Gathering tomorrow's medicines

When mycologists from very different backgrounds combine their skills to discover the medicines of the future: the story of a collaborative adventure at the Centre d'Écologie Fonctionnelle et Évolutive (CEFE).
Sylvie Rapior and Franck Richard (University of Montpellier) and Jean-Michel Bellanger (Inserm). Three mycologists with radically different profiles...

"Ecosystem of mycologists

Mycology is an infinite variety of professions," explains Sylvie Rapior. We form an ecosystem of mycologists!" she laughs...

Sylvie and her team of chemists are at the start of the process. It's up to them to extract the selected mushrooms: it's this cocktail of molecules that will be tested on living organisms.
This is where Jean-Michel Bellanger takes over. Passionate about mycology, this geneticist biologist came up with the idea of testing these molecules on nematodes(C. elegans). This small, transparent worm, barely a millimeter long, is a model organism often used in molecular biology. "It enables us to reproduce the characteristic signs of Parkinson's disease. And therefore to identify the possible presence of neuroprotective molecules, likely to treat this disease".

Open collaborations

All that's left to do is turn to an ecologist: a specialist in fungi communities, their evolution and their interaction with their environment. " Franck Richard brings a global understanding that enables us to identify areas where we're likely to find a particular species," says Sylvie Rapior. But he also sheds light on the links between the concentration of active molecules and the natural environment, " two parameters that are intrinsically linked, as chemistry plays a key role in the insertion of a fungus in its ecological niche ", explains Jean-Michel Bellanger.
While the cooperation between these different specialists works perfectly, they themselves now aspire to more open collaboration. Next horizon? Ethnomycology, where specialists in the human sciences will be able to suggest new avenues of research. But also the development of increasingly active networks with amateur mycologists.

"A meeting between enlightened amateurs and competent labs is a guarantee of accurate data. We want to benefit from the contributions of these excellent observers, but also help them in practical ways: for example, by bringing them the power of molecular biology tools," concludes Franck Richard.

36th mushroom and autumn plant show

October 24 and 25 at Montpellier's Faculty of Pharmacy: an exhibition organized by the Hérault Horticultural and Natural History Society. On the program: the main mushrooms used in food supplements: presentation, use and precautions.