Leveillard Thierry

Biography

He obtained his PhD at the University of Rouen (France) in 1989, following a Masters in Biochemistry at the University Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris. He spent three years as a post-doctoral researcher in San Diego (UCSD and the Salk Institute) and moved back to Strasbourg where he worked at the IGBMC for four years. His current project was initiated in Strasbourg where he was recruited as „Chargé de recherche Inserm" in 1998 and ultimately continued in Paris where he was promoted „Directeur de recherche‟ in 2006. The diverse influences of these different geographic locations translate to a broad expertise in molecular biology. He commenced my current medical project on signaling and the therapy of inherited retinal degeneration with José Sahel. It is ironic that within the field of neuroprotection, they try to promote the activity of the very same actors he was trying to inhibit in the field of cancer biology.  Examples include the growth factor GDNF, on which we published one paper in IOVS and two papers in Molecular Vision, and p53 shown to be activated in response to photoreceptor degeneration in a paper published in Molecular Neurosciences. One novel scientific achievement, the yields of which have occupied most of my time over the last ten years, was based on the observations made by Saddek Mohand-Saïd and José Sahel in a mouse model of retinitis pigmentosa (RP). The transplantation of rod photoreceptors in the eye of this mouse was found to prevent the secondary loss of cones, the more vital class of photoreceptors necessary for vision. In the degenerative disease RP, most patient’s carry a mutation in a gene (among many) expressed selectively in rods, hence preventing secondary cone loss by means of mimicking the effects of transplantation could be an effective and broadly applicable therapy.

Research Interest

Neurology