Philippe Roche's Biography

Philippe Roche, Senior Scientist, National Center for Scientific Research

Dr Philippe Roche is a senior scientist at the CNRS, Marseille, France. He started his career in Toulouse (France) where he got its PhD in structural biochemistry, working on the structure of carbohydrates involved in Plant-Microbe interactions (Rhizobium Legume-Symbiosis). This research led to the development of the patented LCO Promoter Technology used as nitrogen inoculants in the USA and South America by Novozymes (http://www.bioag.novozymes.com). After a 3 year post-doc at the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center in Athens, GA USA with Prof Peter Albersheim, he moved to Computer Sciences in the group of David Perahia (CNRS, Orsay, France). In 2001, he joined the Division of Structural Biology of the Henry Wellcome Building for Genomic Medicine (University of Oxford). In 2008, he cofounded with Dr Xavier Morelli the group “Interactions, Dynamics & Drug Design” which focused on the study of the basic principles governing the parameters of molecular recognition (mainly of protein-protein and protein-sugar complexes) and on the development of innovative protocols to disrupt protein-protein complexes. Since 2012, he has moved to the Laboratory of integrative Structural & Chemical Biology (iSCB), at the Cancer Research Center in Marseille where he is in charge of chemoinformatics and molecular modeling projects.