CV Science

Christophe Tzourio Professor of Epidemiology

Course and current status

Training and responsibilities. Christophe Tzourio, MD, PhD, has a dual training in clinical neurology and epidemiology. He was initially trained as a vascular neurologist and served as chief resident of Neurology at Saint-Antoine Hospital in Paris. After completing a PhD thesis on genetic modeling in Alzheimer’s disease, he became a full time senior researcher with the INSERM (National Institute of Health and Medical Research) in 1994. He is Professor of epidemiology at the University of Bordeaux since September 2013 and Director of the Bordeaux Population Health (BPH) Research Center U1219 which includes 13 teams and more than 400 staff members.In 2005, Prof. Tzourio became director of a new INSERM Research Unit U708 in Paris. In September 2013, he was appointed Director of the Bordeaux Population Health research center (BPH) Inserm U1219 at the Bordeaux University, which includes 13 teams and over 450 staff members.

National and international service. Prof. Tzourio has numerous responsibilities in the evaluation and development of research and public health policies in France. He was Director of the Department of Research in Public Health at INSERM and has also served in the Scientific Committee 'Public Health' and in the Scientific Advisory Board of INSERM. He is currently member of the Scientific Committee of Public Health France and, at the local level, on the Scientific Committee of both the University and the University Hospital of Bordeaux. He has participated in multiple scientific councils and steering committees in public and private entities (Foundation for Medical Research, Ministry of Health, Alzheimer Foundation, etc). He is a regular reviewer for international funding agencies, as well as for major international journals, such as JAMA, New Eng J Med, BMJ, Lancet, and Annals of Neurology.

Impact. Prof. Tzourio has worked mainly in the field of epidemiology of brain diseases. He is a leading worldwide researcher in this area, and has been invited to give many keynote lectures in plenary sessions of international meetings (36 since 2000), and to write editorials in international journals. He has published >450 original papers which have been cited >46,000 times in international peer-reviewed journals such as the British Medical Journal, The Lancet, The New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Archives of Internal Medicine, Annals of Neurology, and Circulation (Web of Science H index = 93).

Scientific summary

Key projects. Christophe Tzourio has extensive experience in the design, management, and scientific output of large population-based cohort studies in France. He has been closely  involved in several population-based cohorts, including the 3C study (role: PI; 9,293 participants, 15 years follow-up). He has also participated as a key investigator in large-scale randomized controlled trials. He was the regional PI, member of the International Management Committee and the analysis and writing committees in the international PROGRESS trial, which aimed at the secondary prevention of stroke by lowering blood pressure. He is the co-PI of the LEOPOLD trial, which has received funding from the Clinical Research Program from the Ministry of Health (1.4 million €) and network member of a Leducq Transatlantic Network of Excellence and of a grant 'Investment for Future' in the theme 'Cloud computing and big data'.

i-Share. Within the framework of the prestigious call ‘Investment for future’ Prof. Tzourio has been awarded a large grant (5.4 million €) in 2010 for setting up a cohort study among students, the i-Share study: Internet-based students' health research enterprise. This e-cohort already has more than 16,000 participants, and is the largest longitudinal study ever performed worldwide in this age group. It is also unique in its massive use of web and mobile technologies and large-scale data approaches to provide a better assessment of students' health and to explore questions like brain maturation or the interplay between psychological traits and disorders and brain structures. Prof. Tzourio received the prize "Coup d'Elan de la Fondation Bettencourt" in 2012 for this project.