Clotilde Thery's Biography

Clotilde Thery, Research Director, Institut Curie

Dr. Clotilde Théry is an INSERM director of research (DR2) working at Institut Curie, where she heads a team entitled "Exosomes and tumor growth", created in 2009 within the "Immunity and Cancer" INSERM Unit U932. After a PhD in Developmental Biology (received in Paris in 1992 for her work at College de France on brain macrophages and their interactions with neural cells during development), and a post-doc in Oxford University (UK) and Columbia University (USA) on the early steps of brain development, she turned to the study of cell biology aspects of immune responses in 1996 when joining the lab of S. Amigorena, at Institut Curie in Paris. Since 1998, her scientific interests have focused on the study of small vesicles called exosomes, secreted by immune and tumor cells, which play many roles in communications between tumors and the immune system. From 1998 until 2007, she mainly focused on exosomes secreted by dendritic cells of the immune system, and her work demonstrated their nature as specific subcellular compartments and their ability to transfer MHC-peptide complexes between dendritic cells to enhance efficiency of immune responses. Her more recent goals are to understand the physiological functions of exosome secretion during an in vivo immune response, and during tumor growth. C. Théry has published more than 50 articles in international peer-reviewed journals, (especially in immunology, cell biology and cancer), she is regularly invited as speaker at international conferences. She organized a symposium and several sessions dedicated to exosomes in international meetings, and she is currently actively involved in the establishment of an international scientific society dedicated to extracellular vesicles.