Pierre Ferrier MD, PhD Molecular Immunology
Course and current status
PIERRE FERRIER is a Principal Investigator and Research Director at the ‘Centre d’Immunologie de Marseille-Luminy’ (CIML), France. He also worked as a Director of ‘Marseille-Nice Genopole’, a local consortium of more than twenty laboratories to develop high-throughput researches in genomics. Main research interests include the analysis of the molecular mechanisms responsible for the control of gene expression and recombination programs during hematopoietic cell development and pathogenesis. He is a member of several national and international scientific organizations including the ‘Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (Inserm), the ‘Agence Nationale de la Recherche’ (ANR), the ‘Association pour la Recherche sur le Cancer’ (ARC), the ‘Human Frontier Science Program Organization’ (HFSPO), and the ‘Université Virtuelle Médicale de Monaco’ (UVMM). Pierre Ferrier received his academic degrees from the Montpellier (MD) and Marseille (PhD) Universities, France. He was a post-doctoral fellow (1986-90) in the laboratory of Prof. F.W. Alt at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, New-York, NY, USA.
Scientific summary
We investigate the molecular mechanisms involved in the control of differentiation events during lymphocyte development, including antigen receptor gene expression and recombination. Our now well-established approaches focus on the characterization of cis-regulatory elements and bound nuclear or transcription factors at lymphoid gene specific loci, and their impact on the chromatin structure using techniques from modern molecular biology, especially high-throughput genomics (ChIP-Chip, ChIP-seq, RNA-seq, MeDIP, FAIRE), and bioinformatics. We apply these techniques to perform thorough genomic/epigenetic analyses of lymphoid cells purified from wild-type or mutant mice produced via transgenic and/or gene targeting (knockout/knockin) strategies; and from human hematopoietic malignacies (leukemias and lymphomas) in order to more specifically define the epigenetic events associated with leukemogenesis/lymphomagenesis. In parallel, via knockin techniques, genomics and proteomics, we intend to study precursor-product relationships along lymphoid cell developmental pathways; and to define the factors and regulatory networks that sustain these transitions, then also coupling bioinformatics with mathematical simulation.
