The Marie S. Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA-PF) programme is a highly prestigious renowned EU-funded scheme. It offers talented scientists a unique chance to set up 2-year research and training projects with the support of a supervising team. Besides providing an attractive grant, it represents a major opportunity to boost the career of promising researchers. 

Research laboratories in Brittany are thus looking for excellent postdoctoral researchers with an international profile to write a persuasive proposal to apply for a Marie S. Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2025 (deadline of the EU call is set for 10th September 2025). The topic and research team presented below have been identified in this regard.

Main Research Field 

Life Sciences (LIF)

Research sub-fields

Cancer cell biology, organelle structure and signaling, fluorescence microscopy, 

Keywords

Mitochondria, AURKA, medicinal chemistry, FRET/FLIM biosensors, super-resolution microscopy, 

Research project description

STATE OF THE ART

Mitochondria play key roles in fuelling the cancer cell with energy, providing a selective advantage towards uncontrolled cell proliferation. This is made possible by several factors, including an altered mitochondrial metabolism and high ATP rates. In breast cancer, prior reports revealed that the dependence on mitochondrial ATP is a key determinant to ensure cell proliferation. 

Aurora kinase A/AURKA overexpression is a bona fide hallmark of several solid and hematologic tumors, including breast cancers. Its overexpression correlates with highly proliferative and malignant tumors with poor outcomes and low survival rates. Given the relevance of this protein in cancer, extensive efforts were made to understand its molecular functions and partners. Unfortunately, pharmacological strategies to counteract AURKA amplification and/or its enzymatic activity show poor efficacies in clinical trials. This may be directly linked with the discovery that AURKA plays several roles at several subcellular locations in cells. Our lab provided compelling evidence that AURKA is imported into the mitochondrial matrix, where it regulates energy metabolism3 and the maintenance of mitochondrial morphodynamics. 

Current therapeutic strategies against breast cancers involve catalytic inhibitors of AURKA and targeted protein degraders, which target several kinase pools at once rather than individual, organelle-specific ones. Therefore, it is important to consider organelle-specific functions to develop more selective therapeutic possibilities. Our studies have uncovered the interaction of AURKA with Prohibitin 2 (PHB2)1,5, a protein critical for mitochondrial cristae dynamics and homeostasis. Such evidence now points at the AURKA/PHB2 interaction as a novel and underexplored therapeutic target in breast cancer. Our most recent efforts aim at designing and validating original pharmacological compounds to target the mitochondrial roles of AURKA with increased efficacy, while leaving the other subcellular pools untouched1.

OBJECTIVE: explore the effects of newly-generated PHB2 ligands targeting mitochondrial-specific AURKA functions via its interaction with PHB2. This will lead to the identification of compounds with greater efficacy and fewer side effects than canonical AURKA inhibitors.

The Postdoctoral fellow will combine cutting-edge quantitative imaging, biochemical analyses, and computational modeling to functionally validate a library of ad-hoc PHB2 ligands. These compounds will be validated on their potential to inhibit the mitochondrial functions of AURKA such as mitophagy, mitochondrial ATP production and morphodynamical changes, and to impact cell viability in breast cancer models.

The core expertise of the Bertolin team are state-of-the-art methods and techniques in quantitative fluorescence microscopy to investigate the spatiotemporal regulation of mitochondrial activities. Relevant approaches include (but are not limited to) genetically-encoded FRET/FLIM biosensors, super-resolution microscopy (including direct Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy – dSTORM –), but also take advantage of interactomics and biochemistry to follow mitochondrial and cell physiology2,4,5. The Postdoctoral fellow will be involved in the use of such experimental strategies in the context of this project. 

Selected publications of the team relevant to the proposal:

 1.  Djehal, A., Caron, C., Giordano, D., Pizza, V., Farin, K., Facchiano, A., Desaubry, L., and Bertolin, G. (2025). Development of capsaicin-derived prohibitin ligands to modulate the Aurora kinase A/PHB2 interaction and mitophagy in cancer cells. Preprint at bioRxiv, https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.06.14.598962.

2.  Jolivet, N., and Bertolin, G. (2025). Revealing mitochondrial architecture and functions with single molecule localization microscopy. Biology of the Cell 117, e2400082. https://doi.org/10.1111/boc.202400082.

3.  Sharma, R.K., Chafik, A., and Bertolin, G. (2023). Aurora kinase A/AURKA functionally interacts with the mitochondrial ATP synthase to regulate energy metabolism and cell death. Cell Death Discov. 9, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41420-023-01501-2.

4.  Gökerküçük, E.B., Cheron, A., Tramier, M., and Bertolin, G. (2023). The LC3B FRET biosensor monitors the modes of action of ATG4B during autophagy in living cells. Autophagy 19, 2275–2295. https://doi.org/10.1080/15548627.2023.2179845.

5.  Bertolin, G., Alves-Guerra, M.-C., Cheron, A., Burel, A., Prigent, C., Borgne, R.L., and Tramier, M. (2021). Mitochondrial Aurora kinase A induces mitophagy by interacting with MAP1LC3 and Prohibitin 2. Life Science Alliance 4. https://doi.org/10.26508/lsa.202000806.

