Thomas Lecuit awarded a Chair of Excellence in Biology/Health

Thomas Lecuit, an École Normale Supérieure alumnus, is a biologist whose research focuses on morphogenesis, i.e. the origin of forms, from cells to organisms. During embryogenesis, millions of cells take part in a choreography of movements and changes of form, giving rise to a complex organism. What forces are at work, and what information guides these processes to completion? To answer these questions, he has been leading a research team at the Institut de Biologie du Développement de Marseille (IBDM) since 2001. His highly interdisciplinary team uses Drosophila as a model organism, observing, characterizing and disrupting its development through experimental approaches, and modeling it in collaboration with theoretical physicists.

Thomas Lecuit is also Director of the Marseille-based Turing Center for Living Systems (CENTURI), an interdisciplinary center that studies complexity and self-organization in biology (microbiology, cell, and development biology, neurobiology, immunology), thanks to contributions from physics, computer science and mathematics.

He has been a professor at the Collège de France since 2016, holding the "Dynamics of Living Systems" chair. He is also an elected member of the Académie des Sciences, the Academia Europaea and the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). He is the recipient of several awards, including the Liliane Bettencourt Prize for Life Sciences (2015) and the CNRS Silver Medal (2015).

Scientific project: LivingOrigami "How geometry and mechanics control and constrain morphogenesis".

Morphogenesis is the study of the appearance of forms in biology. This highly robust and complex process is disrupted in disease. What mechanisms underlie morphogenesis? To answer this question, we need to understand how the information specifying cellular behaviors, such as changes in cell shape, is encoded, and this involves characterizing the underlying mechanical processes, and how they are controlled in space and time. To date, the focus has been on understanding how genes and cell mechanics control changes in cell shape and, consequently, morphogenesis at the scale of tissues and organs. However, the role of a tissue's geometric properties and its physical boundaries, size, curvature and dimensionality, has recently emerged as an important, if neglected, feature of morphogenetic processes.

The LivingOrigami project will elucidate the roles of geometry and geometric feedback on cell and tissue biomechanics, and how they determine tissue morphogenesis.

Chairs of Excellence in Biology/Health, a France 2030 initiative

Confirming the ambition set with the launch of the Plan Innovation santé 2030, the healthcare component of France 2030, to make France a leading country in healthcare, the president of France announced in June 2023 the launch of various support schemes to maintain and strengthen, on our territory, research excellence in the field of Biology/Health. A biomedical research base of excellence is a key first step in enabling healthcare innovations to emerge in large numbers and over the long term, with the aim of improving public health, strengthening our sovereignty and attracting international investment and major healthcare manufacturers.

The first Chairs of Excellence in Biology/Health awarded in 2024 are designed to retain and attract the best researchers in their field to France, and reinforce the excellence of French research. The reward is substantial funding to carry out major new projects in France over a five-year period. 

Launched in May 2023, the scheme is operated on behalf of the French government by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR), and aims to fund a total of between 40 and 50 Chairs of Excellence. It is supported by a total budget of €80 million from France 2030.