MAgICS Industrial Chair - Molecular Modeling and Agroresources: Ingredients, Cosmetics and Health


Scientific manager: Manuel Dauchez

Partners: Greater Reims Official start date: 2017

Chairholder: Manuel Dauchez (PR)


The plant contains a prodigious source of ingredients and molecules acting on health and aging through their actions in the fields of nutrition, cosmetics and of course health (aging, cancers, obesity, diabetes, cardiac pathologies , cutaneous, gastric, toxicological problems…).

Being able to understand, from the molecular scale to the mesoscopic scale, the systems involved in these different fields, understanding and dissecting the mechanisms of action at these scales require numerical simulation and molecular modeling approaches.

The objectives of the chair are to identify and characterize new molecules through innovative approaches of multiple screening, and understanding of molecular mechanisms, or to understand the modes of action of molecules and ingredients already identified which remain for the moment without direct applications.

The implementation of dedicated digital tools, databases resulting from the work of actors in the field or existing in the public domain will be at the heart of the MAgICS project to come both to understand and to interpret known experimental data in each of the fields. scientists considered but also to propose new interpretations, new industrial alternatives and/or new compounds whose actions can be tested and compared by the competent experimental teams.

Numerical and molecular modeling must be totally actors of discoveries and validations through the synergy of integrated scientific projects. Validation of theoretical data and modeling will be carried out by experimental approaches which will be based on structural biochemistry approaches, initially by optical spectroscopy approaches on peptides/proteins resulting from the valorization of plant co-products, and biochemical characterization tests .

This original approach makes it possible to couple in a multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach areas which can be exchanged bilaterally, but are only very rarely brought into play in a global and integrated action.


Keywords : Structure / function / dynamic relationships, molecular interactions and biological consequences, numerical simulations, molecular modeling Industrial partnerships: Givaudan (in progress), atos/bull (in progress)

Scientific collaborations: MEDyC CNRS (Pr L Martiny), ICMR (Pr JH Renault), C2I2 Chair (CReSTIC – Pr Krajecki), AFERE Chair (INRA – Pr Caroline Remond), ABI Chair (AgroParisTech – Pr F Allais (in progress)),

Biotechnology Chair (CentraleSupElec – Pr P Perre), Dr Laurence Lins (Gembloux-Belgium), Pr A matagne (ULg-Belgium), Pr B Bochicchio (Potenza – Italy), Pr A Bonvin (Utrecht – Netherlands)…