Supervisor

The Postdoctoral Fellow will be supervised by Dr. Giulia Bertolin. Dr. Bertolin and her group (https://igdr.univ-rennes.fr/en/mitochondrial-biology-and-integration-cell-cycle-team ) are deeply fascinated by the way mitochondrial architecture and functions are intimately connected, and how these are shaped over time and space. Dr. Bertolin obtained her PhD at Paris 5 University/Paris Brain Institute, where she studied the role of Parkinson’s disease-related proteins in maintaining mitochondrial quality control by mitophagy and organelle protein import. For her postdoc, she moved to the IGDR in Rennes, where she developed innovative genetically-encoded biosensors and quantitative fluorescence microscopy approaches to follow mitochondrial functions in cancer cells and in Drosophila. In 2017, she was awarded a CNRS tenured position at the IGDR. Her current research is interdisciplinary, and aims at gaining a superior spatiotemporal resolution of mitochondrial functions by developing novel fluorescent biosensors and super-resolution microscopy pipelines for mitochondrial biology. Dr. Bertolin is also serving in the Editorial Board of Communications Biology (Nature Portfolio), and she is funded by the French National Research Agency/Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR JCJC and PRC schemes), the French Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale, and by the Ligue Contre le Cancer foundations.

Research areas: cell biology, mitochondria, autophagy/mitophagy, genetically-encoded biosensors, cell cycle, quantitative fluorescence microscopy, FRET/FLIM, super-resolution microscopy.

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3j1c8fAAAAAJ&hl=fr&oi=sra

Department/Research                       

The IGDR (https://igdr.univ-rennes.fr/en) is a dynamic and expanding institute, with 16 teams including more than 200 international researchers and staff. Research at the IGDR covers a wide range of subjects in cell and developmental biology in classical model systems while strongly promoting interdisciplinary approaches, particularly at the interface between physics and biology. The institute also benefits from the close proximity with state-of-the-art core facilities, particularly in microscopy (Microscopy Rennes Imaging Center, MRic, https://microscopie.univ-rennes1.fr/), flow cytometry (CytomeTri facility, https://biosit.univ-rennes.fr/cytometrie-en-flux-et-tri-cellulaire ) and in artificial intelligence and image analysis (FAIIA facility, https://faiia.univ-rennes.fr/en ). These in-house facilities are open to all IGDR members. Beyond the scientific skills that will be acquired throughout the project, training opportunities in soft skills and in career development for early-career researchers are available through the CNRS and the University of Rennes.

Rennes is the capital of Brittany, in northwestern France, with easy and direct access to Paris (around 1.5 hours by train). Its rich tradition of cultural, musical and artistic events, as well as its close proximity to the coast, makes it a very welcoming and pleasant place to live.

Location: Institute of Genetics and Development of Rennes, Campus Santé Villejean, Rennes, France.

Skills Requirements 

The applicant should hold a PhD in biology. Proven experience in cancer cell biology and in fluorescence microscopy – including a solid knowledge of Fiji/ImageJ or similar image analysis software – are a prerequisite. Prior experience in the study of mitochondrial functions and/or in structural predictions using molecular docking analyses will be considered extremely favourably, but they are not mandatory. Some knowledge in FRET and/or super-resolution microscopy would be a plus.

Candidates are expected to originally conceive their research project, conduct research independently, interact with ongoing international collaborators on this project, communicate their results in national/international meetings and to prepare manuscripts for publication. Fluency in English, both written and oral, is mandatory. Prior knowledge of French is not a prerequisite. The Postdoctoral fellow is also expected to train Master students enrolled in the French University system. In this light, some prior expertise with training and/or teaching will be appreciated (although not mandatory). Training of students in the team can be done in English.

A first-author original publication (not a review article) obtained from the PhD and/or previous Postdoc internships, either accepted or as a preprint, is mandatory for the present application.

Eligibility criteria for applicants

Academic qualification: By the MSCA-PF call deadline (10 September 2025), applicants must be in possession of a doctoral degree, defined as a successfully defended doctoral thesis, even if the doctoral degree has yet to be awarded.

Research experience: Applicants must have a maximum of 8 years full-time equivalent experience in research, measured from the date applicants were in possession of a doctoral degree. Years of experience outside research and career breaks (e.g. due to parental leave), will not be taken into account.

Nationality & Mobility rules: Applicants can be of any nationality but must not have resided more than 12 months in France in the 36 months immediately prior to the MSCA-PF call deadline (10 September 2025).

Application process

We encourage all motivated and eligible postdoctoral researchers to send their expressions of interest through the EU Survey application form (link here)[1], before 31st May 2025. Your application shall include:

• a CV detailing: (i) for each position you had, the exact dates and location (country) and (ii) a list of accepted publications;
• a cover letter including a research outline (up to 2 pages) identifying the research synergies with the project supervisor(s) and proposed research topics described above.

Estimated timetable

Deadline for sending an expression of interest : 31st May 2025

Selection of the applicant: June 2025 at the latest

Writing the MSCA-PF proposal with the support of the above-mentioned supervisor(s): June – September 2025

MSCA-PF 2025 call deadline : 10 September 2025

Publication of the MSCA-PF evaluation results: February 2026

Start of the MSCA-PF project (if funded): May 2026 (at the earliest)