UM atUM [S01-ep15]: From Research on Aniridia to the Gravimeter

[Podcast] - Published on March 21, 2022 in Science and Society

This week, Frédéric Michon, an Inserm researcher at the Montpellier Institute of Neuroscience and winner of the Groupama Prize, talks to us about his research on aniridia. In the second part, Nicolas Lemoigne introduces us to the Geosciences gravimeter.

As you well know, rare things are expensive! This holds true for markets as well as for healthcare, and research into rare diseases often struggles to secure the funding needed to bring solutions to patients. In France, a disease is considered rare if it affects no more than 30,000 people—that is, fewer than one in every 2,000 people. To date, 7,000 rare diseases have been cataloged and identified. For 80% of them, the cause lies directly within our genome. It is estimated that 3 million people are directly affected in France and 25 million in Europe. Precisely because they are rare, these diseases often take years to be diagnosed, and in the majority of cases, treatments simply do not exist.

This is a situation that people with aniridia—a rare eye condition that can eventually lead to corneal blindness—unfortunately know all too well. Thanks to our guest’s research, these patients may well find renewed hope. Frédéric Michon is a researcher at the Montpellier Institute of Neuroscience; he has just been awarded the Groupama Prize, which supports research on rare diseases, for his research on aniridia.

In the second part of the program, we meet Nicolas Lemoigne. He is a research engineer at the CNRS, at the Montpellier Geosciences Laboratory, where he works on gravimetric instrumentation. We follow him to the laboratory’s basement, where the gravimeter—an instrument that measures gravity—is safely shielded from external vibrations.

AtUM , you’ve got the schedule—let’s get started!

Co-production: Divergence FM / University of Montpellier
Host: Lucie Lecherbonnier
Interview: Aline Périault / Lucie Lecherbonnier
Report: Aline Périault
Editing: Bruno Bertrand
Director: Anna Demeulandre

Listen to the show “AUM science” on Divergence FM 93.9

Keywords: UM atUM, Portrait, Research, Science