2007 to Currently
Freelance Consultant - Start-up and SMEs Business development
Strategy, Management & Marketing of Innovation
Fund raising for innovative Start-ups and Small-Middle sized Companies
Molecular Cell Biologist Researcher at CNRS, Lyon, France
2008: Collaboration with physicists : organization and properties of chromosomes in human cancerous cells
Molecular Cell Biologist Researcher at University of Nice, France
August 2003 - April 2007: During my PhD, I investigated the myogenic potential of human mesenchymal stem cells. My research led to elucidate how these cells could contribute to the formation skeletal muscle fiber
Teacher at CERAM EAI-tech (Sophia Antipolis, France)
January 2006 - May 2006
In charge of the course : formal and molecular genetics (college level)
Founder-CEO and Head-Teacher at Institut Medi-Science, Nice, France
September 2000 - June 2006
In charge of Teaching biochemistry, genetics & cell biology, Recuiting teachers, Marketing & Sale of the courses
Coaching and motivation of students to make a success of their contest - the access to the 2nd year of university medical studies
GR Consulting - Strasbourg France
2009: Short Executive Training : Business Administration
Management School of Strasbourg University, France
2008 – 2009: Master’s Degree, Innovative Project Engineering
University of Nice Sophia-Anitpolis, France
2003 – 2007: PhD, Molecular and Cell Biology
Scientific Production (for a detailed Science CV click here or see below)
• Mechanism by which Stem Cells from human fat can produce bone. Elabd C. et al. BBRC. 2007
Ari MASSOUDI Scientific Details
- Researcher (Post-doc position) in Molecular and Cell Biology Start January 2008 – End Contract September 2008
Research projects: Short Post-doctoral researcher position at the CNRS in Lyon. I brought my expertise in the Cell biology techniques into a laboratory of Biophysics studying human chromosome architechtures in normal and cancerous cells.
I followed a complete college education in molecular cell biology, biochemistry and genetics at the University of Nice in France (1998-2007).
- PhD (Doctorate) in Molecular and Cell Biology Start August 2003 – Graduation April 200
Research projects: see below
- Master's Degree (Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies in French) in Pharmacology, Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of Nice. Start August 2002 – Graduation June 2003
Research projects: see below
- Bachelor's Degree (DEUG1&2 - License and Maîtrise in French) in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at University of Nice. Start October 1998 - Graduation June 2002
PhD Research projects: My research career started when I entered into the Master of Science at 2002. The project was to study the capacities of Human Adult Stem Cells obtained from fat tissue to transform in different other tissues such as skeletal muscle in the goal of providing new therapy for damaged tissues. The project ended with the defense of myPhD at April 2007. This project included a close collaboration with a neurologist clinician team. My research led to elucidate how these cells could contribute to the formation of muscle. I also collaborated to other topics concerning therapeutic potentialities of these cells, such as bone and cartilage repair. These research contribution was published in several scientific journals, and ina textbook dedicated to college students in biology and medical studies.
Master's Degree Research project: Optimisation of the somatic skeletal muscle transgenesis with recombinant AAV vectors. The genes to be expressed were the GFP, lacZ and a novel muscular angiogenic factor (myodulin/tendin/chondromodulin I-like).
Scientific techniques learned and developed during my science career
- Small animal experimentation (mouse), Micro-surgery and Micro-dissection:
- Experimental myocardial infarctus induced by ligation a coronaryartery or by cryonecrosis (goal: injection of human Stem cells in the necrosed zone, followed later by tracking of the transplanted cells)
- Human and mouse skeletal muscle dissection and viable myofibre isolation and culture (goal: obtention of a highly pure primary cell culture of muscle stem cells – satellite cells - )
- Somatic transgeneis : injection of recombinant AAV virus in mouse skeletal muscle (goal: over-expression of genes of interest and phenotype caracterisation)
- Cellular & Genetic Engineering: human and mouse primary stem cell culture (from fat or skeletal muscle tissues), human and mouse cell line culture, lipo-transfection and recombinant virus transduction (rAAV, rLentivirus), pharmacology cell-assays, FACS, RT-PCR, RNAs isolation, plasmid DNA preparation
- ImmunoCytochemistry (simple or double antibody Immunofluorescent staining) and Cytochemistry (beta-galactosidase staining)
- Histological slides preparation with Cryostat, ImmunoHistochemistry and Cytochemistry on skeletal muscle, heart, bone or fat tissues
- Confocal Laser Microscopy (Zeiss), Tissue & Live-Cell Imaging (sofwares: imageJ, MetaMporph, Zeiss)
- Biochemistry techniques : subcellular fractionation, protein purification, western blot
- Bioinformatics : Blast, PCR primer design
Note: I also learned to culture and differentiate mouse Embryonic Stem cells (mES cells), but I have not done experiments with these cells.
