Valerie Planat-Benard is an Associate Pr. at the Universty of Toulouse III and co-director of Team 4 GOT-IT « Guided Organization of Tissue for Innovative Therapeutics » of the Restore Institute since January 1, 2021. 

Valerie joined Pr. Louis Casteilla’s team in 2001 after spending 4 years at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla (CA, USA) in the group of Dr. Gary M. Bokoch. Her work on monomeric GTPases has led to new approaches to study their activation (pull-down assay, FRET) and to a better understanding of their involvement in various biological situations such as inflammation and cancer. Since 2001, her work has contributed to a better understanding and to defining the function of mesenchymal stromal cells, particularly from adipose tissue (ASCs) [1][2], and to develop ASCs-based cell therapy approaches [3]. Her work therefore addresses cognitive as well as translational science issues with a significant investment in R&D and regulatory aspects to bring projects from proof of concept to clinical application. Recent work is devoted to a better understanding of the role of ASCs in the maintenance and restoration of tissue structure and function during the aging process, particularly with respect to their connective structural role in relation to inflammatory and metabolic signals [4].