Sophie de Carné

Dr Sophie de Carné Trécesson joined Gustave Roussy in October 2024 as Junior Group Leader to establish the Inflammation and Cancer Plasticity Laboratory within Inserm Unit U981 and the IHU PRISM programme. In March 2025, she was appointed Chair of Junior Professor in Cancer Prevention at Université Paris-Saclay, a tenure-track position supporting early-career researchers with strong academic leadership potential.

Her research focuses on the early stages of tumour development, particularly in KRAS-driven lung and pancreatic cancers. She investigates how the exposome, such as chronic inflammation, affects KRAS-mutated tumour-initiating cells and their interaction with the microenvironment, with the aim of identifying actionable mechanisms that could inform targeted cancer prevention strategies.

Sophie completed her PhD in Cell Biology at the University of Angers, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in Nantes. In 2014, she moved to London to join the Francis Crick Institute (formerly CRUK LRI), working under the mentorship of Professor Julian Downward. At the Crick, she led basic and translational research projects combining orthotopic murine models, single-cell multi-omics sequencing, and large patient cohorts to explore the influence of RAS signalling on the anti-tumoural immune response, tumour plasticity and response to treatment in lung cancer.

Her scientific works and contributions have been published in leading journals, notably in the areas of treatment response prediction and preclinical model development. She has secured competitive research funding and received several awards, including a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship and the Crick Translation Fellow Award, and was named one of the 2025 Young Leaders by the Franco-British Council.