July 17, 2018
Genome BC was pleased to present Jean-François Deleuze at its most recent Genomics Forum. Jean-François was one of four international speakers who brought their unique perspective to some of the most pressing challenges facing the integration of genomics into clinical health care settings. In addition to his presentation at the forum, we interviewed Jean-François and asked him what we could learn from his insights to build more capacity for genomics in British Columbia.
Jean-François Deleuze is both the director of the Centre National de Recherche en Génomique Humaine (CNRGH) and the scientific director of the Centre d’Etudes du Polymorphisme Humain (CEPH-Fondation Jean Dausset). He began his career in the pharmaceutical industry working for Rhône Poulenc Rorer and then Aventis and finally Sanofi where he established and headed the worldwide Human Genetics center of the company for about 10 years.
Jean-François has coordinated numerous international translational research collaborative projects (identification of biomarkers and therapeutic targets) in the field of the genetics of multifactorial diseases (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, Alzheimer’s) and cancer, involving academic groups, but also biotechnology companies. He was one of the initiators/pioneers of the introduction of personalized medicine approaches in the pharmaceutical industry. In his last 2 years at Sanofi, Jean-François built an efficient and state of the art stem cell platform that has delivered world-class translational tools and disease models.
