Addendum

Complementary information

> This page contains information on recently submitted papers and will be updated in real time.

Confidential Information(s)

Update March 2026:

We are emerging from a long tunel. The move has been delayed because of a period of serious deterioration of my health, between october 2025 and january 2026, culminating with a 10 day hospital stay in January, followed by a slow recovery. Things are improving now, I feel better, and we are progressively getting back to normal.

1) Move: The physical lab move was delayed, but our installation at MMG is almost complete. We are all 3 (the two PhD students and me) affiliated to the MMG since November 2025. Our MMG mouse colony is up and running. Clara and Charline are both running their PhD projects and are well integrated at MMG and in the Magdinier team. We have kept a small cohort of experimental mice at IBDM for Charline’s project, for experiments that will be done before the end of march. The physical move of our remaining material (-20 and -80 plus material) will be scheduled for April/May. 2) The paper on Fat1/FAPs has been revised prior to submission, and will be submitted soon (and posted on biorxiv). I will post the updated pdf below in a few days. 3) Future AAVs/CRISPR/dCas9 paper: We have almost completed all the experimental work and analyses that we had planned to include in the future manuscript. A last cohort will be processed in March 2026, and Final analyses will be carried out in the following 3-4 months, to complete what is needed for the corresponding manuscript in which Charline will be 1st author. We have started assembling figures, and expect to finalise them and write the manuscript in the second half of 2026. 4) March 26 deadline: we have just submitted the scientific report for Charlines PhD fellowship renewal that was due on march 10th.

October 2025:

We are planning to move from IBDM to the MMG (INSERM U1251) before the end of 2025. The rederivation of our mouse lines is almost complete, and almost all lines have arrived at the MMG mouse facility or will arrive in the coming weeks. Our physical move should occur around November, and we are in the middle of organizing it. Meanwhile, we still have a few experimental cohorts to process at IBDM before december.

The team at MMG will be composed of me, Charline Ytier (AFM-Telethon fellowship, 2nd year PhD student), Clara David (1st year PhD student, Fellowship ED568). We will be helped by Pierre Perrin (Research engineer, IE), who is already helping us a lot.

My cancer treatment in 2025 was quite heavy until this summer, which slowed me down more than expected. While I focus on priorities related to the move, I’m also working on manuscripts. Here is an update on pending paper submissions: 1) The paper on Fat1/FAPs is close to ready (latest version below). The preprint will be posted on biorxiv in October 2025, and submitted. 2) The preprint 09/2022 was in fact never submitted (initially because of a cancer recurrence in 2023, and later because it didn’t make it back to my priority list). I plan to submit it right after the Fat1/FAP paper. 3) We have made progress with our new work with AAVs/CRISPR/dCas9 approach, and are also preparing a manuscript, which we will be preparing for submission in 2026 (first author Charline Ytier). Charline has prepared a poster for the AFM young researcher symposium on July 4th, and was awarded the Best Poster Prize.  

Manuscripts ready for submission (Confidential)

Preprint : PA Ferracci & F. Helmbacher. Fat1 deletion enhances Fibro-adipose infiltrations induced by glycerol injury in skeletal muscle. (submission pending). PDF (provisory, almost complete). 21/10/2025 (replaces v1 from 07/10). A new version will be posted in a few days (update 15/03/2026).

Will be updated when ready, and posted on biorxiv.

Manuscripts Submitted/under revision/Revised

I will only add preprints here when I am the lead senior author (unless a preprint was posted on biorXiv)

Preprint: Nathalie Caruso, Angela K Zimmermann, Tarana Nigam, Karelia Lipson, Françoise Helmbacher. An intragenic FAT1 regulatory element deleted in muscular dystrophy patients drives muscle and mesenchyme expression during development. Biorxiv (09/2022), September 17 | doi: 10.1101/2022.09.14.507898 | PDF |

Manuscripts Accepted/in press

papers are transfered below once published

Recently published

Published in 2024: Review article: Marcelo Flores-Opazo, Daniel Kopinke, Françoise Helmbacher, Rodrigo Fernández-Verdejo, Mauro Tuñón-Suárez, Gordon S. Lynch, and Osvaldo Contreras. Fibro-adipogenic progenitors in physiological adipogenesis and intermuscular adipose tissue remodeling. Molecular Aspects of Medicine (2024), June, 101277. | PDF | PMID : 38788527 | published 23/05/2024

Accepted & Published: Rui Li, Jingchen Shao, Young-June Jin, Haruya Kawase, Yuting Ong, Kerstin Troidl, Qi Quan, Lei Wang, Remi Bonnavion, Astrid Wietelmann, Françoise Helmbacher, Michael Potente, Johannes Graumann, Nina Wettschureck, Stefan Offermanns. Endothelial FAT1 inhibits angiogenesis by controlling YAP/TAZ protein degradation via E3 ligase MIB2. Nature Communications, (2023) April 08 | PDF | PMID: 37031213 |

Accepted & Published: Françoise Helmbacher. Astrocyte-intrinsic and extrinsic Fat1 activities regulate astrocyte development and angiogenesis in the retina. Development (2022), January 20. | DOI: 10.1242/dev.192047 | PDF: FAT1-RETINA (last submitted version) | see also biorxiv preprint (2020) |

Accepted & Published: Francoise Helmbacher#, Sigmar Stricker#. Tissue cross talks governing limb muscle development and regeneration (Review article). Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology, (2020), June 7. (#: co-corresponding).
-Available online 07/06/2020. (Helmbacher & Stricker 2020)

Accepted & Published : Ievgenia Pastushenko, Federico Mauri, Yura Song, Florian de Cock, Bob Meeusen, Benjamin Swedlund, Francis Impens, Delphi Van Haver, Matthieu Optiz, Manuel Thery, Yacine Bareche, Gaelle Lapouge, Marjorie Vermeersch, Yves-Rémi Van Eycke, Cédric Balsat, Christine Decaestecker, Youri Sokolow, Sergio Hassid, Beatriz Agreda-Moreno, Luis Rios-Buceta, Pedro Jaen, Pedro Redondo, Ramon Sieira-Gil, Nicky D’Haene, Virginie Moers, Milena Rozzi, Jeremy Blondeau, Sophie Lemaire, Samuel Scozzaro, Christine Dubois, David Pérez-Moraga, Isabelle Salmon, Christos Sotiriou, Francoise Helmbacher and Cédric Blanpain. Fat1 deletion promotes hybrid EMT state with enhanced tumor progression, stemness, and metastasis. Nature, (2021) 21 January | PMID: 33328637 |

Accepted & Published: Emily J. Lodge, Paraskevi Xekouki, Tatiane S. Silva, Cristiane Kochi, Carlos A. Longui, Fabio Faucz, Alice Santambrogio, James L. Mills, Nathan Pankratz, John Lane, Dominika Sosnowska, Tina Hodgson, Amanda L. Patist, Philippa Francis-West, Francoise Helmbacher, Constantine Stratakis, Cynthia Andoniadou. Requirement of FAT and DCHS protocadherins during hypothalamic-pituitary development. JCI Insight, (2020) Oct 27 |PMID: 33108146 | PDF |
– Submitted on 04/11/2019 – Revised 21/09/2020 – Accepted 15/10/2020 – Online 27/10/2020

Publication list

Available at the following links:
Scopus Author ID: 6506307667 | orcid.org/0000-0001-6822-1246 |Google scholar profile |