Bio-imagerie

Dr Sachiko Sato is Full Professor at the Department of Microbiology-Infectiology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine at Université Laval. Since 2003, she is also director of the Bioimaging platform at CRCHU de Québec. She graduated with a Bpharm from Faculty of Pharmaceutical Science, Chiba University. After working in Nippon Hoffman-la-Roche Research Centre in Kamakura, she joined as Ph.D. student in the laboratory of Dr. Akira Kobata, the Institute of Medical Science of the University of Tokyo, Japan in 1987. During the same period, she also worked as a visiting scientist in the laboratory of Dr. R. Colin Hughes, at the MRC: National Institute for Medical Research in London, UK, where she first encountered an interesting cytosolic mammalian glycan-binding protein, now called galectin-3. She later obtained her Ph. D. from the University of Tokyo in 1994. Then, as postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Ron Kopito, Stanford University, she was involved in the work on cystic fibrosis that established the precedent that a genetic disease can be remediated by a chemical mean for the first time. This concept has been elaborated as “corrector” treatment for cystic fibrosis. After she completed her post-doc training in the Infectious Diseases Research Center of Université Laval, Quebec, Canada, she became principal investigator of the laboratory of glycobiology in this centre in 1999. While her research interest has always been to elucidate the role of galectins in host-pathogen interactions, the interest of her laboratory recently has been extended to the study of the therapeutic potential of galectins and N-acetylglucosamine for the treatment of muscular dystrophies and the development of a new single-cell lineage tracking system.

Dr Leclerc is a Full Professor at the Department of Microbiology-Infectiology and Immunology at Université Laval. He did his postdoctoral studies at the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel, Switzerland. Dr Leclerc is author or co-author of over 50 publications and 44 communications at at various international conferences and symposia. Dr Leclerc is interested in the structural aspects of viral capsids, their maturation and the genome encapsidation process. He is also involved in the development of a vaccine platform based on the use of a plant virus. He works on two models: the hepatitis C virus (HCV; icosahedron) and papaya mosaic virus (PapMV; rod shape). He uses the techniques of molecular biology, electron and confocal microscopy, protein biochemistry and basic immunology to elucidate the driving principles governing the interactions between the capsid subunit and their nucleic acid. He is actively collaborating with the laboratory of Dr M. Allaire at the Brookhaven National Laboratory (New-York) and Dr S. Gagné (Laval Univ., Québec) to determine the structure of these proteins by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). He is also developing a novel protein-engineered vaccination strategy based on the use of viral capsids. He has demonstrated that these capsids trigger an immune response (cellular and humoral) that persists for more than a year after a single vaccine injection.

Dr. Masahiko Sato is a full professor in the Department of Molecular Biology, Medical Biochemistry and Pathology, and a researcher in the Neuroscience Axis at the CHU de Québec. He received his MD from the University of Tokyo, Japan in 1988. During his doctoral studies, he received basic training in biochemistry, molecular biology, cell biology, and live cell imaging. He pursued postdoctoral training at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (currently, Cancer Research UK) at Clare Hall Laboratories in London with Dr. Tomas Lindahl who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2015, and subsequently continued his training at the Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University in the United States, with Philip C. Hanawalt. In 1996-1997, he accepted a position at Université Laval, and joined CHUL.

Ms. Julie-Christine Lévesque is a research professional in Dr. Sachiko Sato’s team and supervises the bio-imaging platform’s daily activities. She is very familiar with all the equipment of the platform and can advise users on their handling, offer them a complete practical training or provide an image acquisition service, depending on their needs.