Actualité - Award

Researcher Jean-Léon Maître receives Claude Paoletti prize

10/30/2019
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Jean-Léon Maître was awarded the Claude Paoletti prize on October 30th 2019 during a ceremony at the CNRS headquarter. This prestigious prize rewards the quality of his scientific projects and his original research on embryonic development.

JL Maitre

The CNRS awarded the Claude Paoletti prize of 2019 to Jean-Léon Maître (U934/UMR3215) group leader of the Mechanics of mammalian development team.

During its first days of development, the mammalian embryo forms a structure called the blastocyst, which mediates the implantation in the maternal uterus. The specific architecture of the blastocyst is crucial to the specify which cells are destined to placenta or to the embryo and to position the first axes of the body plan. Jean-Léon and his team use microscopy, biophysics and genetics to understand how the embryo builds itself. Borrowing from material sciences, the Mechanics of mammalian development team recently described how the first axis of symmetry of the mouse embryo results from hydraulic fracturing of cell-cell contacts. This research helps understanding our own origins and will be used to improve assisted reproduction technologies.

Started in 2016, the team led by Jean-Léon Maître has been supported by an ERC Starting Grant, the ATIP-Avenir program from the CNRS, the HuDeCA cross-cutting program from Inserm, the FSER prize, Labex Deep and Nouvelle équipe and QLife fundings from the Idex PSL and a partnership with Zeiss.

I am honoured that our collective effort is acknowledged with this prize and I thank the CNRS for their continuous support of our research.

anounced the researcher while receiving his prize.

Claude Paoletti, as director of the department of life sciences at the CNRS, undertook numerous initiatives to support young researchers. To celebrate his memory, his friends initiated this prize, which is now supported by the INSB at the CNRS. More info on Paoletti prize