Jean-Laurent Casanova, MD, PhD

 

Rockefeller University​

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​Jean-Laurent Casanova was born in 1963 in Paris, where he received his MD in 1987 and his PhD in 1992, after training at the Pasteur Institute in Paris (with Philippe Kourilsky) and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Lausanne (with Janet Maryanski and Rob MacDonald).

 

Following a pediatric residency in Paris and a pediatric immunology-hematology fellowship at the Necker Hospital for Sick Children (with Claude Griscelli and Alain Fischer), he was appointed professor at Necker in 1999. There, with Laurent Abel, he cofounded the Laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Diseases. He led the experimental (wet) lab, whereas Dr. Abel led the computational (dry) lab.

 

Over the last 25 years, Dr. Casanova discovered and characterized the first monogenic etiologies for a variety of severe viral, bacterial and fungal infections that predispose otherwise healthy infants, children, adolescents and even adults to a single type of infectious disease.

 

These discoveries, at the crossroads of microbiology, immunology, genetics and medicine have provided compelling evidence that life-threatening infectious diseases can be caused by monogenic inborn errors of immunity.

 

These studies have had important clinical implications, as they provided a basis for genetic counseling and led to new therapeutic approaches based on an understanding of the host component of infectious diseases. Moreover, they revealed disease mechanisms that apply to the pathogenesis of the same infections in other settings, including AIDS and immunosuppression.

 

These studies also have had major biological implications, as they revealed the largely redundant function of host defense genes in natura, in the setting of a natural ecosystem governed by natural selection. 

 

Recognitions

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• Dautrebande Prize (Belgium, 2004)

• International Howard Hughes Medical Institute research scholar (2005-2008)

• Richard Lounsbery Award (USA/France, 2008)

• Professor at the Rockefeller University (2008)

• E. Mead Johnson Award (USA, 2010)

• InBev Baillet-Latour Health Prize (Belgium, 2011)

• Ilse and Helmut Wachter Foundation Award (Austria, 2012)

• Milstein Award (USA, 2012)

• HHMI investigator (2014)

• Robert Koch Award (Germany, 2014)

• Sanofi-Institut Pasteur Award (France, 2014)

• Stanley J. Korsmeyer Award (USA, 2016)

• Inserm Grand Prix (France, 2016)

• Elected to the EMBO (2005)

• Elected to USA National Academy of Sciences (2015)

• Elected to USA National Academy of Medicine (2015)

• President of the Henry Kunkel Society

• Co-editor-in-chief of The Journal of Clinical Immunology

• Editor of The Journal of Experimental Medicine, Current Opinion in Immunology, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA