Julien Duxin receives the prestigious ERC Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). His research using frog eggs focuses in delineating the molecular mechanisms underlying the repair of cancer inducing DNA lesions.
Julien Duxin receives EUR 1.5 million for the project DPC-REPAIR, which he, backed by the ERC Starting Grant, can continue to work on for the next 5 years. Julien Duxin who is associated with The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research, conducts research into the biological and molecular mechanisms behind the repair of harmful DNA lesions known as DNA-protein crosslinks.
These lesions are produced by different environmental or chemotherapeutic agents, and are suspected of causing premature aging and cancer in humans. In spite of the importance of DNA-protein crosslinks for human diseases and health, we currently have insufficient knowledge of how these lesions are repaired.
Using a cell-free system derived from frog eggs, which has the remarkable capacity to recapitulate genome maintenance events in a test tube, Julien Duxin hopes to identify some of the key regulators of DNA-protein crosslink repair, and understand how defects in this reaction cause cancer and aging in humans.