Dr. Marie-Luce Vignais is a senior scientist at the French CNRS. She holds a PhD in biology from Paris University. She completed post-doctoral training at Princeton University (USA) and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (USA). She is studying the role of the tumor microenvironment in tumor progression and was among the first to report the trafficking of mitochondria through tunneling nanotube (TNT) connections between MSCs and cancer cells. Her group designed the patented Mitoception protocol, which enables the quantitative transfer of pre-isolated mitochondria to target cells, to study their effects in the target cells. Dr. Vignais has focused her research on glioblastoma, a poor-prognosis brain cancer. She has shown that the acquisition of mitochondria by glioblastoma stem cells (GSC) rewires their metabolism and supports chemoresistance, thus opening new options for resensitizing cancer cells to treatment (Nakhle et al., Cancer Res. Comm., 2023).

Werner J.H. Koopman is a biochemist and research group leader at the Department of Pediatrics (Radboudumc, Nijmegen, The Netherlands). Research in his group (“Cellular Bioenergetics”) aims to understand cellular energy metabolism in the context of mitochondrial (dys)function at various levels of complexity (organisms, tissues, cells, proteins, molecules). Regarding pathomechanisms, investigations primarily focus on rare mitochondrial diseases (MDs) including Leigh Syndrome (LS) and mitochondrial (dys)function in other pathologies (e.g. melanoma, Parkinson’s disease, immunity, neurodevelopmental disorders, aging). Part of the group’s research is performed at the Department of Human and Animal Physiology of the Wageningen University (Wageningen, The Netherlands) to study the whole-body energy metabolism of mitochondrial disease mice and (nutritional) intervention strategies. In this context, research efforts pursue four main goals: (1) to develop, apply and make available novel technologies for live-cell microscopy analysis, (2) to provide fundamental insights into cellular and mitochondrial bioenergetics, (3) to understand the (patho)physiology of MDs driving novel intervention strategies, (4) to disseminate knowledge and provide counselling to relevant stakeholders.