Young Investigator 2009
Dr Jérôme Lafont
Jérôme receives his award from Bruce Caterson (Chairman) and John Couchman (Secretary)
Biography
Jérôme obtained his PhD in 2005 in Paris at University Pierre et Marie Curie, working on one of the CCN family members, the Nov gene. He studied its regulation by TGFbeta-1 and described its role in chondrocytic gene regulation. He then joined the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology at Imperial College as a postdoc under supervision of Chris Murphy. There, he studied the role of hypoxia in controlling the chondrocyte phenotype (weblink). His work showed a new role for the hypoxic transcription factor HIF-2α in regulating essential chondrocyte markers such as Sox9 and Collagen 2. It raised the possibility of stimulating cartilage repair by promoting the differentiated human articular chondrocyte phenotype through HIF-2α. After receiving the YIA from BSMB, Jérôme recently secured a lectureship at University Claude Bernard-Lyon1 (France). From January 2010, he will be settled in the Institute of Biology and Protein Chemistry (IBCP), where he will now develop his own project on hypoxia and cartilage biology in Frederic Mallein-Gerin’s laboratory (weblink IBCP).