Power-points, PhD Thesis, Textbook
- Power-point presentation of my PhD defense (French language) : http://goo.gl/BV94G
- Power-point presentation of my PhD results (English language) : http://goo.gl/y7s1E
- My PhD thesis (French language) : http://goo.gl/aKptT
- Textbook about Stem Cell Biology (French language): http://amzn.com/613152386X
- Human adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells acquire muscle identity only after spontaneous fusion with myoblasts. Massoudi A. HAL. 2007 http://goo.gl/Kyq59 / Alternative link at WebMedCentral 2011 http://goo.gl/sSKKG
- Human adipose tissue-derived multipotent stem cells differentiate in vitro and in vivo into osteocyte-like cells. Elabd C., Chiellini C., Massoudi A., Cochet O., Zaragosi L-E., Trojani C., Michiels J-F., P. Weiss, Carle G., Rochet N., Dechesne C., Ailhaud G., Dani C. and Amri E-Z. BBRC. 2007 http://goo.gl/VBFxk
- Macrophage characteristics of stem cells revealed by transcriptome profiling Charrièrea G. M., Cousin B., Arnaud E., Saillan-Barreau C., André M., Massoudi A., Dani C., Pénicaud L., Casteilla L. Exp Cell Res., 2006 http://goo.gl/PVxMo
- Myodulin is a novel potential angiogenic factor in skeletal muscle Pisani D. F., Pierson P. M., Massoudi A., Leclerc L., Chopard A., Marini J-F., and Dechesne C. A. Exp. Cell Res., 2004 http://goo.gl/J72bp
Symposium (power-point & poster communication)
- Poster Communication at FASEB Muscle Stem cells Biology Congress. IndianWells/USA 2007
- Speaker/Power-point communication at the Colloque des Jeunes Chercheurs de l'AFM. Evry/France 2007
- Poster communication at the Colloque Groupe Biologie du Développement. Nice/France 2006
- Organizer and Speaker/Power-point communication at the symposium « les Journées de l’Ecole Doctorale » Nice/France 2006 - 240 people
- Poster communication. Congrès Myologie AFM. Nantes/France 2005
- Poster communication at the « Cell Biology ELSO congress ». 2004 Nice/France
- Poster communication at the « Conférence de l’Institut Paul Hamel ». 2004 Monaco/France
One week training in the laboratory of Professor Terence A. Partridge, at the Medical Research Council London/UK, November 2003:
Benchmarking, Importation and Development of a new Biotechnology in Nice/France
During November 2003, I had the opportunity to visit during a week the laboratory of Pr. Terence Partridge (MRC, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College, London) to learn how to isolate mouse muscle myofibers. This technique was then used routinely in our lab.
During my PhD studies, as a side-project, we collaborated with neurologist clinicians and we had easily access to human skeletal muscle biopsies from dystrophic or healthy background.I extended the isolated myofiber technique with some slight modifications to human skeletal muscle. I developed a unique protocol to obtain and to culture stem cells from human skeletal muscle biopsies. Modifications concern both the collagenase step (=> noticeably better yield of viable fibers in culture) and the Growth Medium. With my protocol, we can obtain very naive stem cells, and culture these cells with a long term expansion and with retention of their myogenic potential (self-renewal and stemness).
Current protocols used in academic labs or even for clinical assays, let to obtain committed muscle cells, myoblasts. Myoblasts are not stem cells! They cannot proliferate extensively and die both in vitro by senescence and in vivo by massive apoptosis and necrosis after injection into muscle. Therefore, clinical assays in human using myoblasts need millions of millions of these cells to be injected per cm2 of a muscle. All the results have demonstrated a weak functional restoration, therefore cell-therapy based on myoblasts injection is not viable.
My protocol is undisclosed, unplublished and unexploited => patent potential. I would like to share it and make it live in a biotech startup.