Jean-Louis Mandel Explained

Jean-Louis Mandel, born in Strasbourg on February 12, 1946, is a French medical doctor and geneticist, and heads a research team at the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology (IGBMC). He has been in charge of the genetic diagnosis laboratory at the University Hospitals of Strasbourg since 1992, as well as a professor at the Collège de France (Chair of Human Genetics) since 2003.

Biography

Doctor of Medicine (1971) and Doctor of Science (1974) from the University of Strasbourg (theses prepared under the supervision of Prof. Pierre Chambon), Jean-Louis Mandel was Associate Professor of Biochemistry at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Strasbourg from 1978 to 1984, then Professor of Medical Genetics at the same Faculty from 1984 to 2003 before being appointed to the Chair of Human Genetics at the Collège de France. He leads a research team in human genetics at the LGME (Laboratoire de Génétique Moléculaire des Eucaryotes, directed by Pierre Chambon) which became the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology (IGBMC) in 1994. He started a molecular diagnosis of genetic diseases in 1985, which became the genetic diagnosis laboratory at the University Hospitals of Strasbourg in 1992, for which he has been responsible since then. Jean-Louis Mandel was appointed Director of the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology (IGBMC) from 2002 to 2007, following its founder Pierre Chambon, then Deputy Director from 2007 to 2009. From 2008 to 2009, he was Director of the Mouse Clinic (ICS). He has also been a full member of the French Academy of sciences since 1999[1] and a corresponding member of the French Academy of Medicine.

Scientific contribution

Since 1982, Jean-Louis Mandel has been working on the identification of genes and mutations responsible for rare inherited monogenic diseases affecting the nervous system and/or muscles. He has also contributed to the development of diagnostic tests and the analysis of pathophysiological mechanisms for several of these diseases, using animal or cellular models in particular. His most important contribution concerns the identification and characterization of the mutation mechanism by unstable expansion of trinucleotide repetition. In 1991, his team showed that Fragile X mental retardation syndrome, the most common cause of hereditary intellectual disability, is due to the expansion of a CGG repetition associated with localized abnormal DNA methylation (Oberlé et al. Sciences, 1991). From 1995 to 1997 his team (with notably Yvon Trottier), in collaboration with Alexis Brice's team (Hôpital Pitié Salpétrière) identified polyglutamine expansions as pathogenic epitopes in Huntington's disease and four other dominant ataxias, which led to the identification of genes involved in the spinocerebellar ataxias SCA2 and SCA7 (Trottier et al, Nature, 1995, Imbert et al. Nat Genet 1996, David et al. Nat Genet 1997). In 1996, with Michel Koenig and Massimo Pandolfo, he showed that Friedreich's Ataxia, a neurodegenerative disease, is caused by the expansion of a GAA repetition in the gene encoding a protein of unknown function, frataxin, and participates in clinical and genetic studies on this disease (Dürr et al, NEJM, 1996). Jean-Louis Mandel has also identified the genes responsible for adrenoleukodystrophy, with Patrick Aubourg (Mosser et al, Nature, 1993), ataxia with isolated vitamin E deficiency with Michel Koenig (Ouahchi et al, Nature Genetics, 1995), Coffin-Lowry syndrome (mental retardation linked to chromosome X) with André Hanauer (Trivier et al, Nature, 1996). His work with Jocelyn Laporte has led to the identification of the mutated MTM1 gene in X-linked myotubular myopathy (Laporte et al Nat Genet 1996) and more recently the mutated BIN1 gene in autosomal recessive centronuclear myopathy (Nicot et al, Nature Genet, 2007). For several years, Jean-Louis Mandel has concentrated a significant part of his activity on the development of effective strategies for the molecular diagnosis of monogenic intellectual deficiencies, which affect more than 1% of the population and are characterized by extreme genetic heterogeneity, and for a better clinical knowledge of these different genetic forms (projet GenIDA [2] [archive]) (Piton et al, AJHG, 2013, and Redin et al. J Med Genet 2014).

Awards and honours

Representative publications

J.L. Mandel has published more than 350 articles and has an H-index of 86 (Web of Science, January 2015). Below, about thirty representative publications (* publications cited more than 200 times, ** more than 500 times)

Notes and References

  1. http://www.academie-sciences.fr/academie/membre/MandelJL_bio1209.pdf Académie des sciences : Jean-Louis Mandel
  2. https://www.kavliprize.org/prizes/neuroscience/2022 Kavli Prize 2022
  3. https://www.allianz.fr/v_1391122800000/qui-est-allianz/allianz-s-engage/dans-la-societe/la-recherche-medicale/media/a_PlaqALZPrixRecherche2013.pdf Allianz s’engage depuis 30 ans dans la recherche médicale

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