CarMeN

CarMeN is a joint biomedical research laboratory (INSERM U1060 – INRA U1397 – Université Lyon 1 – INSA Lyon) in the field of metabolic diseases, obesity, type 2 diabetes and their cardiovascular complications (myocardial infarction, stroke), kidney failure and dyslipidemia. Gathering about 180 persons, including basic scientists and medical practitioners to strengthen the interactions between cognitive research and biomedical and clinical research, the main objective of CarMeN lab is to improve our understanding of these important diseases and to develop new treatments and preventive strategies for a better care of the patients.

The "Cardioprotection" team has been created in 2002. It gathers basic scientists and clinicians for medical different disciplines (cardiology, cardiac surgery, physiology, vascular neurology, radiologists, anesthetists, nephrologists) all interested in « ischemia-reperfusion injury ». The general objective of the team is to improve our understanding of the pathophysiology of ischemia-reperfusion injury and identify new molecular targets in order to transfer new therapies to patients (acute myocardial infarction, ischemia stroke, organ transplantation). The team has a special focus on the role of mitochondria (permeability transition pore opening) and calcium transfer from endoplasmic reticulum to mitochondria in ischemia-reperfusion injury. The clinical group of the team demonstrated for the first time that ischemic postconditioning by coronary angioplasty can reduce infarct size in acute myocardial infarction patients.

The team is largely involved in the MARVELOUS project in different work packages and tasks, including in:

- evaluating how new MR imaging acquisition and post-processing techniques might improve our assessment of different features of ischemia-reperfusion injury, including: infarct size, area at risk, micro-vascular obstruction,

- finding new biological and imaging markers of left ventricular remodeling and function after acute myocardial infarction,

- assessing whether the developed new acquisition and post-processing tools might contribute to optimize acute MI patients care.

Michel OVIZE is the MARVELOUS coordinator. He is professor of cardiology at University Claude Bernard, Lyon and head of the department of cardiovascular functional explorations at Hôpital Louis Pradel, Lyon, France; Director of the “Cardioprotection” team in the Inserm Unit 1060 (CARMEN); current coordinator of the Clinical Research Center (Centre d’Investigation Clinique, CIC) of Lyon. He is also coordinator of the OPeRa University Research Institute (IHU) and of the IRIS University Hospital Federation (FHU).

The other team members working on the MARVELOUS project are Emmanuelle Canet-Soulas, and Marlène Wiart.