"Les CIFRE" Ph.D. Scholarship 2023

Béez Biotech is an innovative enterprise established in the summer of 2021 in the beautiful city of France called Rennes. Beez aims to upsurge the success rate of "Medically Assisted Reproduction (MAR)," where Beez is developing cutting-edge research projects, especially for quality reproductive cell selection. 

Our R&D unit specializes in developing microfluidic-based biomimetic and lab-ready solutions for healthcare applications. We are fully equipped with 3D printing-based microfluidic fabrication, where we are able to produce molds for microfluidic channels up to 50µm × 50µm. Additionally, we share a biological lab facility equipped with advanced imaging systems and cell preservation units. The research unit of Beez Biotech comprises multidisciplinary skills, including microfluidics, fluid dynamics, sperm biology, image/signal processing, and biotechnology. The company is an outcome of the H2020-MSCA-IF funded project MicroFSMA. Since its creation, the company has been financed through prestigious regional research subventions like Inno R&D and Rennes-Saint Malo experimentation.  Company is collaborating with INSERM Rennes to study chemotactic behaviors of human sperm cells. 

INSERM Rennes

The team “ Physiology and Physiopathology of the Uro-Genital Tract” (UrGenT) led by Nathalie Dejucq-Rainsford (1st class research director at Inserm) was renewed in January 2022 by the INSERM for a 5-year mandate and has received the prestigious “FRM team” label from the Medical Research Foundation in 2022. The UrGenT team is a recognized leader in the field of reproductive biology and more specifically the study of the impact of the chemical and biological environment onto the human fetal and adult uro-genital tract (see www.irset.org for more details on publications and projects). The team currently encompasses 20 permanent members including Inserm researchers, lecturers, clinicians and engineers, as well as 13 doctoral and post-doctoral students, all with complementary expertise in reproductive biology, genomics, bio-informatics, toxicology and virology. The laboratory provides state-of-the-art facilities for a range of cutting-edge approaches (e.g. 3D organ culture and microscopy, single-cell RNAseq, RNAscope, cell sorters, levels 3 and 2 laboratories), as well as access to patient cohorts. The team researches are supported by a number of international and national grants (e.g. European grants Zikalliance & HuGoDeCa, MSD international grant; ANR, ANRS-MIE, Inserm transversal program HuDeCa). The UrGenT team is one of 12 teams from IRSET-Inserm U1085 in Rennes (Research Institute for Environmental and Occupational Health), an inter- and multidisciplinary research center under the supervision of Inserm, the University of Rennes and the EHESP (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Santé Publique). IRSET includes approximately 350 people (molecular and cellular biologists, immunologists, virologists, toxicologists, epidemiologists, clinicians…) dedicated to the study of biological processes and environmental factors that affect human health, and offers numerous technical platforms. 

 "LES CIFRE" and research projects   

"LES CIFRE" is a subsidized 3-year research program facilitated by "Association Nationale Recherche Technologie (ANRT)." The program establishes the bridge between academia and industry where an associated scholar can benefit from the dual research culture to drive their future professional integration.

The R&D unit of Beez Biotech, led by Dr. Shukla, and the research laboratory of Prof. Dejucq-Rainsford are jointly developing a project to study the chemotactic behavior of human spermatozoa. The swimming behavior of the human spermatozoa will be explored in a chemical landscape where microfluidic-based gizmos will be utilized to establish the chemical gradient. The recruited candidate will work at the interface between cell biology and biophysics.