Florence Janody

Cytoskeletal Regulation & Cancer

Group leader

F. Janody was awarded her Ph.D on December 1999 by the Mediterranean University (France), before joining the laboratory of J. Treisman at the Skirball Institute, USA in 2000 as a Postdoc. During these trainings, her main interest has been to understand how signal transduction cascades regulate gene expression. She established her independency in 2006 at Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC) in Portugal before moving to Instituto de Patologia e Imunologia Molecular da Universidade do Porto (Ipatimup)/ Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde (i3S) in 2018, where she is leading the CYTOSKELETAL REGULATION & CANCER group. Her lab has reported molecular mechanisms by which the cytoskeleton regulate cancer signalling activity (2011-Dev.; 2011-Dev. Biol.; 2014-Oncogene; 2014-PLoS One; 2015-Curr. Biol.; 2017-Nat. Comm.; 2019- Sci. Rep.) and issued a spotlight on actin and tissue growth (2018-JCB). They have revealed a role of the co-repressors Dachshund in coordinating signalling outputs (2015-Dev.; 2016-PLoS Genet.), assessed the role of microenvironmental signals in controlling hybrid EMT phenotypes (2020-Cancer Res.) and their ability to cooperate (2021-IJMS) and identified the mechanism behind the survival of E-cadherin-deficient cells (2015-Hum. Mol. Genet.).

Selected Publications

Selvaggio G., Canato S., Pawar A., Monteiro P.T., Guerreiro P.S., Manuela Brás M., Janody F., Chaouiya C.,

Hybrid epithelial–mesenchymal phenotypes are controlled by microenvironmental factors. Cancer Research80(11):2407-2420, 2020. [Journal: Article] [CI: 29] [IF: 12,7]
DOI: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-19-3147 SCOPUS: 85085904168.

Jain P.B., Guerreiro P.S., Canato S., Janody F.,

The spectraplakin Dystonin antagonizes YAP activity and suppresses tumourigenesis. Scientific Reports9(1):, 2019. [Journal: Article] [CI: 12] [IF: 4]
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-56296-z SCOPUS: 85077305562.

Janody F.,

The Big Bang of tissue growth: Apical cell constriction turns into tissue expansion. Journal of Cell Biology217(3):807-808, 2018. [Journal: Note] [IF: 8,9]
DOI: 10.1083/jcb.201801076 SCOPUS: 85042848294.

Tavares S., Vieira A.F., Taubenberger A.V., Araújo M., Martins N.P., Brás-Pereira C., Polónia A., Herbig M., Barreto C., Otto O., Cardoso J., Pereira-Leal J.B., Guck J., Paredes J., Janody F.,

Actin stress fiber organization promotes cell stiffening and proliferation of pre-invasive breast cancer cells. Nature Communications8:, 2017. [Journal: Article] [CI: 107] [IF: 12,4]
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15237 SCOPUS: 85019618841.

Brás-Pereira C., Potier D., Jacobs J., Aerts S., Casares F., Janody F.,

dachshund Potentiates Hedgehog Signaling during Drosophila Retinogenesis. PLoS Genetics12(7):, 2016. [Journal: Article] [CI: 11] [IF: 6,1]
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1006204 SCOPUS: 84982854129.

Caldeira J., Figueiredo J., Brás-Pereira C., Carneiro P., Moreira A.M., Pinto M.T., Relvas J.B., Carneiro F., Barbosa M., Casares F., Janody F., Seruca R.,

E-cadherin-defective gastric cancer cells depend on Laminin to survive and invade. Human Molecular Genetics24(20):5891-5900, 2015. [Journal: Article] [CI: 28] [IF: 6]
DOI: 10.1093/hmg/ddv312 SCOPUS: 84943762566.