Biography

Prof Catherine Chaussain (DDS-PhD) is the director of the lab Oral health - UMR1333 INSERM at the dental school of Université Paris Cité, France.
As a PhD student, she worked on models of 3D collagen culture of gingival and dermal stromal cells to study the wound healing process. As a post doc, she moved her interests to the study of calcified tissues, especially dentin and bone. In particular, she identified pathological MEPE-derived peptide in human hypophosphatemic dentin. She worked as a post-doc student in Chicago at UIC in the laboratory of Pr Anne George. There, she developed a model of degradation of dentin phosphorylated proteins by MMPs and the use of the resulting cleavage products as biomolecules to induce tooth or bone regeneration. Back in France, she has developed new research themes by using the tooth to study the biomineralization process. More specifically, her team studies the pathobiology of calcified tissues, in particular in the context of rare disorders disturbing the mineral metabolism, especially hypophosphatemic rickets. She recently uncovered an association of claudin 16 mutation, a gene that encodes a tight junction protein, and amelogenesis imperfecta adding a new gene as a cause of enamel renal syndrome. She has developed strong collaborations with national and international teams and inserted her lab in several international research networks and patients associations. Her team routinely uses human, murine pulp mesenchymal stem cells in vitro and in preclinical models. At the hospital, she is the head of the dental department of the French national reference center for rare disorders related to phosphate and calcium metabolism (OSCAR network; ERN BOND). She is the co-author of above 100 publications.