Digital publication of Prof. de Thé's opening lecture in English

Hugues de Thé

Oncology: From Empiricism to Integrative Biology

After decades of descriptive studies, the biology of cancer is undergoing a real revolution: with genetic approaches, researchers have identified many of the cell deregulations likely to drive tumours. A treatment combining arsenic and retinoic acid targets the protein responsible for promyelocytic leukaemia. This treatment, which has cured virtually all patients, gives hope that the in-depth understanding of carcinogenesis mechanisms may lead to new therapeutic approaches that could be transposed to other cancers.

De Thé H., Oncology: From Empiricism to Integrative Biology, translation by Liz Libbrecht, Paris, Collège de France, Inaugural Lectures, 2024.

This book was published with the support of theFondation du Collège de France.

Hugues de Thé, a physician and former intern at the Hôpitaux de Paris, with a PhD in science, is head of the biochemistry/molecular biology service at the Hôpital Saint-Louis, head of the research unit UMR "Pathologie et virologie moléculaire" and professor of molecular biology at the Paris-Diderot University. He has been a member of the French Academy of Sciences since 2011 and, in March 2014, was appointed Professor at the Collège de France, where he holds the Chair of Cellular and Molecular Oncology.