Concept
Luciferase
Related people (14)
Johan Auwerx
Johan Auwerx is Professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he occupies the Nestle Chair in Energy Metabolism. Dr. Auwerx has been using molecular physiology and systems genetics to understand metabolism in health, aging and disease. Much of his work focused on understanding how diet, exercise and hormones control metabolism through changing the expression of genes by altering the activity of transcription factors and their associated cofactors. His work was instrumental for the development of agonists of nuclear receptors - a particular class of transcription factors - into drugs, which now are used to treat high blood lipid levels, fatty liver, and type 2 diabetes. Dr. Auwerx was amongst the first to recognize that transcriptional cofactors, which fine-tune the activity of transcription factors, act as energy sensors/effectors that influence metabolic homeostasis. His research validated these cofactors as novel targets to treat metabolic diseases, and spurred the clinical use of natural compounds, such as resveratrol, as modulators of these cofactor pathways.
Johan Auwerx was elected as a member of EMBO in 2003 and is the recipient of a dozen of international scientific prizes, including the Danone International Nutrition Award, the Oskar Minkowski Prize, and the Morgagni Gold Medal. His work is highly cited by his peers with a h-factor of over 100. He is an editorial board member of several journals, including Cell Metabolism, Molecular Systems Biology, The EMBO Journal, Journal of Cell Biology, Cell, and Science. Dr. Auwerx co-founded a handful of biotech companies, including Carex, PhytoDia, and most recently Mitobridge, and has served on several scientific advisory boards.
Dr. Auwerx received both his MD and PhD in Molecular Endocrinology at the Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven, Belgium. He was a post-doctoral research fellow in the Departments of Medicine and Genetics of the University of Washington in Seattle.
Georges Wagnières
Georges Wagnières received his diploma degree (MSc) in physics from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1986. He obtained his doctorate in science (PhD) in physics (Biomedical optics) from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne (EPFL) in 1992 and did a postdoctoral work in the Wellman Laboratories of Photomedicine (Harvard Medical School), Boston, USA, from 1993 to 1994. He also obtained a Master degree in Management of Technology delivered by the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC) of Lausanne University and the EPFL in 2001. Georges Wagnières manages a research group active in the fields of: - Detection of early superficial cancers by fluorescence imaging. - Characterization of early superficial cancers by high magnification narrow band imaging. - In vivo and in vitro measurement of the vascular and tissular oxygen concentration by time-resolved luminescence spectroscopy and imaging. - Preclinical and clinical study of new photosensitizers for photodynamic therapy (PDT). - Treatment of neurodegenerative conditions (Alzheimer, Parkinson's diseases) by photobiomodulation. - Preclinical and clinical photodynamic therapy of inflammatory bowel diseases and atheroscerotic plaque. - Improvement of the selective vascular extravasation of chemotherapeutic agents by PDT. - Monitoring the light dosimetry during PDT by fluorescence spectroscopy and imaging. - Monitoring laser treatments of the retina by reflectance imaging. - Light dosimetry and tissue optical spectroscopy. - Radiometry. - Development of light delivery systems for biomedical applications. Georges Wagnières is also co-founder and was chairman of one spin-off companies: - Medlight SA, founded in July 1997, which develops, produces and commercializes light distributors for photodynamic therapy. Georges Wagnières has currently authored more than 235 papers (more than 150 in international journals with review board) and is inventor of 18 patents. He supervised 12 PhD students up to now, and currently teaches biomedical optics and photomedicine in master programs and doctoral schools. In addition, he gives the course entitled "Physique Générale I" to biology first year students registered to the Biology School of the Lausanne's University. MAIN PUBLICATIONS Please visit: https://www.epfl.ch/labs/lifmet/wagnieres/publications/
Matthias Lütolf
Matthias Lutolf is Full Professor at EPFL’s Institute of Bioengineering, with a cross appointment in the Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering. Lutolf was trained as a Materials Engineer at ETH Zurich where he also carried out his PhD studies (with Jeffrey Hubbell) that were awarded with an ETH medal. He continued his research training as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Stem Cell Biology (with Helen Blau) at Stanford University. He has served as the Director of the Institute of Bioengineering from 2014 to 2018. Lutolf is an internationally recognized leader in the fields of stem cell bioengineering and tissue engineering. His research program uniquely combines stem cell biology with engineering principles and quantitative thinking. His team, composed of engineers, chemists, physicists, cell and developmental biologists, strives to develop technologies that have true biological and medicinal function and applicability. Lutolf’s work has led to more than 110 peer-reviewed scientific publications, many of which published in highly reputed journals, more than 25 patents, and the commercialization of several products. Current research in the Lutolf lab is focused on the bioengineering of miniature tissues, termed organoids, that are generated from self-organizing stem cells.
Giorgio Margaritondo
Citizen of the USA and Switzerland, Giorgio Margaritondo was born in Rome, Italy, in 1946. He received the Laurea summa cum laude from the University of Rome in 1969. From 1969 he was an employee of the Italian National Research Council in Rome and Frascati and, in 1975-77, he was at Bell Laboratories in the USA. From 1978 to 1990, he was professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the USA; in 1984 he was nominated associate director for research of the Synchrotron Radiation Center of the same university. In 1990 he was nominated "professeur ordinaire" (full professor) at the EPFL; he directed the Institute of Applied Physics and the Physics Department. He was also a honorary faculty member at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. In 2001 he became Dean of the EPFL Faculty of Basic Sciences. In 2004 he was nominated Provost and he served until 2010, when he became Dean of Continuing Education, until his retirement from the EPFL in 2016 In addition to teaching general physics, his activity concerns the physics of semiconductors and superconductors (electronic states, surfaces and interfaces) and of biological systems; his main experimental techniques are electron spectroscopy and spectromicroscopy, x-ray imaging and scanning near-field microscopy, including experiments with synchrotron light and with free electron lasers. Author of more than 700 scientific publications and 9 books, he was also coordinator in 1995-98 of the scientific division of the Elettra synchrotron in Trieste. In 1997-2003 he was coordinator of the European Commission Round Table on synchrotron radiation, and then became president of the Council of the European Commission Integrated Initiative on Synchrotron and Free Electron Laser Science (IA-SFS and then ELISA), the largest network in the world in this domain. In 2011-15, he was Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Physics D (Applied Physics). He is currently vice-president of the council of the Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI), and president of the Scientific and Technological Committee of the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT). He is Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Vacuum Society and Fellow and Chartered Physicist of the Institute of Physics.
Felix Naef
Felix Naef studied theoretical physics at the ETHZ and obtained his PhD from the EPFL in 2000. He then received postdoctoral training at the Center for Studies in Physics and Biology at the Rockefeller University (NYC) under the guidance of Prof. Magnasco. His research focuses on the modeling and interpretation of high-throughput functional data and the study of biomolecular oscillators. He joined ISREC as an associate scientist in early 2004 and is currently Associate Professor in the Institute of Bioengineering (IBI).