Lucie Pellissier awarded with an ERC Starting Grant 2019

Lucie Pellissier is a recipient of the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant 2019. This year, 408 laureates from 51 nationalities were granted among the 3106 submitted projects (success rate of 13,1 %) by the different ERC Starting Grants panels. Among them, 38 % Principal Investigators are women.

Lucie has been awarded with 1,5 M€ for 5 years allowing her to initiate long-term research projects. The first part of the project aims to identify the molecular substrates and the synaptic plasticity events in a neuronal circuit controlling sociability between congeners in mice and validate these substrates in higher social animals, including farm animals and Humans. The second part will determine the different mechanisms leading to the dysregulation of these substrates, and highligth new common targets of sociability. Modulating these targets using molecular and pharmacological strategies, notably through antibody fragment development, should improve social skills in individuals with social deficits.

Lucie Pellissier got her PhD in molecular neurobiology in 2009 at the University of Montpellier in the Institute for Functional Genomics. After a long first post-doc at the Netherlands Institute for Neurosciences in Amsterdam, she joined the Physiology of Reproduction and Behaviours (PRC) research unit at INRA Val de Loire center for a second post-doc, awarded with Marie Curie Agreenskills grant. She obtained a permanent researcher position at CNRS in this mixed research unit in 2017. In 2018, she became one of the key question co-leader of the Labex MAbImprove on « how can target activity be modulated through antibody binding? ».

ERC press release, Septembre 3, 2019 https://erc.europa.eu/news/StG-recipients-2019

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