Year of Honorary Fellowship, 2012
Bruno Lemaitre obtained his PhD in 1992 at the University Pierre and Marie Curie (Paris) on the P element transposition in Drosophila. Next, he joined the laboratory of Jules Hoffmann (CNRS, Strasbourg, France) where he began a genetic dissection of the Drosophila antimicrobial response. One of his initial findings demonstrated that the Toll receptor protein and its downstream signaling pathway are essential components of the fruit fly immune response. This pioneering work in innate immunity facilitated the identification of Toll-like receptors as crucial mediators of human innate immunity. In 1998, he started his own lab at the Centre Génétique Moléculaire Gif-sur-Yvette, France). In 2007, he became professor at the Ecole Polytechnique of Lausanne. His laboratory uses the fruit fly as a model system to study innate immunity and symbiosis. In parallel, Bruno Lemaitre has developed an interest in the study of personality and its influence in the scientific context.
