Organization of the Ecole-chercheur: "Inovative cellular models for animal Science", held at Jouy-en-Josas from September 11 to 15

Organized by Alice Jouneau (BREED), in collaboration with Pascale Chavatte-Palmer (BREED), Elisabetta Giuffra (GABI) and Bertrand Pain (SBRI), it was one of the deliverables of WP4 of the European EuroFAANG project. It was funded not only by this project, but also by the PHASE and GA departments, whom we would like to thank. The lectures focused on organoid development and its applications for farm animals, such as nutrition, host-pathogen relations, embryo and reproductive biotechnologies. More methodological aspects were also presented, such as genetic modification by genome editing, imaging and organ-on-chip technologies, and microfluidic approaches. Finally, we held two seminars on the ethical issues surrounding the development and use of these new 'tools'.

Twenty-five participants registered, including 11 PhD students, 3 masters and 7 post-docs, from various European countries (France, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, Spain, UK). There were 18 French and European guest speakers, including 6 from INRAE.

We also set up a video link, enabling INRAe agents to follow the conferences (a dozen people connected every day).

A round-table discussion was held on Thursday, to discuss the advantages and limitations of these cellular models, which are certainly promising but still imperfect and limited for some of the tissue functions they aim to mimic.

On the first day, participants were divided into four groups to work on a scientific question chosen from a list of 8 questions proposed by the organizers. They presented their thoughts on Friday. The presentations prompted many questions and discussions, and were much appreciated..

Overall, the seminar was well received, as evidenced by the results of the satisfaction questionnaire we asked participants to fill in.