Do you have to be set in science to attend this conference?
In general, the public is curious and a little more interested than the average for science. I chat with the room, it allows me to see if I’m clear. The goal is also to explain to people what is going on in our laboratories. What we do with the money from everyone. What are the questions we ask and what techniques we have to answer them. It is important to explain at a time when many people and politicians tell anything to ensure a position of authority. It’s good to discuss science with everyone.
What was the purpose of your research on stress?
-It was to understand how it works. Stress can be very useful. This is what allows the body to adjust its behavior. When you are stressed, you produce a hormone, cortisol, which can be 10 to 100 times higher than normal for an hour and then it comes down. This can affect memory, blood sugar, participate in the appearance of depression or psychiatric disorders. We know that people who live under bombs at the moment will be able to develop pathologies later. We have observed on mice that this can lead to social behavior disorders. But if we do not have cortisol, we die, it is also what represses inflammation when we have a bacterial infection.
How much did your study cost and will allow new medical treatments?
We hope. For Parkinson’s disease in particular. But it will take long. For vaccines it goes faster. These results could lead to new therapeutic avenues to treat depression by revealing alternative targets for drugs. For 5 to 10 years of study, our work will have cost between 1 and 2 million euros. But to achieve medical treatment, it costs billions of euros.
