Marc Blondel's Biography

Marc Blondel, Professor, University of Brest

Marc Blondel is Professor of Cell Biology at the Medical Faculty of the “Université de Bretagne Occidentale” (UBO) in Brest, France, since 2006. He leads a research group (in INSERM U1078, for which he is also vice-director) focused on the use of budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to model human diseases. These yeast-based models served to screen for compounds or genes that are active against the modeled diseases, and also to decipher new mechanisms involved in the considered pathologies. After a PhD in the Cell Cycle Lab of Dr. Carl Mann, CEA Saclay (France) obtained in 1996, he held a postdoctoral position for four years at the Swiss Institute of Cancer Research in the Cell Cycle team of Prof. Matthias Peter (Epalinges, Switzerland). Then, in 2000, he was appointed as a CNRS Research Investigator in the Amyloids and Cell Division Cycle Group headed by Dr. Laurent Meijer in Roscoff, until 2006. In 2004 he received the CNRS Bronze Medal and since 2005 he is Senior Editor for Biotechnology Journal (Wiley-Blackwell). Areas of expertise: drug screening, cell cycle/cancer, prion-based diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, budding yeast.