Bertand Coste, CNRS research fellow at the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory (AMU/CNRS), has been awarded the Brixham Foundation 2022 Prize by the Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale. Here's a look back at his career.
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An essential technique leading to important discoveries
It was during his thesis work at the Laboratoire de neurophysiologie cellulaire in Marseille that Bertrand Coste developed a technique for recording and measuring the mechanical perception activity of neurons. From 2007 to 2012, he joined Prof. Ardem Patapoutian's laboratory at the Scripps Research Institute in California as a post-doctoral fellow. He brings with him the same technique that enabled them to discover the mechanosensitive Piezo1 and Piezo2 channels in 2010. It is these channels, involved in proprioception* and light touch, that will earn Prof. Patapoutian the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2021.
Blocking the pain signal in the hope of soothing patients
Recruited by the CNRS on his return to France in 2013, he now works at the Laboratoire de neurosciences cognitives, where he is identifying other mechanosensitive channels involved in pain perception. Currently unknown, the characterization of the molecular mechanisms responsible for pain represents a major public health challenge. Targeting these mechanisms would make it possible to block the pain signal, and soothe the ever-increasing number of patients suffering from chronic pain.
It is for this work that the Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale has chosen to present Bertrand Coste with the Brixham Foundation 2022 Award, a prize designed to support biomedical research on the brain. The ceremony took place on November 29 at the Collège de France.
Bertrand Coste
Portrait de Betrand Coste
Article originally published in Lettre d'AMU, December 2022.
*proprioception: ability to perceive one's body in space
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