Speakers 2024

Speakers 2024

Sebastian AMIGORENA

CNRS

Directeur de Recherche Classe Exceptionnelle


Sebastian Amigorena is “Directeur de Recherche Classe Exceptionnelle” at CNRS, Director of the “Center of Immunotherapy for cancers” and the “Immune responses and cancer” Team at Institut Curie (Paris, France), in the Immunology Department "Immunity and Cancer" that he created in 2003 and directed until 2021. Dr. Amigorena obtained a PhD in Biochemistry in 1990, and joined CNRS before doing a post-doctoral training at Yale School of Medecine (1992-1994). He returned to France in 1995 and started his team at Institut Curie (Paris, France). Dr . Amigorena made groundbreaking contributions to immunology and cell biology, at every stage of his career. As a PhD student, he discovered ITIMs, a family of short amino acid motifs present in the cytosolic tails of numerous inhibitory immunoreceptors that play critical roles in the control of autoimmunity. As a postdoc, he identified specialized intracellular compartments, related to endosomes, where peptides are loaded on MHC molecules. As a group leader, he pioneered the field of antigen cross presentation, establishing the fundamental functional properties of phagosomes in mouse and human dendritic cells and showing how these specializations contribute to the initiation of adaptive immune responses by dendritic cells. Amigorena’s group also showed that regulatory T cells inhibit low avidity CD8+ T cells selectively, thus preventing autoimmune reactivity and optimizing the efficacy of effector and memory immune responses against non-self antigens. His findings modified our understanding of antigen presentation and T cell priming by dendritic cells, with applications in the fields of cancer immunotherapy and vaccination. Dr. Amigorena published over 200 original articles, including, as a co-first or co-last author, in Nature (4x), Science (3x), Cell (2x), Immunity (6x), Nature Immunology (4x), Nature Cell Biology (2x), and Journal of Experimental Medicine (6x). Dr. Amigorena is a member of the French “Académie des Sciences” and an elected EMBO member since 2005. He received numerous national and international prices and awards, including the Silver Medal from CNRS (2004), the Research award from Fondation Bettencourt (2005), the Griffuel Prize from ARC (2007), the Alt Award from CRI, and twice the prestigious senior European Research Council (ERC) award (2008 and 2014), the award Claude Bernard from Paris City (2017). He became Knight of the French "Légion d'honneur" (2018). He co-directs the Labex (Investissements d’Avenir) DC-BIOL, awarded in 2012. He serves on numerous Editorial Boards and is a regular referee for major international journals (including as a reviewing editor in Science, since 2012). He mentored over 30 post docs and students. His international leadership is reflected by invitations to write reviews in the most influential journals and to speak, including as a Keynote Speaker, at over 100 international conferences.

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