Dr. Jean Gagnon PhD

Retired research director from the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Dr Gagnon is presently collaborating with the Pathogenesis and Lentivirus Vaccine Laboratory (PAVAL) at the University Grenoble Alpes (France). Dr Gagnon completed his undergraduate studies at Laval University (QC, Canada), followed by doctoral studies in biochemistry at the University of Toronto (Ont, Canada). After a postdoctoral period at the University of Washington (Seattle, USA), he worked for eight years at Oxford University on the complement system at the MRC Immunochemistry Unit, headed by Professor Rodney Porter. During this period, he also collaborated with Dr A. Williams at the MRC Cellular Immunology Unit, on membrane protein markers. Recruited by the CNRS in 1988, Dr Gagnon established a laboratory to work on enzymology and study of structure-function relationship of proteins at the Institute for Structural Biology (Grenoble, France). In 2003, in order to pursue his interest in protein folding, he co-directed with Professor J.-Y. Cesbron an avant-garde research team on prion diseases. Over his career, Dr Gagnon has surpervised several graduate students at Grenoble and other universities. His publications include more than 170 papers in high-impact journals, including Cell, Nature, PNAS, Science, as well as leading journals in the fields of protein chemistry, immunology and more recently, virology.