In addition to his team leader position at IRCAN, Eric Gilson heads IRCAN, co-heads a team with Pr J. YE and Y. LU at the LIA (Laboratoire International Associé) “Hematology and Cancer” at the Ruijing Hospital (Shanghai, China) and is the scientific coordinator of the cross-cutting Inserm program on aging (AGEMED).

Before the 90’s, telomeres were mostly considered as DNA repeats of a certain length depending on the presence of telomerase. Overall, the work of Eric Gilson contributed to broaden this view by revealing an unusual organization of telomeric chromatin and unexpected links between this chromatin, telomere length, regulation and chromosome end stability and senescence. Therefore, his work had and still has a strong influence not only for telomere people but also for researchers working on the higher-order structure of chromatin, replication, DNA damage response, cancer and aging. Nowadays, the main objective of Eric Gilson research is to provide an integrated description of the telomere signaling pathways involved in aging and malignant transformation.