Pierre-Marie Lledo - Curriculum Vitae#

Long CV

With interests ranging from brain development and brain disease to neuronal circuitry, Dr. Lledo is best known for his studies of the interplay of sensory input and genetics early in mammalian brain development, when the unusual malleability of the nervous system allows experiences to shape the lifelong wiring of the brain. His research has employed techniques from systems and molecular neuroscience to probe the mechanisms of early neural wiring, the limits of early brain plasticity, and how such neuronal plasticity depends on neurogenesis throughout life. Such work could have profound implications for developmental disorders as well as learning and education.

Dr Lledo has pioneered use of the olfactory system as a model system for sensory systems and plasticity, and his laboratory has become accepted world-wide as one of the centers of expertise in elucidating the functional implications of adult neurogenesis.

During a post-doctoral stay at UCSF (San Francisco, USA), Dr. Lledo was the first to demonstrate that synaptic plasticity requires receptor trafficking and to investigate the function of the cellular Prion protein in synaptic transmission. When he came back in France, in 1997, he started a group that rapidly became active in elucidating the basic mechanisms of the olfactory bulb function and in uncovering the mechanisms by which the adult brain produces newborn neurons, as well as in revealing the functional implications of adult neurogenesis. His laboratory has pioneered the use of viruses to study the development of newborn neurons in situ.

Lledo's group made the surprising finding that the maturation of inhibitory circuits - such as the stunted development of wiring in the olfactory bulb from a deprived network - controls the timing of early brain plasticity. By directly manipulating the onset of such inhibitory transmission within the olfactory bulb, Lledo and his colleagues have shown that neural plasticity mirrors this timing, a finding that has had a major impact on developmental neuroscience. Lledo continues to investigate the structural and molecular mechanisms of these phenomena, as well as the role of rhythmic electrical activity that occurs from the interplay between principal neurons and local inhibitory neurons.

Today, Dr. Lledo is one of the main opinion leaders in cellular neurobiology, as demonstrated by his publication list (62 originals papers since 1991) and invitations to International Congresses (64 since 1998). Among several responsibilities, Dr. Lledo is now the corresponding investigator in Paris of a network called the "European Neuroscience Institute" and he is a member of the Academia Europaea and he had just been appointed to the Scientific Council of the Pasteur Institute (January 2007).