Dr. Gabriel Ichim leads a research team at the CRCL in Lyon (France) called Cancer Cell Death. His research focuses on the non-canonical roles that regulated cell death, and mainly apoptosis, can have during oncogenesis. His team showed how apoptosis can fuel the proliferation of bystander cancer cells, revealed that apoptosis can be partial in certain settings (the so-called « failed apoptosis ») and actually boost cancer cell aggressiveness, while apoptotic proteins can have uncommon roles in glioblastoma stem cells. His team is now actively working on deciphering the mechanistic underpinnings of other types of regulated cell death while also characterizing the role of apoptotic proteins in cancer.