Dr Champeil

Career Profile

2018 Professor
2010-2018 Associate professor (John Jay College)
2003-2006 Assistant professor (John Jay College)
2003-2006 Post-doctoral fellow

Research Interests

Having completed a Msc in in chemical engineering in France, I went on to pursue PhD in synthetic chemistry at Trinity College, Ireland. I then went to the United States to complete post-doctoral fellowships in organic/bio-organic chemistry in the field of cancer research. There, I found myself progressively more interested in the chemical principles underpinning biology. I now work at the interface of biology and chemistry, looking at how anti-cancer molecules interact with biological systems and developing new versions of bioactive molecules. I took up a position at John Jay college, part of City University of New York in 2006 where I teach organic chemistry and other related courses and where I developed my research group.
My research is funded by the national institute of health and we recently made two significant discoveries regarding an anti-cancer drug currently used in the clinics, mitomycin C (MC). We discovered that MC targets a different DNA sequence that was previously thought, and we developed a synthetic route to access a type of adduct (Interstrand Crosslinks) that MC produces when it reacts with DNA. We are now interested in the synthesis of oligonucleotides modified by Mitomycins (using the novel synthetic routes we developed) and the investigation of cellular responses triggered by the direct treatment with these DNA-alkylating agents. We are particularly interested in determining how the structure of the DNA lesions caused by the drugs influences cellular signalling.

https://www.jjay.cuny.edu/news/research-rise-science-professor-elise-cha...