ cells should lead to a transfer to clinical applications in MASH and obesity. The P140 peptide is already in Phase III clinical trials in lupus patients (CNRS/Immupharma patents). In this context, it has shown no harmful adverse effects in the hundreds of lupus patients who have already received the therapeutic peptide. The tenable and innovative challenges of the MASH-Flow program are to reposition the therapeutic peptide P140 in the context of chronic liver diseases. The aim is to slow down the severity of the disease and avoid progression from MASH to liver fibrosis, cirrhosis, and liver cancer.
Material, human and financial resources available to the project: The team has all the in-house equipment needed to carry out this project (peptide synthesis, immunochemistry/biochemistry, cellular and molecular biology, imaging, cell culture, flow cytometry, etc.). Various technology platforms are available to the team. We have a clinical batch of P140, and several mouse models of MASH/obesity are already available. Human samples will be provided by clinical collaborators and the Établissement français du sang for healthy controls. The entire team’s work focuses on various aspects of the biology and pharmacology of the P140 peptide, providing highly
competent supervision for the new doctoral student. The project will be carried out in close collaboration with the three other teams involved in the ANR-supported MASH-Flow project. Significant French and international funding is available for the project.
Keywords: inflammation; chronic liver disease; lysosome; mouse models, peptide treatment
Selected publications from the host laboratory directly related to the project > In the PDF