According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), infectious diseases are still among the three leading causes of death worldwide and first in developing countries. In addition to HIV infection, which remains a health problem in poor countries, Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are a diverse group of communicable diseases that prevail in tropical and subtropical countries affect more than one billion people. The work of our team has been dedicated to study the mechanisms of apoptosis, which is one of the major phenotypes of programmed cell death (PCD), in the context of host-pathogen interaction. The specificity of our research lies in an upstream research aimed at clarifying the biochemical and molecular mechanisms involved in the process of PCD, in particular the contributing role of mitochondria, and a downstream research studying these mechanisms in vivo by using Non Human Primates (NHP). These models give us the opportunity to test drug therapeutic approaches and analyzed microbe persistence in deep tissues after treatment.

The proposed research program will be centered on the study of the inter-relationship between cell death, metabolism and immune response in the context of microbe infections. The specific objectives that we plan to pursue over the next 5 years will be (i) to assess the improvement of ART therapy in NHP using anti-apoptotic agent, which in turn may restore mitochondria defect and bioenergetics during HIV/SIV infection; (2) to understand how leishmania impact on mitochondria metabolism by altering innate immune response and host cell death to improve therapy for parasite eradication in deep tissues; (3) to understand the molecular basis of the release of innate cytokines, IL-1 vs IFN-during viral infections and its relationship with cell death pathways. Chronic inflammation may contribute to microbe persistence and the absence of eradication.