Meriem El Karoui, 2026 awardee of the Human Frontier Science Program Organization
On 14 April, the Human Frontier Science Program Organization (HFSP), an international programme funding frontier research in the life sciences, awarded its 2026 research grants as well as the second round of acceleration grants to 117 of the world’s most innovative scientists from 31 countries. Meriem El Karoui is among the awardees.
Meriem El Karoui, research director at INRAE and based at the Laboratoire de biologie et pharmacologie appliquée (LBPA - Université Paris-Saclay / ENS Paris-Saclay / CNRS), has been awarded a research grant from the Human Frontier Science Program Organization for her project "Living Batteries: Reconfiguring cell-wall deficient bacteria as synthetic mitochondria", jointly led with Madeleine Moule (University of Edinburgh, UK), Matthew Scott (University of Waterloo, Canada), and Karl Morten (University of Oxford, UK).
Bacteria are ubiquitous micro-organisms that play a vital role in our microbiome, although some can also cause disease. In certain chronic infections, they can lose their cell wall and become cell-wall deficient bacteria (CWDB). This transformation enables them to evade the immune system and persist discreetly within human cells, acting as silent reservoirs.
The awarded project aims to harness this ability by transforming these bacteria into "synthetic mitochondria", that is, structures capable of producing energy within cells. Mitochondria play a crucial role in cellular function, and their dysfunction is linked to many chronic diseases as well as ageing. Using CWDB as a foundation, the objective is to create mitochondrial analogues capable of repairing or supporting diseased or ageing cells. The project also seeks to understand how these bacteria coexist with human cells, in order to mathematically model exchanges of energy and nutrients between them.
In the longer term, this research could lead to the development of new approaches to restore impaired cellular functions and open up new perspectives in fundamental biology and human health.
Research Grants, which run for three years, are awarded to international teams of two to four scientists engaged in a new collaborative project. They support innovative fundamental research addressing major biological challenges, encouraging original and interdisciplinary approaches. These projects rely on the complementarity of expertise from researchers based in different countries, enabling them to tackle questions that could not be addressed within a single laboratory.