The French Atomic and Alternative Energy Commission

— CEA —

CEA (Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives), the French Atomic and Alternative Energy Commission, is a public research and technology organization founded in 1945 and active in four main areas: defense and security, low-carbon energies, information technologies and health technologies. The CEA currently counts 15,838 employees including 1,556 PhD students and 293 post-docs. It has been ranked the most innovative public research organization in Europe and ranked second in the world in the "Top 25 Global Innovators - Government" ranking (Reuters, 2017). Within CEA, the Fundamental Research Division (DRF) performs research in the field of health to improve knowledge in pathogenesis and to translate scientific advances into innovation for the patient. It‘s research is supported by technological expertise (“omics” technologies, structural biology, imaging, pharmacology and preclinical expertise) developed through facilities and platforms integrated in National and European infrastructures. It is strongly involved in the European infrastructure for health: iNEXT (H2020-INFRAIA-2014-2015), TRANSVAC2 (H2020-INFRAIA-2016-1), IBISBA 1.0 (H2020-INFRAIA-2017), EASI-Genomics (H2020-INFRAIA-2018-1), EATRIS-Plus (H2020-INFRADEV-2019-2), PREP-IBISBA (H2020-INFRADEV-2019-2). Within the DRF, the Interdisciplinary Research Institute of Grenoble (IRIG) aims at exploring biological processes on a molecular scale and to carry out research in technologies for life sciences and health. Within the DRF, the French National Center of Human Genomics Research (CNRGH) offers state of the art expertise and capacities for the production, storage and analysis of high-throughput sequencing data for large-scale genomic studies. Within the CEA‘s Technological Research Division (DRT), the Laboratory for Integration of Systems and Technology (LIST) is specialized in digital systems and software-intensive technologies. The LIST works in partnership with French and foreign industrial companies on applied research projects in four main topics: advanced manufacturing, embedded systems, health ionizing radiations and data intelligence. Within the LIST, the Department for Metrology, Instrumentation and Information (DM2I) addresses signal processing, multidimensional health data processing, statistical analysis and machine learning modeling by developing innovative mathematical approaches and associated software platforms.

Role within KATY

The CEA is mainly involved in three Work Packages of the KATY project:

  • Within WP4, the CEA is responsible for collecting and bioinformatic processing of data from multi-omic profiling of normal and tumor renal tissues, associated with clinical trials comparing the effectiveness of targeted therapies based on protein kinase inhibitors and immunotherapies. It is also in charge of collecting and processing multi-omic data generated from cell models (2D and 3D cultures) associated with measurements of sensitivity to targeted therapies. Finally, it participates in the organization of this data and metadata within a Data Lake and a Knowledge Graph.
  • Within WP5 that the CEA coordinates, it is in charge of the statistical modeling of high-level molecular perturbations (protein complexes, biological pathways) and the prediction of the cellular heterogeneity of the tumor microenvironment, from data collected at the level of genes and proteins. Finally, it is involved in the development of AI-based predictive models of the response of renal cancer to targeted therapies using graph-based, transfer and federated learning algorithms.
  • Within WP6, the CEA is responsible for transcriptome and exome sequencing of cohorts of renal tumor tissues. It is also involved in the experimental validation of the predictions of response to targeted therapies generated by AI models using ex vivo cell models: organotypic tissue slice cultures and patient derived xenograft (PDX) mice.

Main contacts

Photo of Dr Christophe Battail
Dr Christophe Battail
Team Leader
Photo of Dr Stéphane Gazut
Dr Stéphane Gazut
Deputy Team Leader
The French Atomic and Alternative Energy Commission
25 Rue Leblanc
75015 Paris 15
France