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Jules Hoffmann, Nobel Prize of Physiology and Medicine 2011, will take part in a colloquium at the Faculty of Medicine and Odontology

  • May 28th, 2019
Jules Hoffmann

The colloquium will be hosted at the Faculty of Medicine next Monday 3 of June to the 11'00 hours in the Room of Degrees.

Professor Jules Hoffmann (Echternach, Luxembourg, 1941) graduated in Biology and Chemistry at the University of Strasbourg, where he also got his PhD. Degree in Biology in 1969. He spent his post-doctoral training at the University of Marburg (1974). Thereafter, most of his scientific career was developed at the CNRS (Strasbourg), where he became director of the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology.

In October of 2011 he received the Nobel Prize of Medicine and Physiology, together with Bruce Beutler and Ralph Steinman for his research work in the field of immunology and, more precisely, in the mechanisms of the innate response. Prof. Hoffmann Discovered the basic mechanisms that trigger the innate response of the immune system towards bacteria that he first described in Drosofila, the Toll proteins, that shortly afterwards were also found in mammalian cells. These Toll-like receptors (TLR's) are present in the membrane of surveying immune cells (dendritic cells, monocytes, macrophages) and recognise certain structural patterns that are expressed in bacteria. Together with the PRRs (pattern recognition receptors) the TLRs (toll-like receptors) allow to early detect the bacterial infection thanks to the recognition of PAMPs patogen-associated molecular patterns) triggering the quick response of the innate immune system. His scientific contributions have been determinant for a better understanding of the mechanisms activating the innate immune response.