Sabine Ben­samoun, a research sci­en­tist at CNRS, has been coor­di­nat­ing a team of close on 40 per­sons in the joint CNRS-UTC-BMBI Lab since Jan­u­ary 2018. Their research focus­es on two main themes – elas­to­graph­ic analy­sis of mus­cle and liv­er tis­sues and the role played by the TIEG1 gene in mus­cles. Inter­ac­tions presents her por­trait: a woman with an ingrained incli­na­tion for research. 

It’s was when she returned to France in 2006 after com­plet­ing two years in Post­doc work at the Mayo Clin­ic in Min­neso­ta, USA — a world-class med­ical research unit — that Sabine Ben­samoun launched her two research pro­gramme themes. These pro­grammes were imple­ment­ed with the active help of the Mayo Clin­ic and numer­ous oth­er part­ners. Sabine Ben­samoun had not come back emp­ty-hand­ed from the USA. 

The Mayo Clin­ic recent­ly devel­oped a mod­ule – cou­pled to MRI (mag­net­ic res­o­nance imag­ing) analy­sis — aimed a char­ac­ter­iz­ing the mechan­i­cal and func­tion­al prop­er­ties of the human liv­er. The expres­sion here is mag­net­ic res­o­nance elas­tog­ra­phy (MRE). The aim, as Sabine Ben­samoun sees it is “to estab­lish a bet­ter diag­no­sis as to the sever­i­ty of the patholo­gies detect­ed, to improve on patient mon­i­tor­ing, per­son­al­iz­ing treat­ments, etc.” The MRE pro­to­col still remained to be cer­ti­fied. UTC is reg­is­tered as one of the ten research units in the world select­ed for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion (and the only one in France) that pos­sess­es an MRE set­up. After years of research, the data and results were analysed at the Mayo Clin­ic. For all par­ties involved the wager paid off, includ­ing for UTC. That was how MRE became a more effi­cient, less inva­sive diag­no­sis tool, address­ing cas­es of liv­er fibrosis. 

And this was how Sabine became inter­est­ed — in the frame­work of a resrec­ah con­tract with anoth­er part­ner, Echo­sens Ltd – in anoth­er liv­er pathol­o­gy, viz., steato­sis, a term denot­ing the per­cent­age of fat in a liv­er. A pro­to­type set­up, called ‘Fibroscan”, has been made avail­able to her research team and has already pro­vid­ed some high­ly con­clu­sive results. 

In 2013, the MRE and Fibroscan mod­ule plat­form was installed at the Clin­ique Saint-Côme, thanks to the vig­or­ous com­mit­ment of Dr Charleux and all the Saint-Côme teams, the prac­ti­tion­ers, the ‘admin’ staff and the tech­ni­cal sup­port per­son­nel. “The clin­i­cal tri­al peri­od has begun, with a selec­tion of some 200 patients”, under­lines Sabine Bensamoun. 

Two oth­er projects, relat­ed to mus­cle fibres, have been launched too. The first is under way at the Saint-Côme Clin­ic, with an MRE set­up devot­ed exclu­sive­ly to mus­cle stud­ies has been installed and con­cerns mus­cu­lar age­ing and Duchenne mus­cu­lar dys­tro­phy. Two pub­li­ci­a­tion­s¹, 2011 and 2015 respec­tive­ly, set out the first results of the research pro­gramme. The sec­ond char­ac­ter­izes face mus­cle activ­i­ties, and is a study in col­lab­o­ra­tion with sur­geons Pro­fes­sors Devauchelle and Con­stans at the teach­ing hos­pi­tal in Amiens. 

We should bear in mind that Sabine Bensamoun’s PhD the­sis has, as its title, “Mul­ti-scale char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of mechan­i­cal and mor­pho­log­i­cal prop­er­ties of the mus­cu­lo-skele­ton sys­tem”. In oth­er words, it dealt with bone, ten­don and mus­cu­lar tis­sues. Dur­ing her two year spell as a Post­doc at the Mayo Clin­ic in the USA, Sabine worked on bone and ten­don age­ing, notably with Pro­fes­sor Spels­berg, who dis­cov­ered the TIEG1 gene. “In order to study the role played by this gene in bone tis­sues, we used TIEG1 KO mice cre­at­ed spe­cial­ly at the Mayo Clin­ic, and which did not pos­sess this gene”, she adds. She man­aged to bring back some spec­i­mens of the IEG1 KO mice off­spring, which are reg­is­tered under Mayo Clin­ic prop­er­ty rights, and pur­sued her inves­ti­ga­tions on the TIEF1 gene with UTC team mem­bers, Philippe Poule­taut and Malek Kam­moun, exam­in­ing in par­tic­u­lar the role of the gen is cer­tain human mus­cu­lar dis­or­ders. Clin­i­cal stud­ies are under way in rela­tion to ill­ness­es such as osteo­poro­sis, car­diomy­opa­thy, and cataracts or as mark­ers for cer­tain forms of can­cer (breast, ovary). We now know that absence of TIEG21 leads to mus­cu­lar hyper­tro­phy with an alter­ation of shape and activ­i­ties of the mito­chon­dria in cells the main role of which lies in cell ‘res­pi­ra­tion’ and hence in the com­pete res­pi­ra­to­ry sys­tem. Sabine proves tire­less when it comes to the advance­ment of sci­ence and she has thus far been able to mobi­lize 5 research teams in France and 3 more in Europe (in Ger­many, Hun­gary and Esto­nia), to try to iden­ti­fy the mech­a­nisms and oper­a­tional mode of thyen TIEG1 gene, which rais­es, she thinks, a key ques­tion: what role does absence of TIEG1 (or its sub-expres­sion) play in cer­tain mus­cu­lar dis­or­ders such as the Duchenne mus­cu­lar dys­tro­phy, or mito­chon­dr­i­al myopa­thy…? What is the dri­ving force and wish of Sabine Ben­samoun? They will be to rein­force and sta­bi­lize in time her research team(s) so as to progress in her analy­sis of the TIEG1 KO strain of mice. Fail­ing which, the results already obtained will be wel­comed by the Mayo Clin­ic enabling it to iden­ti­fy — in the mid-term — new ther­a­peu­tic strate­gies to address mus­cu­lar ill­ness­es or exer­cise intolerance. 

1- www.researchgate.net/profile/Sabine_Bensamoun