Isabelle Oswald, Mycotoxin Champion and Marraine 2021

For this new 2021 edition of the Occitanie Exposcience, we are pleased to present the portrait of our new sponsor, Isabelle Oswald, Director of the Joint Research Unit of Food Toxicology (Toxalim) on the INRAE Center*Occitanie-Toulouse.

For the occasion, we interviewed the FReDD on Wednesday 26/05/2021! The interview is now online and to discover here:

Recruited in 2014 at INRA, after studying to become an agronomist engineer at Rennes, where she received the Tisserand Medal as a major in her promotion.

She works very early in research, from immunology to toxicology to mycology. Each of these research disciplines and themes has been so intensely addressed. Its main study subjects are mycotoxins, toxins from fungi in about 50% of the food.

These toxins can be involved in certain pathologies, have a major impact on human and animal health and challenge science by their multiple effects and their abundance. An issue that is growing in a climate of global warming conducive to mould development.

Currently, in an internationally renowned unit of nearly 100 researchers, Isabelle leads a team of about 20 people, one of whom is working on the biosynthesis of mycotoxins and the other on the characterization of their toxicity.

« My new challenge is to study the effect of mixtures between mycotoxins and other contaminants, such as heavy metals. We are exposed, in the diversity of our foods, to very low doses of contaminants, but which add up and sometimes generate cocktail effects. ».

Isabelle Oswald lends her expertise to Anses and EFSA to assess the risks associated with contaminants in food. This research is intended to change the regulation since it does not yet consider mixtures. It is estimated that only 20% of the molecules produced by fungi are known and that some mycotoxin metabolites are more toxic than the original toxins. This is the case for aflatoxin, the most powerful natural carcinogen currently known.

Isabelle Oswald is awarded the 2018 Laurier for excellence in agronomic research. With more than 200 scientific publications, an international network of collaboration and the formation of some 30 teasards and post-docs, Isabelle Oswald has by her works marked the world of fungal toxins. This award salutes the work of a team for about twenty years with pioneering results, especially in the vaccination of pigs and humans.

Indeed, it achieves a first striking result by showing that mycotoxins can decrease the vaccine response and therefore that some vaccination failures in animals and humans are attributable to a contaminated diet, a link that had not been envisaged before. A second pioneering result, Isabelle establishes that some mycotoxins affect the intestine, which no longer plays its role as a selective and protective barrier, thus showing that these food contaminants, even at low doses, can have a long-term harmful effect on health.

His journey and his work are to be found on this portrait of INRAE (source of this article), and also at Exposcience Occitanie 2021 on 4 and 5 June!

*INRAE: National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment